1. GoldenEye: Down Guantanamo Way
Speaking of the War on Terror... In the six year hiatus that followed Timothy Dalton's second Bond movie, the Soviet Union fell, and many commentators struggled to see a place for 007 in the 'new world order' that was emerging. GoldenEye proved those critics wrong with a slick new leading man in Pierce Brosnan and a clutch of bravura action sequences, but most importantly in acknowledging the character's Cold War roots and exploring what it means to be James Bond in a world without clearly defined ideological opposites. If anything, it's the more contemporary references that have aged badly, particularly a throwaway line at the end of the movie. The scene: Bond has defeated the rogue 00 agent Alec Trevelyan by dropping a satellite array on his face. In the surrounding jungle, he's enjoying a post-ideological kiss with the sexy Russian computer programmer Natalya. It's safe to say that things could get a little shagging-orientated, but before they can, a team of Navy SEALS emerge from the undergrowth, along with Bond's oafish CIA contact Jack Wade (the fact that they waited for a bit seems slightly...well...awkward). It's here that Wade offers a line that most certainly wasn't written with posterity in mind: "Maybe you two'd like to finish debriefing each other at Guantanamo?" Er...unless he's talking about a different Guantanamo, I'm not sure if waterboarding, kneeling down with a black hood over your face, marines blasting out Metallica 24 hours a day- I'm just not sure if any of those things are really that romantic. But then, maybe Bond likes a bit of kink. Like The Living Daylights, this is another topical reference that might have seemed innocuous enough at the time, but takes on a more awkward meaning after the geopolitical craziness of the last decade and a bit. At least, after fifty years and twenty three movies, Bond hasn't lost his capacity for cringe, and in this ever changing world in which we live in...that's awkwardly comforting.