2. Keeping Bond In Touch With His Dark Side
All three of the last films in the Bond franchise have succeeded in presenting us with his more human side. A man apart from the rest of the world that we somehow can still empathize with. These movies are trying to tell us that as dangerous as 007 may be, he is still a person and one with several flaws. The idea of his godlike invulnerability is a myth even he is having a hard time still believing. Especially when his performance evaluation turns out to be less than satisfactory as Silva reveals to him. Solo paints Bond's life in very much the same shades of charcoal grey. He is getting older, the physical wounds linger, and he is still attempting to patch them up through substance abuse. His mission to Africa is a dirty one, a political assassination or as M likes to put it to make his target "a less efficient soldier." Basically to commit cold-blooded murder in the most unsportsmanlike way, something Bond has always had tremendous trouble doing in the past. As already stated before the mission goes foul and a wounded Bond is left stranded out on his own. He wanders bleeding into a village filled with starving children. A nearby hut reveals what the civil war has done to all the adults in the form of a mountain of skeletons.