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Track Event
Bishly bashly nongly tinkle goes the window. Bishly bashly nongly tinkle goes the “score”.
Yes, yes, crashy bangy tank go boom etc., and lots of noise and destruction, yawn, but whilst all that carry on bimbles along… suck my sausage, but is Natalya the principal character of GoldenEye? We know next-to-nothing of Bond, despite this being the bullseye opportunity to reintroduce him, and of Trevelyan even less, beyond being The Misspelling of Dorian Gray. That might be merciful, mind.
If any character is said to experience anything in GoldenEye (Bond progresses not one smidge), then it is its female lead. An adventure with Natalya and Some Men What Speak Funny. So marginalised has Bond been by all the sniping at his decrepitude and Jurassic worldview that somebody else has to engage the audience / reader. The hive mindset has GoldenEye as a wip-woaring weintwoduction to James Bond, but it doesn’t do that; it concentrates its attention, and forces ours, on what James Bond isn’t. For those who assert the delusion, I know that you dream a lot, holding onto lies.
To that end, I would suggest that both Ms Scorupco’s performance and the character as novelised can be chalked up as more successful elements of both emanations of the enterprise. At least she’s being taken (relatively) seriously. How did we get from this to Plastic Glove Controls Death Laser From Space in roughly the same amount of years as it now takes to produce one Bond film? Given his tangible sniffiness at this commission, it’s a lost thrill that we were denied John Gardner’s novelisation of Die Another Day, which could have been so magisterially embittered and uppity at that casserole of acrid stupidity. That may be my negative energy blasting through, though, like a Death Laser From Your Screen.
When I write “(relatively) seriously”, Natalya does remain a character who has escaped a helicopter via its ejector seat. I suspect a design flaw there. No doubt someone will assert that this is absolutely viable. Assert away, poppet. Me do no do care, me do no.
John-John displays a habit in this book of retconning the unlikely, and the first two paragraphs of this chapter unpick the point that Bond leaps through that window with no idea of how and where he will land. Apparently, he knew there was a truck down there. We cannot have cheap thrills; everything must be explained. Except the ejector seat in a helicopter. Still, at least Mr Gardner’s enjoying himself with the statutory abbreviations, amongst them “the APCs”, which go undefined, and “the smaller BTU-152us with their open tops and room for some eight men.” Budge up, sounds like a party. “Ourumov sounded furious and had a weapon in his hand.” It’s a chainsaw. I lie, but it was an interesting lie. It would make for a different film. Better one, arguably. Natalya “clung to the hope that her new friend had somehow escaped and was already preparing a rescue.” She blithely assumes Bond is her friend (he’s only going to pump you and dump you; he’s not nice, m’lovey) when the relationship so far has all the emotional robustness of one’s interactions with the shelf-stacking classes.
“Natalya could smell the sour, unwashed body of Ourumov…” He’s been at his data-base; careful there, me duck. “When it happened, Ourumov jerked and actually cried out in dismay”. One suspects he’s put in many hours like that, but let’s be nice and say that when it happens, when the “wall on their left seemed to disintegrate”, it’s a highlight of the film and – finally – a bit o’Bond amidst all the pottering about. Smashing. It’s basely visceral to watch a tank smash through a wall but after all the inert meandering of GoldenEye, a sudden, funny high.
“The fear which now came as a stench from the general…” He’s all smell, isn’t he? We interrupt this amusing piece of action to give you a paragraph about why General Ourumov is scared of tanks, which is a decent enough character point in a book untroubled by them. Still, a classic piece of Gardnus Interruptus. “He had shown a not unnatural fear of tanks from that time.” Curious choice of career, accordingly, although I suppose they don’t have many tanks in Space! Force!, or whatever it is he runs.
“Bond had signed with pleasure… pulling the small knob…” I abbreviate for my own titillation, but it takes him nearly two hundred words to start the tank and one has to derive such teeny glee as is poss. Get on with it; poor (too) young (for you) Natalya is being asphyxiated by the sickly zoo smell of Ourumov. “It always looked so easy when you saw those tank battles in movies…” Movies? “One of the first things he had done on hitting the street was to reach for the driver’s headphones…” No, that’ll mess up Pierce’s crazed hair and we have enough trouble keeping that under control as it is.
All plays out much as on screen, absent Herr John’s lovely comedy face, and that’s possibly – a guess - due to this bit being filmed early on so Mr Gardner had more substance to work on and transcribe. Doesn’t mention the crass Perrier product placement (same incident, generic “beer”), but does get around to defining the APCs (at last!). “The wail of the sirens, though faint in his ears, was detectable and lord knew what else was out there…” A non-specific lord? Even the silly bit with the winged statue is in there and John is sufficiently decent not to treat it with (too much) contempt. Ooh, here’s a new bit; Bond drives the tank through an office block for reasons both unexplained and too expensive to film. Ooh, here’s another new bit: Bond attempts to murder some soldiers at a roadblock through the medium of “tank”. At no point does he adjust his “necktie”.
Rolls on, does the tank, beyond the reach of the authorities, completely inconspicuous. Do they not have helicopters? Perhaps they do, but all the ejector seats went off, tearing the pilots into pulled pork. And, of course, the next situation has been set up by John, who doesn’t trust us one liddle bit, by reminding us all that the train yard had been pointed out by Wade when they were wasting time and words however many days ago it was, piddling around St Petersburg. In the film, we have never been here before, and didn’t need to. John has unilaterally decided that there must be credibility and coherence in this tale of a grumpy dinosaur smashing through a city in a tank and not being followed or gunshipped into atoms.
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The Train
Was gifted (ugh) one of those Alexa chaps for Christmas. Terrifying, not least due to the similarity in name of the sister-in-law. It’s even more of a complete friggin’ know-all. Hilarity ensues. More than here, anyway (a low threshold). However, as a fun challenge, ask the little swine to “Play James Bond songs”. Cover versions ensue. Very distracting cover versions. Out-of-tune cover versions only serving to exacerbate the strength of even the feeblest originals. Ah, GoldenEye.
“…there was a strong sinister sense of long gone power about the place.” Ladled on as thickly as the other references to decay and times past, is it becoming counterproductive to do so? The analogy with the Bond series is becoming rawer with each reference and there’s not much “new” going on here, when it comes to it. “It had obviously once been somewhere of tremendous strategic importance.” It kept MGM and Pinewood afloat for years. “You could tell that by the types of structures and the strongly constructed platforms…” Gunbarrel. Man in dinner jacket. Dolly bird. Explosions. Weakfish jokes. Charm. Slight sense of daft shabbiness. Jobs for the boys. Song. Back in two years (occasionally).
It appears Bond has driven the tank across some fields. He remains outwith arrest. Er um er. No wonder Russia has to resort to cyber warfare: their army’s absolute rubbish. Yes, I mean you Putin. You there, baldy titch spaz-nose teat-face. Yeah, you [……………………………………thud]. Just in case you were unsure, Zukovsky is described as “the gangster arms dealer”, as opposed to a government one and there are two burly leather jacketed gentlemen walking up my front drive and this is very odd as I didn’t order them, this time.
Bond has left the tank and is in plain view overlooking the train yard. No-one accosts him. John has fun with other details – “Scapegoats, Savage, Sego and Scrooge nuclear weapons”. Scrooge? Does it see the error of its ways at the last minute? Strikes me as an odd trait for a weapon, but then they put ejector seats in helicopters, so what do I know? (Very little).
Hang on, Ourumov shoots his driver? “Twice in the stomach and then once through the head…” I don’t recall that from the film. [Scuttles back hurridly to GoldenEye, not a phrase you’ll see me write again]. Well, well, well. He does come across as significantly more unmitigated-bastardy in the book, although it might be the choice of actor, rather than the role, that engenders my sympathy for him within the film. Not very PG-13, that bit. Not going to sell many watches and grotty little sports cars with that. I am sure it was edited out / not filmed at all for purely artistic reasons. Likewise the unbridled come-hithering of Xenia as she wiggles her way towards Natalya and aims several pleasingly moist single-entendres right at her groin. “Such romps we’ll all have.” Only if Ourumov has a shower first. “Xenia is an extraordinary woman. She likes anything with legs.” Big fan of tables. I am sure this is what it means.
Mr Gardner describes the interior of the train at length – another Gardner villain occupying a facsimile of a real environment (loads of them do; don’t bother checking, it’s not a good use even of your time). “The china on the breakfast table” gets, as ‘tis Gardner, more descriptive heft than Trevelyan himself, although we are told that the left side of the face is “scarred and terrible, with the eye socket pulled down out of alignment and the mouth frozen at the corner.” Abandoned agent with considerable facial disfigurement seeks terrible but implausibly-plotted revenge years down the line, having set himself with “computers”; is Skyfall. I am sure that not making Mr Bean particularly scarred was for artistic reasons, and not another punch pulled in the pervading stench of nervousness, risk aversion and bland commercial compromise that pervades GoldenEye as much as the ripe aroma of General Ourumov.
“Trevelyan spoke softly, and she noticed that he had a very similar accent to that of Bond.” Fibs is naughty. Equally impenetrable, granted, but unless this Bean tick is trying to pull off (fnarr) transatlantic Oirish dog-whistle (he might be, can’t tell) then all similarity is out of the window, with no truck upon which to land. Apparently, Trevelyan’s left eye reminds Natalya “of a lizard or a chameleon.” Isn’t a chameleon a lizard anyway? C’mon, John, you’re usually right dead good at your research and right dead boring about proving it. Three pages we have of, in turn, Xenia, Ourumov and Trevelyan leering over Natalya as a shared sex object. It’s a New World. Now it’s the villains who do the predatory sexual stuff. Look how we have changed! Surprisingly lurid, given that the film pushes none of these buttons other than the occasional grunt from Ms Janssen and the genesis of CumjawBrosnan. Funny that a John Gardner Bond should come along and outsex the films. A moment to think what the quadrupling of a smelly Russian General, a deformed lizard man, a spider/scorpion woman and poor little Natalya would look like. More than a moment. Unlike the story, that’ll definitely have legs, for Xenia to enjoy. Arms, too. And the smell of burning flesh, apparently, although that might just be “007” eau de toilette (£27.95, which is steep for bleach). Behold the slippery slope (don’t ask why it’s slippery) to the Benson… the Benson “penchant”, let’s say.
“As he moved towards her again, there was a shrill, piercing alarm which seemed to surround them like some tangible envelope.” Envelopes are tangible, Johnners. How else to you think I send my blackmail letters? Email? I think not: someone could reply with a “Spike”. More on that, imminently.
“In the short time Bond had available…” he will now spend over a page lining up the tank to fire its gun. Time has no meaning. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. The Biblical quote came back to him together with familiar scents from the past, the smell of chalk and other boys (???); of damp grey flannel and the harsh penalties for flouting rules.” Hey kids, look at your exciting modern hero. Do you like the Bible and smelling boys? Move over Whatever-Pope-We’re-Now-At, James Bond is here!
Trevelyan’s “Communications Carriage”, which apparently justifies double capitalisation, has “state-of-the-art” (for 1995) computers that would “keep them in touch with the entire world if need be.” That is what they’re for, y’know. At that rather petty observation you are doubtless making “a noise which mingled anger with a hint of admiration”, absent the admiration, which is an achievement as I’ve no idea what that would sound like, so you win. Bracing herself for impact, and in the film I recall this as one of the camper moments in a pretty broad performance, Xenia is “straining backwards in her seat… her legs straight.” First time for everything, dear. Even with the “deadly question mark” arising from multiple explosions there’s still no police or army in sight, and those two gentlemen outside now seem to be spraying something onto my front door’s knob. It’s as if someone’s told them what I want them to be doing, but have weirdly misinterpreted it. Ah, GoldenEye.
“ ‘James, why can’t you just die like any other normal person?’ “ He can’t say hello like a normal person, either, but this is a bit rich coming from Trevelyan given that his earlier survival remains inexplicable.
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Steel-Plated Coffin
“Bond particularly recalled a seminar at which Trevelyan spoke of the need for the man in the field never to show any true emotion, and always to appear utterly uncaring about anything if caught out.” This is a) notionally a characteristic of a bad and naughty man-part-lizard and b) opens speculation about what Bond’s seminars were like, especially his PowerPoint display, the “roleplay” session (dear lord (non-specific lord)) and whether the biccies were any good.
“Both Trevelyan and Xenia stood with their backs towards Bond and a little too close to various switches and buttons that probably meant they could shut off the light, or open doors to go into the carriage forward of the middle one in which they stood.” Thanks for telegraphing that one, John. Spoiler alert.
A page passes for Bond to get hold of a handgun. This doesn’t happen in the film. It is no loss.
“ ‘You’re stuck here with us as your hostages….” He’s not stuck, the police aren’t interested. “A poet once wrote, ‘The glass is falling hour by hour….’ “ / Bond continued the quote, ‘The glass will fall forever. But if you break the bloody glass, you won’t hold up the weather.’ “ James Bond. Literary badinage. No, not badinage: bloodyterrible-inage. But, ‘tis Gardner. It’s a New World. A very pompous one, it seems. Modern hero. Modern hero. Keep repeating it. It might convince, eventually. Hey, you there, young chap: put down that priest Playstation and tune into James Bond! He’s right groovy and a real happening guy.
“ ‘Unless you can find the source and remove that bad boy Boris within a couple of days, you’re done for, old son. Buggered and bitched.’ “ Sounds fun. Sounds like an old fart, though. Beyond the accent issues, can see why this little speech didn’t make it into the turbo-charged techno-thriller (with computers ‘n’ ting) GoldenEye. Only seven years to speed-ramping, Yo Mamma and double-surfing. Stick with it. It gets “better”. (It really, really doesn’t).
“Don’t do anything stupid, Alec. I really don’t want to kill you. I want to take you home.” What makes you think this is my first time? Oh! Mr Bond .
“You always had a yen for strawberry-flavoured girls, James.” Did he? I wonder if that came up on the appraisal. He’ll have a girl called Strawberry in due course, but that’ll be during his even angrier years. I remember him feeding Vesper Lynd some strawberries but that was at a time when the British reading public had had fresh fruit rationed and were about as likely to identify a strawberry as they were the GI who had fiddled with their mother. “He was a clever actor, Bond thought.” Well, he keeps being cast despite the discernible talent being little other than getting killed off. “In that simple line the man had conjured up a picture of countless nights spent in the arms of Natalya, of every possible kind of fleshly lust studied and practised with her.” Euuwwwk. Urrrrgh. And mppppfff. “Every possible kind of fleshly lust” is every possible kind of Gardner. “Natalya came hobbling in.” What fleshly lust brought that on, then? Who put the anus in Janus?
“Not simply a laugh of pleasure or mockery… That was the laugh of a madman.” Something similar’s coming from the other side of my front door. I shall send one of the more expendable offspring to investigate.
“ ‘Long ago and far away. Like a playwright once said about fornication. ‘That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.’ “ Bitch is dead, surely? And, all this literature … Bitched, buggered and bewildered, am I.
“ ‘What’s true is that in forty-eight to seventy-two hours…” two to three days, then, “…you and I will have more money and more power than God.” (Specific God). Does God have money? Not after all those class actions, She doesn’t.
“Bond shrugged. ‘Kill the girl if you like. She means nothing to me.’ “ Now, if that opening bit of this chapter about the seminar and day-long team-building workshops were to hold true, then Trevelyan would know this is a lie. He does not appear to do so. He does not practise what he preaches. I shall be filling in my feedback form accordingly, and there weren’t enough biscuits either.
Oururmov isn’t just shot; Natalya knees him in the groin first, before “the top of [his] head disappeared in a fine red mist.” Shame; I liked him. “Bond ducked sideways, threw himself down near Natalya and came up shooting.” Is one of the possible kinds of fleshly lust studied and practised with her. “ ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you James. Good of you to ask. ‘ “ Cow. “Took one look and shouted, ‘Boris?’ / ‘Where?’ / ‘Somewhere out there.’ She’s very bright.
“ ‘He’s only alive when he’s at a computer. He could be anywhere – Timbukthree…. ‘ / ‘Timbuktu.’ This is what passes for comedy. Death, you’re beckoned. (I suspect it might be on the doorknob; the assigned child has suddenly developed catarrh, and – ooh - a limb’s off. ‘Scuse me while I stop the dog from gnawing it). Forget studying and practising every possible kind of fleshly lust, you might want to divert her attention to humour. Don’t really get why a Russian fluent in English would make this “mistake”. No, you’ve paid for your seat now, and every other film has started, so you might as well sit to the end. What do you mean, it’s awful? It’s modern. So modern.
“ ‘If I can send a spike down the line, I could trace exactly where he is.’ “ I’m very sure that outside of GoldenEye I have never heard use of the word “spike” in this context. I wonder what it could be? In other news, the local police have turned up here much more quickly than the Russian police have at Trevelyan’s train, so all’s well. Except the child.
“He turned his attention to the floor, and removing a large Swiss Army knife from its hiding place in the waistband of his slacks…” That sounds a dangerous place to keep it, given all the jumping through windows and clambering about he’s been doing. “Slacks.” Oh, John, you spoil us. You really, really do.
We have to “see” Trevelyan and Xenia wandering about outside the train. We have to “see” Trevelyan set the timer to blow Bond’s carriage (fnarr). We have to “see” Trevelyan and Xenia unclip restraining locks from the helicopter. It’s all go. “By the time he reappeared…” it was midnight… “By the time he reappeared, Xenia had the engine running and the rotors turning.” Go on, Xenia, punch the ejector seat and we can end all this, right now.
“C:>SPIKE”
“C:>SEND SPIKE ENTER”
20 GOTO 10. Etc. “She gave a wild war whoop.” Yes, watching people “do internet” is fascinating. “Then they both heard the disembodied voice of Janus, Alec Trevelyan (you’d forgotten, hadn’t you?), coming from above (it’s a kind of fleshly lust)”. In the film, the Janus think seems forgotten earlier once it’s revealed to be Trevelyan (halfway through the second trailer, three months earlier). Being the god of change and time, that this is going so slowly is all Janus’ fault. Being the god of both beginnings and endings, he could do a bit of hurrying up on the latter. Still, only fifty pages to go.
“Natalya had typed in a further command: C:>FOLLOW SPIKE TRACE.” Did she? Well, she’s just made of useful, isn’t she? Can do typing and everything. “The watch was one of the most useful things Q had ever provided him with.” Ignore the syntax, buy the watch. “He yanked at the back of her shirt…” Time and a place, you old menace. At least we’re spared the dialogue about codeword synonyms for bottoms, although Mr Brosnan shouting “chair” does make one wonder whether the Bond of the book has actually let go of the one he pinched from the cell. There is nothing to suggest he has. It has legs; Xenia’d like it.
“She smiled up at him. ‘Wow! Was it good for you?’ “ Bit odd, given the last week (it might have been a month) of utter trauma she’s been through. And the trauma about to happen. “He smiled at her, his lips drifting down towards her mouth.” The child’s face seems to be melting in the same way. I am not sure how to explain this to Mrs Jim. “…she lifted her face, then her body, to his.” At least that stops him showing off the size of his library. Yeah, you two just go squelch, it’s not as if the police are on their way, is it? You just crack on there, practising every possible kind of fleshly lust, and don’t you worry about the:
- Dead Defence Secretary
- Multiple dead soldiers
- Mashed up streets and buildings
- A stolen tank, generally
- Exploderated train
- Dead General (now smells worse; apparently it was possible)
- British agent, armed with approximately two bullets and a knowledge of literary quotations, in the middle of Russia’s middle of nowhere.
No, just hammer away at each other and everything will be just strawberries.
James Bond will return in the next chapter, which fatefully is called “Interluide”, as if there hadn’t been enough timewasting already. Jacques Stewart has contemplated the imminent wrath of Mrs Jim and is currently booking a one-way helicopter ticket (ejector seat is extra, apparently) to Timbukthree.
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Retired
Terrible accident due to Cold War building in desperate need renovations
Streets safely dismantled As part of a gentrification project
A celebratory parade before the vehicle was put out of commission
Another terrible accident, which sadly cost the life of decorated and respected general, demonstrating why Cold War era equipment was being decommissioned
And we in the Russian government will not dignify the last point with a response. Good afternoon.
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I shall adopt this as my family motto.
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That’s a great name for a band! 
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Isn’t it?!?!?!
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Interlude
Ah, the intermission. So modern is GoldenEye, it has an intermission. Wrap yer laughing gear round a creamy King Cone and revel in how a tale already stretched atom-thin, is further so.
“There were a lot of problems…” Ah, GoldenEye. This chapter carries its share in showing how Bond and Natalya get to the Caribbean beyond a straightfor’ard “they do”. No, John won’t tolerate that. We must be told, via unusual artistic choices. Because what will happen is so peculiar, I want to believe that all of this was scripted, costumed, catered, lit, key (and, yes, dolly) gripped, second-assistant-directed and shot, but good judgment edited it out. Yet somewhere, out there, proof exists of… (adopts Amsterdam boat guide voice) ….Oh. I want to believe that, but suspect it’s a filler ramble in GardnerWorld, with its traditional curiosities. Otherwise the book ends within another fifteen pages.
“They were on foot, some six or seven miles from the centre of St Petersburg.” Don’t worry, there’s no police nearby. Nor anyone who noticed TrainGoBang. Rozzers turned up jolly quickly when Bond blew that chopper, though. Happens. “In these days of the new Russian democracy, it was not always a good idea to be without transport”. Firstly, this suggests that it sometimes was. Secondly, Bond has just destroyed every “moving vehi-icle” in the Greater St Petersburg bailiwick and thirdly, what unmitigated codswallop.
Quaint that one problem is the lack of a telephone. How much of GoldenEye could be brought to a merciful end by a message into the MI6 WhatsApp letting them know Trevelyan is alive, he’s in Cuba, no he still hasn’t learned how to speak lolz, laters. Ah, GoldenEye, now as prehistoric as it initially labelled Bond. Two years later, 007 controlled a car with a ‘phone. Progress! And product placement.
“They walked on for several miles, happily unmolested…” I’ve occasionally had unmolested walks, ‘tis true. Is regular lachrymose molestation a characteristic of going for a walk in John’s odd world? “…save for a beggar who insisted on singing for them in a high-pitched tuneless voice.” This was cut. Was this because:
- despite clever use of doubles, they couldn’t make The Actor Preece Bambam’s dual roles convince. Hard enough getting the main one to; or
- Flat Eric decided he’d prefer to “sing” at the end, whilst the audience fled; or
- it was very unusual to cast Princess Anne, and it would have distracted people from the plot… thing; or
- it proved one egregious Michael G Wilson cameo too far?
The film tends to show Russia in an even-handed way;, John has no qualms about presenting it as ‘orrible, decayed and feral, its Establishment being corrupt and venal, and everyone else scrabbling for food and a smidge peasant-y. Although he might be describing the bits they filmed in Watford.
In “a grubby little restaurant” – Hertfordshire, then – they find themselves hidden from the police by the proprietor, “obviously a man who had some kind of grudge against authority in any shape or form”, and it’s a shame that George Lazenby’s appearance was removed. Hiding them in a cupboard, “…then the proprietor put his finger to his lips and closed the door, leaving them in pitch dark. Natalya’s hand came up to his face, her fingers exploring eyes, nose, mouth and chin.” Couple of things I’m boringly bound to pick apart with negative energy, there. Firstly, the most recent “him” was the café owner, so this Natalya seems a goer, know what I mean, nudge nudge, and inconsistently drawn given earlier primness, and primness yet to come. It’s that, or duff grammar. The experience of loving won’t take all the pain away. Secondly, even if it is Bond she’s now molesting on their walk - blimey, it does happen - that observation of her character is undiluted. Thirdly (I said a couple: I lied), is poking Bond up his nose inherently sexually alluring? Fourthly, James Bond as portrayed by The Actor Pierce Brosnan performs sexual acts in the closet. Mm-hm.
“At first she did not respond as his lips caressed hers, then, like throwing a switch…” (John plays with “turned on”) “…he felt her body thrust against his, and she opened her mouth.” Presumably it’s his fingers he stuffs in there; his turn. Just his fingers, mind. Cheap to film – it’s pitch black – but presumably silly to listen to. No less silly than Eric Serra joining in on the molesting by his attacking an oil drum with a tambourine, though.
Given what’s going on in this cupboard, one wonders whether they contemplated casting Boris Becker as 007, but no-one would ever accept a blond Bond, even with his stronger grasp on English than this cast. I know the Becker incident occurred later than the film’s release, but this is GoldenEye and history, chronology and the passage of time are all cruel fictions.
The concept of “the Police and Security Organs” doubtless has Natalya all-a-quiver. Duhty little monkey.
Bond’s relationship with Wade has not improved and he (Bond, not Wade, O Grammar Organs) remains irritable. Viral irritation infects the reader when the chitter-chatter about the right and wrong name for the KGB fills space as heavily as a cabbage-rich dogfart. “ ‘I don’t know a single Russian who calls KGB anything else but KGB – yesterday, today, forever, like the ads for that musical, Kittens.’ “ / “ ‘Cats’, Bond corrected.” Oh, why did they never film Gardner’s stuff? Clue right there, m’kittens. Squabbling about acronyms, statutory Lloyd-Webber (“Cats”, frequently), clunking might-be-humour-can’t-tell and Bond pompously correcting others. Entertainment.
“…the outskirts are crawling with people looking to do dangerous things to you.” That’s Watford. On and on they grimly bitch through exposition, although the influence on my “style” cannot be denied, arriving both at Bond’s hotel and the unlikely, if convenient, situation that the hotel isn’t being watched and they can pass - unmolested, to Natalya’s chagrin - through the centre of a city Bond has recently obliterated. “Bond hated disguises; never felt happy wearing them; found it difficult to take on some new role.” Obvious comment for that last bit [insert here, lorem ipsum brosnan flimflam jimjam]. RogBond gaily slapping on clown face this is not; what it is , is much worse.
Does BrosnanBond adopt a disguise, onscreen? Dodgy aliases (aged Russian scientist; foot-taller South Efrikken diamond smuggler; banker; actor) are a different matter. We have Connery’s epic transformation into a Japanese fisherman and subsequently, in homage to skills acquired in that guise, the equally upsetting washed-up old whale. Mr Lazenby is in disguise for a good hour of kilt-based heavily-dubbed fun, Sir Roger flings nipples and fake moustaches around like there’s no tomorrow (it never dies) and even that Dalt-Ton dressed up as Osama bin Laden-with-problems-that-one. There are some (cretins, mainly) who say that Mr Craig sported a skull mask more regularly than that time he disguised Spectre as credible entertainment. Infrequent revisitor to his spavined tenure though I am, I think Mr Brosnan once wore some exploding spectacles. That’s it. Denied as we have been of watching the talent wear a funny hat, here comes John to the rescue and…
(Adopts Amsterdam boat guide voice (again; it’s a lifestyle choice, and you are required to respect it for some unfathomable reason)) …Oh.
“ ‘Don’t worry, James. We’ll be subtle. We won’t put you in drag.’ “ Is dialogue that happens. “Just age you a bit…” off-message, yet a-bloody-gain, Jay-G “…and Natalya can be aged down.”
Oh yes?
You’re right to worry. “It’ll be cool.” Is dialogue that also happens. I have a bad feeling about this. Not least because we are in a hotel room; in his safe space, John unleashes raw Gardner. “There was an American passport for Bond…” wink wink guess who we’ve cast? “…complete with a new face…” all this nictating hurts my soul… “…a new face which sported large heavy spectacles, grey hair and a chubbier face.” The face sports… a face? Logical, if lazy. All edited out: you don’t spend money on hiring the BrosFace to hide it.
“ ‘Don’t try and drink anything while you’re wearing those [foam pads] in your mouth, James. They tend to suck up liquids so you spray everyone.’ “ Fnarr. Bond’s response – ‘I read that in an upmarket espionage novel somewhere’ – is classic GardnerTroll. Can’t recall this from the Flemings, so they’re not “upmarket”. Can’t recall this from Gardner’s Bonds, so double-down-ditto on that. Vibe now in Mr Gardner’s attitude reads as “none-too-bothered”. Might be in one of his “own”, possibly The Secret Compartments Generations. You go, John. Actually, do. Go. “The change in his appearance was really quite remarkable…” Happens every ten years on average, and just wait until they do it again in ten years’ time if you truly want “really quite remarkable” and “twats”. “…and he emerged into the sitting room to find Wade with a young schoolgirl he did not recognise.” So he claims. This sounds… un-nice. Princess Anne’s cameo was already cut; thankfully, so was Prince Andrew’s. For the next film, bit more Fierstein, bit less Epstein.
Modern hero, everyone. Come on, watch GoldenEye (please), we’ve reconditioned Bond and the series so it’s not grotesque sexist objectifying old tat with a verruca-tongued cretaceous pervert at its centre. We really have changed things. Promise.
“ ‘She’s meant to be about fifteen.’ “
(Guess whose voice) …Oh.
“…and the school uniform really does exist.’ Wade gave her an almost lecherous look.” This isn’t… right in the head, is it? Bickering old men lounging around a Russian hotel room with a woman dressed as an underage girl. Perhaps she’ll do some weeing on them, adding to the Presidential library. Is Natalya shaped like a fifteen-year-old, then? That’s terribly, terribly dark, if so.
One can only imagine (because it’s fictional) the script conference at which this was floated past Barbara Broccoli. No wonder she “set out to destroy her father’s legacy” (copyright The Very Mentally Unwell, 2005) if this is what that legacy protected. Could this really have been part of a screenplay of a film trying to modernise Bond? Or never part of that, never even contemplated by Eon (the track record’s not watertight: Bibi Dahl, I’m looking at you (not like that))? Is it simply free-range sabotage on the part of a pissed-off writer churning out a rote novelisation that no-one’s going to read because no one was doing so by then? Can I assert that simply because John Gardner is dead and can’t sue? (Yes). For a chaste film, the book has expanded the sexual content into areas of “challenge”.
“He dumped a pair of old style British passports on the table.” So – maroon or blue? It’s so confusing these days.
“ ‘I like the – what do you call it? Gymslip?’ “ At which, the audience at the premiere in the Radio City Music Hall crawled into a collective ball and cringed itself to death. “Natalya lowered her eyes… “ The one word edited out there was “coquettishly”, otherwise the book could only have been sold in Holland, “…as though embarrassed.” You’re embarrassed? Recalling the theory that the story is that of Natalya and the strange persons she meets, doubtless all this is evidence of her being in charge of the situation and manipulating these weak men to her will.
It’s definitely that
“ ‘That’s correct.’ “ There Bond goes, correcting her again, as if he’s the master and she his pupil and… ewwwwwwww. Before all this roleplay, the lead actor looked twice her age and now he’s three times that, and that’s before the grey hair and spurty-juice pads. None of this is helping the relaunch. Deliberately. Look ye, says John, with your proclamations of refreshing Bond’s attitudes; look ye on all of your right fancy promises of change that I shall now utterly undermine by emphasising the series’ prior penchant for inappropriate age-gaps in the grimmest way imaginable. You thought post-1980 BrontoMooreus nibbling at lithe young things was potentially unhealthy? Bet you won’t film this, said John. John won that bet. John was right.
John was terribly wrong.
“Bond looked her up and down, the white knee socks did his libido the power of good.”
I’m not sure what to say (making various noises but articulating anything coherent, much doubted by several, finally abandons me). I appreciate I have a capacity for ill-thought-through poor taste but I bow in recognition of a superior talent. In “You’ll never know, how I watched you from the shadows as a child”, the “you” and “a child” are synonymous. It’s at a level of troubling way beyond anything from that Mr Benson. I owe him an apology, and genuinely meant.
No, it’s Natalya in control. It really, really is.
You might ask why, if I consider this fit to be quicklimed into Bond Hell (which I do, clue fans), I am spraying at such girth about it? I suppose it’s because it’s so non-Bond, so seedy, so sordid and so pointedly contrary to such purpose as GoldenEye claims to possess, a reinvention into a more enlightened age. As for Bond’s libido, having within a few pages practised fleshly lust beside an incinerated train and then molestation in a cupboard, to now be stimulated by the sight of a schoolgirl confirms that it’s not the killing that keeps him alone, it’s the colossal sexual deviancy. Did this come up on the evaluation at the start? No wonder none of the women ever stick around. They’ve seen what’s in his SECRET COMPARTMENT, and it’s not healthy. Nor legal. Also, they get older. Whatever the throwaway references to gender equality (or entertainment) in the film, Mr Gardner’s having none of it. Send spike. Send it dressed as a child.
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(The interlude continues. Seems to be quite long. Turns out the projectionist’s seen the rest of the film and has decided that it’s a sub-par ripoff of You Only Live Twice and so is contemplating putting that on instead).
And on it goes. “ ‘What I don’t like is the underwear. Thick, dark blue and feels like serge.’ Bond smiled. ’Standard uniform issue at British girls’ schools.’ “
Comfortable reading, this. Was this in the computer game? Put that joystick down.
Where does Wade get hold of underpants for children (and did he have them to “hand” already)? The CIA: a smashing bunch of lads. You imagine how Bond “smiled” and not wake up screaming, I challenge you. “Wade put on an innocent look.” How old were all those previous wives? There’s no way, even with a cast of all the talents (which this one isn’t), that this scene, Bond talking about kids’ pants, could come across on film as anything other than sinister. No wonder they always overstate the independence and significance of the Bond women being Bond’s equal and blahblahblah; they have to atone for this, and must do so, forever. Presumably – and I accept it is a presumption – John considered this to be “funny”. The product placers and toy manufacturers were equally giddy.
Wade “took the liberty of working out your sizes”. Lord (very specific Lord), what has this become? God (very specific God) help you if he invites you round to look at his collection of toy soldiers. Accordingly, Natalya must have the bearing and measurements of a fifteen-year-old girl, and Wade is sufficiently aware of girls of that age to procure – and that’s the word – suitable garb. Later in this chapter, Bond has sex with her.
I accept that John addresses a peculiarity of the film, which has Natalya dressed in the same clothes for three-quarters of its length, by which stage she must stink like a teenager’s bedroom, but in tackling the need to change clothes, to go in this direction, whilst an artistic expression, is aggressively perverse.
Time to leave the hotel room; the atmosphere there is a bit much, and off to the airport. “Bond presented himself at immigration as a crusty, no-nonsense, slightly eccentric, ex-military type abroad.” Just the sort that’s Not a Paedo Sextourist, Not One Bit. Whilst at the airport, Natalya finds herself (in role) groped by two female security officers. “Later, she told him it was the worst moment of her life.” Liar.
In Paris they change back to “near normal” – there’s no way back for either of them, nor us I fear – and then onto Puerto Rico which is an odd choice given that this is where Ken Spoon’s fiancé / girlfriend / whatever / who cares (aged…?) found herself cut apart at the end of the previous book. Will that be mentioned? Met by a young man “who had CIA written all over him” – I will never understand the tattooing thing, especially when it leads to security breaches like that – who “appeared to be very taken with Natalya.” Probably because she’s still wearing the white knee socks. No, we’re in a New World now, where women aren’t objectified. Except when novelised.
Ah! A “luxurious BMW” is presented unto Bond and his child bride, so BMWs are driven by old men whose libido is energised by schoolchildren. I think this is what John is telling us. I’m prepared to believe it, and probably always have. GoldenEye asks (tells) us to evaluate Bond, so I can do naught else but accept the invitation. Mr Gardner does not describe the car other than by its brand, so presumably was aware of the deal but not aware of the … horrid thing manifesting it. “ ‘I’m glad we had the opportunity of making your dreams come true.’ Bond smiled at her” In the same way Jimmy Savile used to, when expressing the same sentiment. Why’s she there? I know she has asserted that no-one else can disarm the satellite, but she doesn’t, and, surely, Bond having reported this to his superiors, there would be someone more qualified available? Unless he hasn’t reported it in, because he wants to keep his relationship with Natalya a secret for reasons to upsetting to probe. “ ‘I just hope we don’t end up in a nightmare.’ “ Well, you’re in this wretched chapter, for a start.
“…Natalya turned to look back, giving a little squeak of surprise…” Still going with the “young” thing, there, John? How wise. “…just as a neat little Piper Archer passed low over their heads, flaps fully extended…” Whose flaps, I am too much of a gentleman to observe. The ‘plane has “Lord Geoff I stencilled on its nose”, which in a chapter of such atonal weirdness is amusingly odd rather than actively distressing.
So… we were with Wade in Russia and now he’s turned up here? Porq-why? I suppose this bit was always in the script; the dialogue is similar to the film, if Gardnered. However, John’s determination to show how Bond and Natalya escaped Russia necessitated involving Wade and his collection of children’s undergarments, otherwise verisimilitude would obviously have been very badly ruptured. However, to have him turn up again immediately feels more contrived than as seen on screen, not least when Wade does not recognise Natalya despite leering at her five paragraphs previously. That might be because she’s (probably) dressed as an adult and he’s not interested any more. “ ‘Oh, this is a present from what’s his name – N? R? A?’ “ Interesting choice of initials there, Jack. Why should those spring to mind, by immediate association? Is Jack Wade a member? Profile fits common membership interests of the muzzle-nuzzlers.
(I meant the gardening).
(And the paedophilia).
Rather than depart in the grotty “moving vehi-icle”, Wade will fly off in the aeroplane; if he spends more than an hour on the ground, he could be arrested and deported for… things. Accordingly, the ‘plane “ ‘…will be waiting for you… at the private aircraft parking at San Juan Dominicci…” which John then has to tell us “…is San Juan’s domestic airport”, and there I was assuming it was a potato.
“Wade cocked his head on one side, looking quizzically at Natalya, as though he had never met her.” A poor attempt to deny the charges. We could – and, on grounds of taste, should – have been spared the previous interlude (I get it now) in St Petersburg and then this wouldn’t come across so oddly. Notably, Bond states that Wade “brought” her clothes in Russia, not bought, suggesting Wade already had them, confirming… why is there a bolus of heavily armed illiterates at my front door? Ah, they’ve all touched the doorknob (not a euphemism; an accusation). What a lot of coughing. Oh dear, never mind etc. Great guys, those Russians. (Can I have my cheque now? And please, please destroy the tape of me eating fish and chips in that Travelodge: Mrs Jim will just freak out about my cholesterol level again).
“ ‘I have been promoted…” says Natalya. “Now I’m deputy sheriff of Mr Bond’s posse.’ “ Yes, dear, he definitely said “posse”. No, he did . There’s absolutely nothing to worry about, you’re being very brave, we’ve been after him for years, so you just give us the agreed signal when you want us to extract you. Or him from you. “ ‘You have a very weird taste in certain more intimate garments, Mr Wade.’ ‘Oh, yes. I hope they were the right size.’ ‘Perfect.’ Bond looked at them with innocence written all over his face.” No, Barbara, hey, stop, what’re you doing, this is great stuff, we can’t just pretend to your father we forgot to do the scene or it somehow got destroyed in transit. Don’t open the film can, it’ll expose it and… ah, dammit, what-the-f___? Jesus. No, it’s way too bloody late to reshoot and we’ll never capture the magic of that dialogue again. Are you going to tell Cubby one of his favourite scenes has gone? Yes, I know he’s so old that he thinks he’s an ant, but it’s still only polite. Politer than that last comment, anyway.
“For the first time, the pilot leaned down, gesturing to Wade to hurry up. ‘My chauffeur’s getting anxious.’ “ He’s spotted Puerto Rico’s NonceSquad coming over the hill. Next film, Wade only appears on a US airbase; always needs a quick escape. “He clapped Bond on the shoulder and kissed Natalya on the cheek.” Leave her be, you monster. The “bomb around in it” remark stands but we all know that the only damage he can do driving that ghastly car is to his dignity. An achievement, given what we know of the man. In the book, the car belongs to the CIA, and is not the pastel-blue rollerskate engineered by Q (although being shaped like a toy makes it is easier to lure the young). Accordingly, it should be Bond more concerned about all the duct tape and “garments” he found in the glove compartment, and the dawning realisation that the knocking coming from the boot wasn’t a loose spare wheel.
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(The interlude might be ending soon. The projectionist has relented but has put it to the management that one could just go straight from the train exploding to Bond and Natalya flying into Cuba and lose nothing)
Right, the beach scene…hm…
For some, pivotal in the change of attitude in the Bond series, in that it expressly pushes a reflective, deeper quality not overtly present in Dink Bumschlapp (full name), Dr Kananga flatulently bursting like a giant polyp and Octopussy’s blithely virulent racism-for-laughs. For others, a toe-curling exchange that ignores the subtlety in what has gone before, exposes the lack of appreciation / understanding / basic intellectual awareness of those subtleties in those who claim this as new, and a change for the worse in heralding the writ-large personal angst that reached its abject peak / trough with OberBlofeld.
You’ve guessed which way I’ll tumble, haven’t you? I hope what follows is more than “oh, more whining about GoldenEye and Pierce Brosnan, put a sock in it, man” although when I did last put a sock in it, man, paramedics were required and I can’t have them touching that front door, it would be such a waste. Additionally, you could have given up well before now. You know the name. You know the number of times I’m going to be unpleasant.
“He thought of all the years he had spent living in secret yet enjoying everything that his hedonistic life had to offer.” Not the profile of a sex offender, you say? “What had he become, he asked himself.” Better not ask me, lest my answer be insufficiently developmental. “Was he just a killing machine?” No. There are some even less appealing characteristics. Odd that it’s the killing that troubles him. “Did his superiors let him get away with all kinds of excesses both on and off missions because they understood the kind of strain his work produced?” Spread the blame. It’s institutionalised. I demand a Public Inquiry. That episode in the South of France was just box-ticking, distraction from The Truth. We went through a rigorous evaluation process and we will now start our learning journey and Make Sure It Does Not Happen Again. “He knew that some people turned a blind eye to his way of life…” Are you still so sure this isn’t about decades of wilfully ignored abuse? “…just as he knew they paid him more than most of the regular presenters at the BBC.” Or “…the regular officers of the Secret Intelligence Services”. Or “…the regular members of a Royal Family (non-specific Royal Family)”. Or ”…the regular driver of BMWs”. Whatever.
Another prediction from Mr Gardner that came true, then.
Natalya struggles along an over-filtered beach. “Presently she reached down and tousled his hair.” I wouldn’t do that, m’love, hairdressing and make-up are having a hell of a time keeping that under control. They are now furious with you, and have stormed off set to see their union rep, threatening to keep you in that acrid cardigan forever.
“ ‘Janus was your friend, wasn’t he?’ he asked.” The book does keep up the “Janus” thing much longer than the film and, yes, it does say “he asked”, not “she”, and either this is a major twist which I didn’t see coming and adds a visceral dimension, and a classic Gardner traitor, or it’s shoddy proof-reading. However, if the book had been proof-read, the first half of this chapter wouldn’t exist, so I suppose shoddiness has advantages. “She tried to get up from the sand, but he grabbed her arm and drew her back to him.” He sounds nice. “ ‘I hate you…’ “ A little changeable, is she not? She might, though, have “checked out Q’s briefcase”, found a selection of personal items and realised that her previous pleasure at there being “ ‘…not another human being in sight’ “ was dangerously unwise, stuck as she now is, miles from anywhere with this pervy old mollusc. “Your kind’ve caused so much grief all over the world…” …even in Timbukthree… “…with your guns and your instruments of death.” Just wait until he starts singing. Natalya has known this man for – what? – even on the perplexing Gardner timeline, a day and a half? They have had about seven conversations. Are all Computer Scientists like this? First M, now this one. Never talk to them. They’ll just presume to fillet your soul.
We don’t get the “alive/alone” nonsense (and nonsense it is); instead, a diverting little speech from Bond running thus. “ ‘I do a necessary job. If I didn’t do it, someone else would. I simply have to level things off so that one day there will be some kind of true peace in the world.’ “ The pomposity aside, it’s a distinctly different focus from the film. Bond accepts here that others could perform his role (the meta-text of having a new “actor” aside), whereas the film is the Big James Bond Here He Is Again. His pontificating about peace is obviously deluded given the history of violence but not uninteresting. There is less melodrama than the film, and it’s considerably more jaded. Not fit for relaunch. We’ll reshoot that bit.
About which…
As the man would come to say, youth is no guarantee of innovation. The mythologizing of GoldenEye the film as breaking new ground with its oxymoronic – and largely moronic - SHOUTED INTROSPECTION saddles the rest of the audience with the limited insight of those who promulgate such a view. One can draw conclusions about his character from the way he deceives Solitaire into bed, or manipulates Domino into helping him, or “seduces” Pussy Galore, or shoves Fekkesh’s mistress in front of a bullet or (etc…). Although superficially “not nice”, they also manifest the core, unsatisfied yearning that is at the heart of Bond as a character, rendering every relationship expendable because they’re ultimately foolish to pursue. He’ll never be satisfied. “Returning to Fleming”, what is the final line of The Man with the Golden Gun other than the payoff to that?
What is “We Have All The Time In The World” (as sentiment or song) other than a yearning for love that has not yet happened? That the two stunted souls have… all the time in the World (see?) to get there. Time enough for life to unfold all the precious things, etc. That’s the point. That’s the story . They’re not in love yet, and are denied the opportunity to have it happen. That’s the tragedy as both changed their behaviour, controlled the habits of their previous lives to try to achieve it; for what? It’s not a love song insofar as that concept assumes the presence of love. It’s a “wanting to love” song, and all that plays out is the cruellest manifestation of the unsatisfied, never-to-be-satisfied, striving that is endemic in Fleming’s writing. OHMSS is not about loss; it’s denial of gain (Blofeld, Tracy, Bond). You’ll never know, what it means to get so close and be denied. That’s what keeps him alone; the pointlessness of pursuing satisfaction.
This, we already knew. It’s all there. However, we are treated with contempt now, and contempt that we deserve if we flatter the likes of GoldenEye with misguided claims about its novelty, its depth. If we’re so hopeless that we have to rely on the dialogue to POINT IT ALL OUT then we might as well assert that if we fail to breathe, that was someone else’s responsibility to TELL US. I suppose that since GoldenEye is of itself a Brodie’s Notes of Bond, appealing to lowest-common-denominator telegraphing of character is a consistency in its approach. There is novelty, then: we haven’t needed to be told before. Yay that.
Worse would come. Casino Royale, stopping every fifteen lines to TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT BOND has become practically unwatchable over the years, beyond even that unbearable moment when two decent actors discuss wristwatches in a contractually-obliged manner many substrata below their collective talents. I do wish Eon Productions would stop it. I feel so terribly patronised. There’s no discovery, nothing to find, if it’s all laid out for one. Why should we accept being told what to think? A guarantee of a manipulated audience mindset helps persuade companies that there will be greater chance of a collective acceptance of their grotty products, so bung us ten million for the budget and we’ll sell the cattle your wristwatch, is that it? Maybe we all became lazy and it’s symptomatic of an era.
Maybe I’m just an old fart.
Talking of old farts, Bond has led the shaped-like-a-fifteen-year-old Natalya back to his shack. “They stood close together, all senses merging…” although any sense of taste is rapidly disappearing… “…hands touching, their nostrils gathering up the pleasant smell of island flowers combining with faintly aromatic scents of the dish, which Bond had set to cook slowly in the kitchen.” Bit nostril-y, this chapter, and Bond’s obviously cooking a quiche again, as is his wont when they’re too young for him. Might be fishfingers and a rusk, though. “When he kissed her, he tasted the aftermath of sweet fruit.” Strawberries, then. Does fruit have an aftermath? Raisins kill dogs; is that the idea? “When she kissed him back, her tongue sliced into his mouth…” Bond’s barrister advises that’s evidence of consent.
“He took her by the hand and she followed him, eyes downcast as though she were completely innocent of men, which would have been a lie.” That chap in the mackintosh, four rows in front of you in the cinema, to the left, yes him; he seems to have woken up so suddenly that his BMW keys have fallen from his pocket. “She gave a little giggle and whispered, ‘More romantic than the schoolgirl pants, eh?’ “ And now that gentleman appears to have exploded. “In the distance, she seemed to hear her mother…” so will Bond, then, as their senses have merged… “…flustered, Natalya you have no shame when, years ago, she had caught her with a local boy.” That’ll happen when you catch your mother with a local boy, although it’s an odd thing to think about at a time like this, unless it’s a suppressed memory of another underage coupling. If, when exercising the biannual permission to touch Mrs Jim on the ankle, the mother-in-law’s voice came into my head, it would put me right off, and also make me wonder about how she had managed to climb out of that well after all these years. Still, it would remind me where I left that shovel.
“…Natalya suddenly sucked in air as her hands enfolded him.” He’s probably heavy, being elderly. “Embracing him with her fingers, she pulled him to her lips and kissed him, then pushed him back so that his manhood lay across her belly.” Lovely. Not filmed, you say? Really? Can’t imagine why. Perhaps they needed a stuntman and [obvious BJ Worth “joke” inserted here]. With inserting in mind, on we crack. “Her hands guided him down and he slid into her…” …he’s quite old and that fruit’s unleashing its aftermath… “…thick and long…” thanks for that, John; possibly a bit much but I accept everyone else gave up reading your Bonds about three books ago, so why not slip it in? As it’s GoldenEye, it could be a reference to Bond’s hair at the given moment, but it’s probably his Police and Security Organ.
“They had become one person…” deuced odd-looking person, but hey ho, “locked…” (sciatica) “…and moving slowly…” (age, probably also the sciatica) “…through the wonder of that great pleasure only woman can give to man, and man to woman.” John’s famed fondness for abbreviations hits a blindspot with LGBTQIA. It’s a New World.
“Both of them had dreamed of nights like this from the first moment of meeting…” That’s about 72 hours and they were tightly tied up to an exploding chopper and… (guess who’s back) …Oh. “…they found the rhythm, lost it, then discovered a natural movement belonging only to them.” They’ve been to a school recorder concert, then? Bond probably has; schools now seem to be his thing. “Two people, locked as one.” Yes, you said that earlier. It’s going to take a lot of those (long) aforementioned sensual oils to prise this old grunt off her, isn’t it? “…he thrust deep into her…” The prosecution team seems quietly confident, has to be said. They’re not interested in you, Bond (few are, by now); they’ll go for a lesser sentence if you give up Jack Wade.
“…they were swept away on that dance which neither ever wanted to end.” The way it’s being described – the Hokey Cokey? “Yet eventually it reached its peak in a kind of explosion and cleansing…” (it does say that) “…sweeping them to the shore of some place beyond this planet, far from their previous experience.” With no extradition treaty, fortunately. John, you’ve outdone even yourself. Having previously considered the Gardner Bonds to have all the underlying erotic charge of gravel, he appears here to have gone quite, quite mad. “…they had tasted everything possible, good, lasting and memorable in physical love.” Everything? Wow. We need to rethink that plea in mitigation. I know you’re the man who is only a silhouette, but it’s going to be the sort of silhouette that appears on the front page of a tabloid, beneath which will be described in lurid detail the contents of your “data-base”.
“Presently, she asked him if he knew this island well.” Hello…what’s this? “ ‘Yes,’ he heard the tiny kink in the back of his throat.” In stark contrast to the ginormous kink on the page. “ ‘Yes, there was a woman. She’s alive, but she may never walk again…” Not surprising if he’s been going at her like he’s been going at Natalya “ ‘We were dealing with a very bad man.’ “ Oh thank the Lord (specific Lord). It’s not James Bond! It is Ken Spoon, because he’s talking about Ken Spoon “adventure” SeaFire, which didn’t have James Bond in it at all . Oh, thank you John, it’s such a relief to find out that you weren’t investing a number of extremely dodgy characteristics into Bond. That’s good, that’s great: am happy now. Can really appreciate the chapter now. Fab. It’s not and never will be part of the Bond Cinematic Universe. It’s the Spoon Uncinematic Universe – the Spooniverse – and nothing to do with James Bond. Magic.
Where this places GoldenEye in any sort of timeline as a repurposing of James Bond is anyone’s guess; but that’s not my main concern. John, you’ve pulled off (fnarr) the best twist so far. It was Ken Spoon all along. This time, the leading man was the double-agent. Fantastic.
“More silence, and the foam surfing up the beach.” Pathetic fallacy. Pathetic, anyway.
“ ‘Kiss me again, James. Please. Please take me again. Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.’ “ I do. The police will take him away and you’ll go into therapy. “His hands stroked her body…” which, we have been informed, could pass for a fifteen-year-old’s… “…legs…” which, we have been informed, could pass for a fifteen-year-old’s (and appear to be disconnected from her body; perhaps Wade’s coming by to assist with disposal), “…thighs…” which, we have been informed, could pass for a fifteen-year-old’s, “…belly, breasts, neck, and shoulders…” which, we have been informed… etc. One might argue that this is all no worse than Fleming’s perpetual description of the female posterior as like a boy’s, but unless I have missed something, he never had Bond take one of them up the GoldenEye.
Ken Spoon having stood in for this extremely dubious chapter, James Bond will return in the final three chapters of GoldenEye (there’s not much of it left, hooray, even though the film still goes on for ages). Jacques Stewart is also capable of thick and long, and you’ve just been reading it.
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Deep breath. Brave words. Maybe just foolish.
As a long time adorer of Jim’s words, knowledge of his lexicon, insight to, and translation of, the images on a screen and words on a page, I have to ask at this juncture, for whom is he writing?
Two decades of cynicism, for what I presume is still an area of his interest, together with a perspicacity for observation has been the absolute end to the definition of humour. In times past, coffee has been splurted out over keyboards upon reading his words.
But in this chaptered essay I have some immediate observations. Observations that I am writing even before I have reached the end of these last three last posts.
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Such is the detail of these observations, combined with just how many people have actually read the Gardner novelisations, I am personally somewhat lost as to what it is one is supposed to be remembering from the book compared to the level of detail that is being thrust upon one for consideration. To wit, I personally own all the novelisations, but, perhaps or perhaps not shamefully, have not read any of them, save Wood’s Spy and Moonraker contributions!
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Point one aside, the speed at which the observations are thrown at me/one, it reads like a transcription of the blurted words of a brilliant sooper scribe on cocaine. And unless one is equally cerebrally equipped and / or suitably high, I am finding it difficult to keep up. Each comma’d, dashed, dotted, bracketed section of five words requires a re-read and a pause to consider from where the observations might come and to how I should react.
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In highlighting these points, I might veritably be confirming my own limitations to high prose but if nothing else, I would Love to read a celebration of his interest in his own inimitable words and style.
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However, one has to commend dedication to the task to see this;
Deary me. Good spot.
All that said, I am as committed to his words as I am to my interest. I will soldier on…
And just to assert I love the humour
Always thanks.
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I can only answer this from my personal perspective. My answer would be: for those who read it. And this is not as daft as it may sound at first, because answer and question point back at us, the people who read it. Who are we?
These are evidently no easily consumed x-out-of-five-star reviews, or simple rants smeared on the cave walls of the internet with dubiously smelling crayons. These are detailed dissections on a body of work, anatomical studies not claiming anatomical correctness because they are made through a subjective magnifying glass, through a lens of decades of fandom and all the joy and pain that entails. A feedback loop stretching back decades, emphasising, blurring, boiling over and boiling down, all wrapped around the topic of James Bond 007 (c) ™.
The intellectual zest, the energy and time and emotional involvement these pieces display need to be seen in perspective with the habitat where they derive their origin, the fandom of a cultural phenomenon that’s going on for almost 70 years now. A socioecological pool stretching through all classes and across all borders, a cultural shorthand that’s understood more universally than any real language. Take an Inuit, a Massai and a Martian to your favourite bar - they won’t agree on the drinks but you’ll very likely get the same nodding and smiles when you mention ‘James Bond’.
This fandom is a habitat as rich and diverse as any you can think of. There are people who studied film theory or architecture because of Bond, others who filled first their shelf then their room, their cellar, their entire houses with Bond paraphernalia. Rich fans buy the cars, not so rich fans buy the toys. Countless books have been written on every bloody aspect of the films, the books, the music. Save for the Rugs of 007, I plan to do that myself…
Obviously, there are websites. We happen to be one. There is a YouTube channel hunting for the Bond style, there are a zillion-and-three discussions ranging from alternative history to the weekly charts of all Bond films/books/songs.
With all of this buzz, with iterations and interpretation ranging back and forth - and likely into the future for some time too - the milestones of the past derive a particular status. They need to be explored for their significance inside the whole scheme. At one time, and this is easily forgotten, GOLDENEYE used to be the centre of the Bond-verse. Just as John Gardner constituted the sole source for the literary James Bond. These things used to make up our world as young Bond fans (and there is surely also something to be said about the computer game that brought many fans to the party). How do they hold up in light of everything that has happened since? What made us buy and read the novelisation of a film we’ve just seen on the screen? For whom was this even written (written as in: contracted and paychequed, printed, marketed with a film still and shipped all across the world)? Who read this back then - and who reads it today?
Indeed, who are we?
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We are fans that enjoy the exploits of a character,regardless of the medium that is currently in vogue.
You can have a female 00 agent.
You can have a female agent that has been given the 007 designation.
But you can’t have a female James Bond 007.
… which was never contemplated by those in charge.
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The Lake
Sing like no-one’s listening. Dance like no-one’s watching.
Write like no-one’s reading.
Is advice. Whether good or not is immaterial. I took it to heart years ago. It appeals to my rock-hard self-indulgence of spirit. Too late to change. My own workplace appraisal says this, amongst other acrid personal abuse disguised as career development objectives. Odd, since I’m self-employed.
I suspect the suspect preceding chapter of GoldenEye embraced the idea. Little else explains its squalor. Yet now, the end hoving into view, merciful release from GoldenEye beckoning, it’s time to return to firmly-spanked discipline to haul one’s self over the line.
“There was no sign of life.” Ah, GoldenEye. “She was just the kind of girl…” girl, note “…with whom Bond could have happily spent the rest of his life…” What’s coming is not the life sentence you’d like, you duhty old man. And when he dies of old age, say ten years’ time, where will that leave her (apart from “roughly 26”)? Selfish maggot. “She was not just a very attractive face and body…” …of a fifteen-year-old; my, how GoldenEye is progressive, “…but a woman he could trust.” There is no factual basis for this assertion. Any belief in trust is more necessity on his part than manifestation on hers. When she goes to the tabloids, he’s had it. “They also knew that, within the next few hours, they might die together.” So, the rest of that life might not be too happy, then. Seems he’s well over Flicky von DeadMeat. I suspect that’s the attitude that keeps him alone. What a ghastly little man.
“The lake was too flawless, too geometric, to be anything but man-made.” It’s only a model. Surprising side-eye from Mr Gardner to Mr Meddings, there. I suppose one of them produced a distractingly artificial facsimile, and the other was Mr Meddings. “…almost reaching a rate five turn…” ooh, a rate five turn; I’m nearly a lake myself, although that’s just the slow slide to decrepitude… “…as he swung through three hundred and sixty degrees and then turned to follow through in the opposite direction.” No; if swinging a 360, you just carry on in the direction you were going. That’s how it works. You might ask, if you dare, why I pay this superfluous novelisation such attention, but someone has to. Wasn’t John.
“…what he thought was probably a 140mm rocket, and where there was one of those, more could easily follow as they usually came in distinctive seventeen rocket packs.” Exactly the lengthy thought process one goes through when one’s just been fired right at you. “He had never heard of a launch of this type of rocket from underwater…” and on it goes, trudging through the detail rather than getting out of the way. “ ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ he shouted.” I agree. This seems sensible. Not sure why one would need to say it. “Wrong!” Sorry? “Wrong!” Are you talking to me, John? “Wrong!” Oh, simmer down, poppet. How can getting out of there be “Wrong!”? Unless you mean Bond, having steered 360, has just flown into the path of a second rocket. I accept that’s “Wrong!”. If Bond’s sat through the film, possible since it’s so self-referential, he wasn’t expecting a second rocket. They couldn’t nick that missile-launch shot from Tomorrow Never Dies, minor technicality about it not having been filmed yet, and they had no budget for two. Spent it all on shampoo and paying Alan Cumming for no discernibly justifiable reason.
“She raised herself from the ground and began to check that she could walk and move her limbs. Bond did the same.” Oh, leave her alone, you grim wretch. Surely she’s suffered enough? Sort your own limbs out, man. “At first he thought Jack Wade had been very quick off the mark in sending help.” Were I Jack Wade, which I hasten to add I. Am. Not., I wouldn’t bother. Bond’s been mean and bitchy all the way through. I’d just leave him there with his lissome ENTIRELY LEGAL concubine. “Xenia was on him like a wild animal…” We’re not told which one, so I’m saying Orang-Utan, because she’s not long for this World either.
“His reply – ‘Don’t be so bloody melodramatic, Onatopp.’ – was almost certainly not comprehensible…” Indeed not. Not the first time John has criticised the script (and not the last) and using the surname chimes oddly, the tone of a teacher providing pastoral care he is dangerously underqualified to give, rather than that of a recipient of imminent attempted sex-crime murder. Mr Gardner’s distracted attention to the extraneous detail of Multi-Buy rocket packs misses a prime exemplar of Brosnan WobbleJaw. Nothing’s comprehensible through that. Little is comprehensible anyway, but even less when his mandible collapses so disconcertingly.
“He could feel the crushing, and thought the bones would crack at any minute as he fought for breath.” The experience of loving, won’t take all the pain away. I get it now; the song is from the perspective of Xenia’s asphyxees. Sung by one, too.
It takes a page for Xenia to die. Sadistic, not least on the reader. At which point, the film beaches itself much like that aeroplane. With Fatima Blush Xenia out of the way, we meander on, and then it ends. “ ‘She always did enjoy a good squeeze,’ he said.” The disdain is tangible, but the joke remains, as if it absolutely had to. The character built to that point, and that point alone, and John couldn’t alter it otherwise the richly layered nuances of “Onatopp” would have been redundant. Or, more likely, the cost of the exploding helicopter and all that stuntwork rendered pointless.
I still think John’s on a sabotage mission here, having deep-infiltrated Bond fourteen years previously (and driven mad as a result). He might as well be sloppy, and chirrup away at nonsense he does not like. If they don’t film his material, fine: he’s going to disrupt theirs, and snipe at its melodrama. It might just be the fate of the noveliser (Mr Gardner was a novel ist , a higher art, but then he did put his name to… this). So expensive are the set pieces and so many months in planning that there is little that can be improvised and one either goes with it or, as here, scathes embitteredly. Where there have been changes so far, they have tended to be in the cheaper dialogue scenes where characters sat around doing bog all of consequence and waiting for the next expensively-mounted fight that has to be written about just-so, to justify the cost. It’s easier to muck about with the inexpensive, go-nowhere stuff, and no-one seems to care what you do with that. This can explain why the novelisation of Diamonds are Forever is so markedly different from its film. I think that’s how it works.
Meanwhile, “below the lake”, in an architecturally doubtful complex, Boris sits, staring at figures on a screen (he’s accessed Ourumov’s data-base, an achievement on 1995 dial-up) and John slips past us once more the word “incomprehensible”. Go on, matey-moo: tell us what you really feel. The robbery is underway, transferring “billions of dollars” from the “Bank of England” (…uh huh) to jurisdictions whose co-dependent economies will also collapse as a result. Don’t dwell on the stupidity of it. Boris is “wild”, as I would be if I saw who was playing me, and Trevelyan seems as warm and friendly to him as Bond was to Wade. An unintended parallel, perhaps, although it does confirm the inadequacy of SIS HR practices, in doubt since that redundant Monte Carlo business.
Meanwhile meanwhile, Bond and Natalya are recovering from Bond’s “joke” and just at the point when they’re nearly OK, he delivers the awesomely clunky “ ‘Xenia wouldn’t have tried to use her bizarre skills on us unless we were near’ “ and poor Natalya collapses again. Still, it’s cheaper than Rohypnol. “…they stopped at the jaw-dropping sight in front of them.” Given that his jaw drops only when in PG-13 sexual ecstasy, this had better be good. “…three tall telescopic masts.” Fnarr.
“ ‘Should have come by submarine not by plane.’ Bond nodded to himself.” John, you’re in no fit state to accuse others of being “incomprehensible” or “bizarre”. They’re miles inland. How would that even work? And how does nodding to one’s self even work, either? Unless it’s not a nod and he’s just trying to manoeuvre his teeth back into place. “ ‘No wonder we didn’t see anything.’ “ That was because it was a Meddings special and about four feet across.
The suggestion in the book is that, although the lake does recede (to… somewhere), the dish emerges from the water, rather than the water draining itself through. The mystery of quite where all that water does go put aside, the film’s option also seems impractical if one wanted to, y’know, hide the dish again . That’s one Humphrey of a bath to fill and if there’s a hosepipe ban, you’re buggered. “ ‘We can get up there by climbing that metal latticework.’ “ And I thought you were going to bloody fly.
Who built this base, anyway? If Trevelyan and not the Russians, how? If the Russians and not Trevelyan, why would Natalya not know where it is already and save herself the ignominy of jig-jig with Jim-Jim? Is the sluice drain clogged up with the bodies of technicians and soldiers erotically smashed apart by Xenia? Did no-one advise this was a flood plain?
Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, “[B]elow the so-called lake.” Hang on, is the lake still there or not? Film would suggest the lairrrrrr is now above the lake, or alongside it, or in it. I probably should be about as bothered as John, which is “not”. “Trevelyan hesitated for one moment, then spoke like a commander on an electronic battlefield.” A what-what? “Commander” is not an army rank, so there’s no field on which to battle, electronic or otherwise. It is a naval rank, though, and given that he’s probably up to his waist in water, it makes sense. I’d steer clear of the electrics, though.
“ ‘Go. Take them out before this begins to get really stupid.’ Ah, we are dwelling on the stupidity of it. “ “Really stupid”. “Incomprehensible” (twice). “Melodramatic”. “Bizarre”. What is Mr Gardner trying to tell us? No, not a story… something… something else . As for “begins”, it’s way too late for that, old smudge, both for your stuff and for mine.
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The Edge of Catastrophe
Could just leave this one at the chapter title. Could call it “MGM in perpetuity” and move on.
“They both slid down the basin, right to the centre, which was the stump of the dish, like a large blockhouse with a sealed hatch on their side. The waterproof seal, Bond guessed, could be activated from either side for there was a heavy spoked wheel in the middle. Presumably, he reasoned, there was an air lock behind the hatch for the use of any maintenance staff.” I suppose Mr Gardner is trying to stem the outward flow of logic in the geography of the complex, but at the same time renders our modern and exciting hero a dullard. I am not interested in James Bond’s knowledge of airlocks. Amused to see him to eject Space Hitler from one, but that’s it. Unless we’re meant to understand from Mr Brosnan’s performance that these thoughts are going through Bond’s mind whilst leaping around the superstructure, in which case that doesn’t come across one bit.
“To their left were five or six long, high cylinders which presumably provided fuel for the internal generators.” Dunno, John, how about you tell us a) how many there were and b) what they were for? Or have you reached the edge of bothering now?
“Now, with a surge of anger, Bond knew that Trevelyan had targeted England. Almost certainly London.” This is triggered by “God save the Queen.” She’s Queen of other places, y’know. Bloody la-di-dah Londoners, thinking they’re It. The satellite is probably currently over Kansas and this whole idea’s nicked from another film. “ ‘The mainframe computer,’ Natalya whispered, ‘They’ll have a cooling system in there. It’ll be like a big refrigerator.’ “ And like my refrigerator, awash with water. Like any fifteen-year-old, Natalya is well aware of the contents of a ‘fridge, takes no responsibility for keeping it filled and doubtless possesses the adolescent incapacity to shut its sodding door properly.
Gunfire, etc.
“Bond attempted to return fire, but he was hopelessly outnumbered.” “Hopelessly outnumbered, he threw his automatic out onto the walkway…” Is he hopelessly outnumbered, John? Do tell. “…he would have to take the chance that Natalya was about to do something very constructive.” It won’t be something you’ll like, Ken Spoon. She’s seen her opportunity to escape your withered clutches. Mr Gardner doesn’t give us that amusing little moment in the film where Bond treats as mere wasps the bullets flying around him, gnats to an elephant. Shrugging them away much like the earlier juvenile psychoanalysis fired his way, by all.
That business about the coldness of the mainframe room, so cold that when Natalya touches a chair she is “ripping skin from her hand as she did so” (ouch), is classic Gardner in having to set up the liquid nitrogen tanks that eventually relieve us of Boris. Fair enough; at least we know it’s Cumming.
“He had around a quarter of an hour to stop what would undoubtedly be the greatest catastrophe ever to befall his country.” Debateable, and yet such things habitually involve a Boris, do they not? Mr Gardner’s uncanny premonitions strike again. “With this kind of urgency, there was only one thing he could do.” Set off about two hundred words about activating mines. “Urgency” is not John’s natural habitat. “…the satellite would eventually drift down and burn out without firing its nuclear bomb to produce an electronic pulse of the capital.” Of the capital? Not “over” or “through”? Still, John’s already announced it’s all “incomprehensible”, so he’s just joining in.
Why does Trevelyan not remove Bond’s watch when he first captured him, back in the statue park?
“To his pleasure he saw the guards’ boots left damp stains as they marched towards him. The fuel must be spreading both ways.” That, or – and stick with me on this one – they’re under a frickin’ lake.
“…the United Kingdom will once more enter the Stone Age.” You didn’t need to go to such trouble; just stick a lie to the side of an omnibus and ramp up the xenophobia (of which name “Xenia” is the shortened version). “ ‘A world-wide financial meltdown.’ He looked as though he pitied Trevelyan.” At least Bond understands the massive flaw in the plot. “ ‘Oh, please, James, spare me any Freudian analysis.’ “ Yes, do. It is unclear whether Bond is expounding that Trevelyan is fixated at the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, latency or the genital stage, but then Trevelyan did just fiddle with Bond’s left arm and that hasn’t happened since that incident with the oversexed Labrador.
However, this is deflection. The reality that the money will be worthless makes the trouble of stealing it equally so. The idea of a scarred villain setting off a nuclear bomb and greatly affecting London, to settle a wartime score, is Moonraker, adapted and updated, and that bit makes “sense”, but the robbery is utter balderdash. “ ‘I might as well ask you if all those vodka martinis ever silence the screams of all the men and women you’ve killed…” The film drops the “women”, because this is an appealing modern non-misogynist, and by 1995 even women were allowed to buy BMWs and wristwatches. “ ‘This isn’t just one of your games, Boris. Real people are about to die, you contemptuous little bastard.’ “ Yesterday in Parliament.
To give Mr Gardner some credit, and I appreciate I’ve not been at all kind throughout this one, his record of the pen-clicking injects tension, and is more consistent in its number of clicks and their effect, than the film. The film seems to have edited some out. The book is conspicuously under-edited. “As he spoke, Trevelyan, his face a rage, pulled his gun and stuck it in Boris’ ear.” Boris’ ear? Not a surprise that Natalya claims “he means nothing to me.” Film’s dynamic makes more sense, and it does give The Actor Pert Bumbum another opportunity to pull a silly face. “Boris was out of control, whirling and screaming…” Don’t come snivelling to me, I didn’t vote for the evil wazzock.
“He then brought his foot up in a kick boxer’s stance…” Hell on his lumbago, silly old fool. “For a precious second [the pen] seemed to remain stationary in mid air…” Stationery pun. “The elevator stopped at the base of the catwalk which led to the transmitter cradle they had seen as the whole structure rose from the lake.” Accordingly, the lake did not drain through and… the dish is suspended above it? So… where is the lair? In another dimension?
Inside the elevator “…Bond dropped from the roof…” ceiling, surely? Roof would be on the outside. Roof is stranger than fiction “…where he had lodged himself, using shoulders and feet, like a climber in a chimney rock formation.” Oh, right. Thanks. Sense of urgency’s gone a-wander.
“ ‘Just get up there to the maintenance hatch. There’s probably a simple chain device which works the mechanism to turn the antenna. The best thing for you to do is remove all the fuses from the maintenance room.’ “ Natalya is expediently well-informed, is she not? The film has the advantage of simply showing us The Actor Peees Broznnnnnnnnnnnn mincing around a set meeting precisely that description, but other than the courier sitting on John’s doorstep waiting for the manuscript, little justifies the laziness of having this Natalya person say such things.
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Journeys End in Lovers Meeting
O apostrophe mine, where are you roaming?
Mr Gardner has moved on from Disney to Shakespeare. We reach the end of GoldenEye’s festival of Bond, twelfth night of a sort, and the Clown shall surely sing:
O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
(She naturally fled, from this charming man)
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
That can sing both high and low;
(His ABBA medley is… open to challenge)
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—
(Told you there was an apostrophe. Chapter should be called “The Edge of Apostrophe ” )
Every wise man’s son doth know.
(She’s closer to his son’s age, so this is a solid hypothesis)
What is love?
(Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more)
’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
(Not here)
What’s to come is still unsure:
(The Brosnan Quartet - the Brosnan QuarTat - never do find their feet, do they?)
In delay there lies no plenty,—
(In the next 25 years there will only be 8 more Bond films)
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
(Sweet-and-fifteen)
Youth’s a stuff will not endure
(…and is no guarantee of innovation, which GoldenEye confirms)
A story that commenced with suspect geography, all that dam-and-gorge malarkey, ends with suspect geography: I still don’t understand how the lake works. This observed, Mr Gardner is giving verisimilitude one last all, describing every rivet, cable and wire as Bond hauls himself around the dish. My patience is thinner than Mr Brosnan’s stunt double.
Natalya runs into “the protection of the jungle” – O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? – and well away from the impending scene of two late middle-aged men manhandling each other around a massive erection.
I owe that Pierce Brosnan a long-overdue apology. To act Bond’s observation - “Some went directly down, through the maintenance chamber and from there into what could only be the true mechanism for repositioning the antenna, yet there seemed to be another set of thicker cables. These went over a series of pulleys and wheels” – yet make it look like none of that is actually crossing his mind for one second, demands enviable talent.
The antenna is a big needle / icicle shaped thingy, which is a departure from the film. Guess where it ends up. Another villain doomed by their own design, and I’m curious whether Mr Gardner will try a “pierce” joke within the few paragraphs still left to him, paragraphs he is currently filling with architectural detail whilst the characters assume their final positions.
“From far below, he still caught the sound of occasional explosions coming from deep within the earth beyond the dish.” No, the lake is beyond the dish.
Isn’t it?
Is this dish what-not still invisible to satellite surveillance, then? If it was the Russians who put it there, are they not now the teensiest bit curious why it’s suddenly emerged? If not the Russians, are they not now the teensiest bit curious about what happened to that lake in Cuba and, for that matter, where all the water went and why there’s a huge satellite dish suddenly nailed into a Cuban forest as if it were a council estate? Moonraker may be (gloriously) stupid but at least they acknowledged that there had to be a radar jamming system. Quite why, once the dish emerges, a rain of fire doesn’t immediately descend upon it, is curious. They probably didn’t have the budget to do it.
“…Trevelyan’s men kept their eyes on this danger point, as though trying to divine the moment when they would have to give up and evacuate the complex.” I’ll take the use of “divine” as John guessing that when the roof gives way, it’ll be water. He doesn’t know either. He doesn’t care to know; he has cables and wires and machinery to tell us about instead. John is happy.
“[Trevelyan] was away and running towards the exit, pushing firefighters out of the way, heading for the cable car that would take him as far as the catwalk above the maintenance room”. So the cable car starts in the underground/water base and… probably best to abandon any attempt to work it out. When did the fire brigade arrive? There’s no indication any of these guards etc are Russians. Who are all these folk, anyway?
The maintenance room in which Bond finds himself bears close similarity to how Natalya described it – how shockingly lucky – and Ken Spoon potters about for a few hundred words, wondering how the mechanism works. Again, Mr Brosnan is able to exude all that in one split-second glance. Depth. John prefers breadth, giving unto us lengthy business about dismantling a mine and deactivating its timing device and… something. I gave up.
Ah, the lovers meet. They fight. That’s less engaging than cogs and microchips and generators, so John hastily cuts away from that lest it becomes interesting, and back to Boris “down under the earth”, which is a) wishful thinking and b) not true and he must really have drowned by now. “ ‘Yes! I am invincible!’ “. Hopefully not.
The fighting having been brief, John’s now manoeuvred Bond back into the safe space of describing “maintenance room”, “mechanism”, “fuse box”, “cables”, “apex of the structure” and other exciting things that will really sell 007 to da kids. Seems it’s all coming down to finding the fuse box, which reminds me I need to replace the bulb in the downstairs loo. “Outside, he looked down and dropped, landing on the housing that he knew contained the final stage of the mechanism.” He doesn’t know this. Far more about-flingery in the book, Ken Spoon leaping around this latticed metal structure as if he’s in Casino Royale. Which he’s not. The fuse box has “butterfly bolts.” The fuse box has had more description than most of the book’s characters. There is safety in inanimate things.
Still uncertain what Bond’s plan is, here. He’s ninety feet above the dish and has planted a mine and now smashed all the fuses, so he’s going to be blowing up with it and either burning or falling or both. Denied the slightly visceral thrill of Bond and Trevelyan actually fighting – one of the film’s most engaging bits – and Bond using the dropping ladder as a means of avoiding being shot, here he just… uses it.
“Below ground….” debateable “…in the control complex, Boris stared unbelievingly at the screen which now read out…” … with Alan Cumming. “He began to scream and stamp, yelling unintelligible obscenities.” Natural reaction.
John doesn’t have Trevelyan fall because he is distracted by the helicopter and Natalya, nor the subsequent grabbing of his leg by Bond: here, he falls because a rung gives way. Tchoh! Cuban builders. Nor is there any of the lively debate about whether Bond’s next action is For England or For Me (very Boris), instead a simple invitation to “Go to hell!”, which seems a bit impersonal but then it is impersonal to drop a former boyfriend quite so literally.
At this point the mine explodes, which strikes one as perilous. Things go bang in the film just after the helicopter rescues Bond; here, the helicopter flies into the explosion, which seems unwise. The helicopter pilot “…was acting under her instructions, which, because of the skeletal edifice they were approaching, were not always practical.” I’ve no idea what this is means other than the girl-child is forcing him to fly into a burning structure and he wishes to express reservations about his working conditions.
“In the centre of the dish, Trevelyan regained consciousness. His eyes opened and the pain that swept over him, combined with the blood in his mouth, told him that he was near death. “ Or near an Alan Cumming performance, which is going on somewhere beneath him, as it is indeed beneath us all. The “long silver spike” does impale Trevelyan. Half of everything is luck, and half of everything is avoidable means of your own destruction. Quite a bit of impaling in the Brosnans – Trevelyan, Carver, Renard, Zao – as if they were pushing at the “pierce” idea without ever making it too blatant a joke. Film suggests the collapse of the superstructure goes into the base, as it did in Severnaya. Foggier, here. Also foggy is the fate of all that money he’s already stolen. Questionable succession planning.
“For a second, Boris knew what was happening…” No basis for a system of accountable government, that. Still: not invincible. Ah, hope remains.
Natalya decides to bark orders at the pilot in Russian, despite there being no evidence of any Russians in the vicinity. As with the film, this helicopter just… flies off. Despite the imminent arrival of three American ones. From a height. Silently. In Cuba. Yeah. And the “forty or so marines” who have been having a nice lie-down rather than provide any meaningful assistance. Jack Wade rises from the bushes, and it’s not the first time he’s hidden himself like that, to spy on youthery.
“Bond needed no backup at this particular time.” You wouldn’t want Wade and forty marines to join in; poor, poor girl. She is never mentioned again. And…that’s it. The Clown shall surely sing.
End credits
Spare yourself the song; it’s vile.
As a point of reflection, and given that GoldenEye wants to have been a reflective exercise, one does wonder quite why one has picked this 25 year-old novelisation apart in such a churlish and bloated manner.
Underlying it is, I think, a recognition that I won’t read this book again. I read it twenty-five years ago. I read it now. Another twenty-five years and I’ll be lucky to read anything other than a prescription, or yet another eulogy for yet another family member. That’s it. One of those life events now spent and not returning. That is to blame it for my frailties rather than those it possesses, a projection activity rather than any intrinsic blameworthiness. In the only life I will ever live, this has been part of it and that leaves me irrationally angry. An irritation that something like this absorbed any of my time. That I have wasted yours, however, restores hollow glee, for like any bully that is how I get my wobblies.
Yet…
The tone not just of what I’ve written but what I have read, is weirdly discordant. Time allows a reflection on GoldenEye’s place in the Bond series, its status as a stand-alone mid-franchise pause for commentary rather than a straightforward continuation. Where the film’s approach to the self-regard is optimistic, aiming to refresh, there’s a sourness, dourness and peevishness of spirit in the novelisation that makes for a fascinatingly uncertain duality. Janus, indeed. Fascinating to me: I suspect you got bored long ago.
Going back to GoldenEye when the superficially appealing novelty has long worn off, the film amuses, and I’ve become considerably fonder of it the more I have written this, because it’s so overtly trying to entertain me. The book, though, is so off-message in how it delivers the same overall picture, and I’m of the view that’s no accident, that its lasting impression of investing a plainly jaded approach to the written Bond into the new and shiny product, designing a fatal weakness into one’s lovely new Death Star, was never going to be a terribly wise strategy. That does give the book an edge, but it’s a precipice I too easily leap from in the pursuit of a fleeting sneer. Generating my darker gut instincts, I’m not sure it’s been a very good idea to read it.
I won’t be doing so again.
The film I may yet dip into once or twice, in time, as it does seem a more optimistic enterprise. The book?
Let it burn.
No longer my concern.
James Bond will return in Tomorrow Never Dies, liberated from the clutches of the old and charging into the future. Ken Spoon, split now from his host at the candle’s last flicker, will return in the 007th Chapter of COLD, and if you thought this one ended bleakly, brace yourself. Jacques Stewart wasted time; now time doth waste him.
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