It's James Bond Day 2025. Here's Why Men Need 007 More Than Ever
Every October 5, fans of the immortal, martini-loving, suave spy, Agent 007, celebrate James Bond Day. This is because, 63 years ago, on October 5, 1962, the first James Bond feature film, Dr. No, debuted in theaters in the U.K. But the phenomenon of James Bond is older than that: It began nine years prior, when author Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published by Jonathan Cape on April 13, 1953. So, some might say James Bond Day could happen twice a year.
Regardless of when you celebrate or what you think about James Bond, it’s safe to say that these days, speculation and conversation about Bond are at an all-time high. As the film franchise retools for a massive Amazon MGM-fueled comeback with Dune director Denis Villeneuve and Peaky Blinders writer Steve Knight, the world is holding its breath, waiting for the next chapter of Bond. But why do we still need James Bond? Why are men still inspired by him? In 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, Sheryl Crow sang that it was all about “martinis, girls, and guns.” But, there’s just as much sex, violence, and debauchery in Shakespeare as there is in Fleming. So, the secret to the Bond cocktail isn’t just about run-of-the-mill thrills.
In 2023, incumbent James Bond author Kim Sherwood told me that she felt that some cursory readings of Bond’s popularity were off. “You might think he’s only for a macho audience or something. But for something to be this globally popular for so long, there has to be more than that going on.”
Yes, there’s an escapist element to James Bond, which was what Ian Fleming intended when he created the character. “He’s a believable man—around whom I try to weave a great web of excitement and fantasy,” Fleming said in 1964. The web of excitement and fantasy is something most people are familiar with, but the believability part, because of the over-the-top movies, might seem a little more elusive.
And yet, when you really look at Bond in both the details and the broad strokes, his popularity is 100 percent connected to both his relatability coupled with a low-key aspirational quality. Sean Connery’s Bond was relatable because he had a dry, down-to-earth sense of humor. Roger Moore’s Bond took that concept and made Bond into more of a dad joke, pun master, the kind of guy who is raising his eyebrows constantly.
Pierce Brosnan’s Bond still feels like a classy elder statesman of action stories, while Timothy Dalton represented a kind of Byronic take on Bond, the sort of Bond that our moms loved because he felt like a brooding hero out of a Brontë novel. (Dalton’s Heathcliffe in the 1970 Wuthering Heights remains unmatched.) George Lazenby’s goofy one-off Bond turned Bond into a hopeless romantic, and Daniel Craig’s 007 is a kind of synthesis of all of the Bonds that came before. (Yes, even Moore. Check out some of those one-liners! “That last hand nearly killed me!”) And through it all, Bond is aspirational, not because he always manages to have fun romantic partners or drink and eat well, but because he remains reasonable in an unreasonable world.
Non-fans of Bond will classify him as a snob who orders complicated drinks. But Bond has been canonically drinking Heineken since the ‘90s, and in 1967, as part of a promotion for You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery did ads for Jim Beam. So, the idea that Bond is a snob Is out the window. And, just because you have taste and like specific things, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, Bond’s confidence in small, everyday tasks, from getting dressed to driving, to checking into hotels, is what makes him so buoying to fans everywhere, particularly men.
Bond can be sarcastic, but the character isn't cynical. He's too heads-down, focused on the task to be cynical. In fact, Bond’s mind is very organized. He’s not a chaotic lunatic or a psycho killer. He’s a cool character, in the sense that by nature of being a secret agent, he’s not drawing attention to himself. We think of Bond as showy because the books and movies are about him. But, as author Kingsley Amis observed, the idea that Bond is a Secret Agent is the thing that makes him appealing. Because a Secret Agent could be anyone, Amis felt that there was a “universality of the secret agent as a focus of day-dreaming.”
Daydreams and fantasies will always be a part of what makes us all tick. And James Bond isn’t a fantasy about someone who lives an outrageous life all the time. He lives that life specifically when he’s working. What about the rest of the time? Well, the rest of the time, Bond remains, safely, anonymous, alive, and secretly, undercover inside all of us.