From the shadows, as a child

Happy 2020, everyone!

I doubt this year will be as great as 2015 was (still the best year of my life since the late 1990s), but it already has two things in common: a new James Bond film is coming, No Time To Die, and it's another anniversary of GoldenEye. 

The first 007 film I watched, the one I consider my favourite and also the best in the series, celebrates its silver anniversary in November, reason why The GoldenEye Dossier has been updated with an incredible new look and new features that'll keep you hooked for hours. Spanish speakers can find some of the material in their language in the Facebook and Twitter feeds for El Mundo De GoldenEye, which as you know, it's the Spanish edition for The World of GoldenEye, my very first book released in 2019.

I'm happy to see GoldenEye ranked so high in almost every fan list and that the film has had such a big cultural legacy. It's part of the DNA of probably any 90s kid, with a lot of help from the Nintendo 64 video game, but I can really feel there is a GoldenEye "generation" out there comprised of musicians, programmers, designers and gamers that remember the film very fondly and got into the Bond fandom just for this movie. Curiously, a movie that would define if Bond had a place in the 1990s and the new millennium. We are in 2020 now and James Bond will be back in action in four months. Had GoldenEye been a weak or uninspired movie, none of us would be talking about Bond now, nor we would care about his return: just look at Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, The Professionals... all series I enjoyed from time to time but are still locked under a "retro" bucket. It could have been Bond's case, but it wasn't.

Of course, some people still consider the film is overrated. I absolutely disagree with that word. I can understand some people saying it's not their favourite or placing On Her Majesty's Secret Service or From Russia With Love above it. But overrated is a strong word to describe GoldenEye. We are talking about a film that thrilled millions, it's probably the Goldfinger or Thunderball of the 1990s, the one that made Bond relevant again. The action is pumping, the editing is sharp, the cinematography is artistic and speaks for itself. As pretty much every other Bond film, it has its slow paced moments, but these are certainly not as dense as the ones from OHMSS or Goldfinger, which can put me to sleep.

Also, the secondary characters. I don't remember a single film in the series where actors that appear for a few minutes or that have no direct relevance to the plot like Robbie Coltrane, Alan Cumming, Tcheky Karyo or Joe Don Baker are so well remembered by the viewer. They have all a hidden significance in the story, mostly to mark the contrast between past and present and how Bond's patriotic values are outdated, or how Russia has changed from the military pride of the Soviet Union to a democracy with politicians running the show, something that affects Gottfried John's General Ourumov as much as Bond. It was a very talented cast!

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned to The GoldenEye Dossier for more on this film and my upcoming projects, and let's hope No Time To Die is a good one. Judging from the trailer, I have a lot of faith.