Prior to buying my husband 007: First Light as a treat, my experience with James Bond was limited to seeing Casino Royale in theaters and liking it a lot, then seeing No Time To Die in theaters and not liking it much at all. My impression of Bond as a character was that he was unexciting, a colonial relic, and mostly an advertisement for luxury goods like cars and watches. After watching my husband play through some levels of First Light, I see that I did not recognize a vital part of who James Bond is. He also has to be extremely fuckable.
My husband is a much bigger fan of the James Bond franchise than I am, and has been taking me through a brief tour of the series. Now that I’ve seen Goldfinger, and then independently checked out Dr. No and From Russia With Love, I understand that a major component of being a member of MI6 is fucking all the time. Much more than Daniel Craig’s Bond, Sean Connery’s iteration of the character is trying to have sex with every woman he sees. While this is regressive and sexist—all the things that made me not have much of an interest in Bond before now—watching the way that Connery’s Bond moves through the world, it’s also extremely believable.
James Bond is a masculine fantasy designed to make men feel powerful. He drives fancy cars and wears expensive suits to appeal to the kind of men who wish they had these things. Part of that fantasy is also being irresistible to women, and being so charming that even very interesting women who should know better eventually give him a shot. What makes it work is that these films are designed so that he looks incredibly cool while doing and wearing and being these things—a universe created to bend to his will. That means that the entire plot of a film can hinge on Bond having dick game so good it convinces a woman not to be evil, like it does in Goldfinger. Of course James Bond has a dick that changes lives. He’s 007, after all. I imagine that was part of his training.
In First Light, Bond is still in the process of becoming a 00 agent, and is a much younger man than the Bond portrayed by Craig or Connery. While he’s still figuring out how to be a spy, what creates continuity with the character is that he is also so, so, so hot. He’s so hot I honestly find it distracting to watch while my husband plays. Part of this is because this Bond is still learning to be an agent, like Craig’s Bond, and thus is full of squishy vulnerability that promises hidden depths. It’s also that this game understands that in order to live out the masculine fantasy of being James Bond, you do actually have to make this guy attractive to women in a way that male video game protagonists usually are not.
It doesn’t hurt that the performance from Patrick Gibson is so confident. So many of his early missions involve him flirting with women, or having to politely rebuff them, but with Gibson’s lopsided smile and cocked head, it’s very easy to imagine that this man has had a lot of practice in turning women down. Essentially, you’re just watching him compliment beautiful women and apologize to them for being too busy to have sex at this moment. It’s charming, especially once Bond meets a beautiful French woman who matches his flirtatious energy.
In fact, it’s the banter that makes this Bond so sexy. You get to spend so much time with these characters in a video game—much more time than in a movie. One of the things that makes First Light’s approach to sexuality feel so adult is that there’s time to build tension. This is most apparent in Bond’s many conversations with the character Moneypenny, who served as Bond’s secretary in the Connery films.
Here, she’s more of a handler, and instead of badgering Bond about when he’ll settle down and marry her, she is constantly calling James Bond a loser. His ability to keep up with her barbs and take them all in stride actually makes him more attractive. It’s Bond’s quick wit and cleverness that keeps him alive, and it’s on display when Moneypenny calls him a total dumbass repeatedly and Bond is actually able to keep up with her. As a very interesting woman-adjacent person, I too have traded quips as a way to make a man earn my company. It’s attractive when someone is so confident that a little teasing won’t dull their shine.
I feel like video games struggle to portray sexuality in an adult way, and not just because they too often treat women as objects rather than people. But the women that Bond admires in this game very much are people—people that aren’t afraid to turn him down. There’s a little bit of risk involved when this young, cocky Bond tries out the traditional Bond moves that carry him through the films. Given that this is a video game, I have watched James Bond straight up die in firefights dozens of times. I know ultimately his destiny is to succeed—when he jumped out of an airplane without a parachute I had no doubt that he would make it through unscathed—but the possibility for failure does exist. He has to do a little work to win people over, even his superiors at MI6 who don’t think he’s ready to be an agent. While I thought I was immune to Bond’s charms, I can feel him winning me over too with each quip and crooked smile.
