Quick question: Did the James Bond films ever refer to his status as a widower during the Pierce Brosnan era (1995-2002)?
Bond got married at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), starring George Lazenby, and his wife was promptly killed.
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) begins with Sean Connery’s Bond tracking down the person(s) responsible for his wife’s death.
The Roger Moore films also refer to her death, e.g. when Barbara Bach’s Russian spy rattles off what she knows about Bond’s personal history in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), or when Bond lays flowers at his wife’s gravesite in For Your Eyes Only (1981).
And the Timothy Dalton films make at least one reference to this, when Bond attends Felix Leiter’s wedding in License to Kill (1989), and Leiter says something about Bond being uncomfortable around weddings as a result of what happened to his own wife.
So all the other actors who have played Bond have touched on this part of the Bond mythos. But has Brosnan? I can’t remember.
Of course, Daniel Craig will not get a chance to deal with this part of the Bond mythos in Casino Royale, because the film effectively re-boots the series and starts it off from scratch, presumably before Bond is married. I’m just wondering if this will make Craig the only exception, in this regard, among the various Bonds.
(I’m ignoring the actors who played Bond in the other versions of Casino Royale entirely, since they aren’t part of the “canon”.)
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