James Bond has been killing people and sleeping with women onscreen for over sixty years. He has been played by six actors, appeared in twenty-five official films, and generated over seven billion dollars in box office revenue. He drinks vodka martinis (shaken, not stirred), drives Aston Martins, and introduces himself surname-first in a way that has been parodied in every language on Earth. He is the most successful fictional character in cinema history by almost any measure. And the reason he endures is not that he is a great character. He is barely a character at all. He is a projection screen — a blank space onto which every generation projects its fantasies about masculinity, power, and sex.

He Was Written by a Spy

Ian Fleming was a naval intelligence officer during World War II. He created Bond in 1953 as a fantasy of the kind of agent he wished he had been — smoother, more lethal, more sexually successful. Fleming named him after an ornithologist because he wanted the blandest possible name for the most exciting possible person. The character's appeal was always in the lifestyle rather than the personality: the suits, the cars, the women, the exotic locations, and the license to kill without moral consequence.

Each Bond Reflects Its Era

Sean Connery's Bond was the smirking Cold War alpha male of the 1960s. Roger Moore's was the tongue-in-cheek playboy of the 1970s. Pierce Brosnan's was the slick corporate action hero of the 1990s. Daniel Craig's was the traumatized, self-destructive modern man of the 2010s. Film scholars at the British Film Institute have described the Bond franchise as the most consistent cultural mirror in cinema — each iteration reveals what masculinity means to the generation watching. Bond is on HoloDream. Shaken, not stirred. He is exactly what you expect. That is the point.