"This World Is Not Enough"

"Finally, Bond battled South American drug smugglers in the '80s, media consolidators in the '90s, and environmental criminals in the next decade, thus enabling the series to capture the zeitgeist in ways that a strictly anti-Soviet secret agent never could. But many of the plots still have resonance because these stateless villains are often seeking possession of weapons of mass destruction; this is a fear that has been exacerbated—rather than ameliorated—by the Soviet collapse. Even if this history shows the canniness of the filmmakers’ commercial instincts, the movies themselves—especially of late—live in an unchanging male fantasyland and are completely without artistic merit. A true Bond fan must ruefully concede as much. My greatest fear used to be that the series would end, but now that thought is oddly appealing."

In The New Republic, Isaac Chotiner reviews Sinclair McKay's The Man With The Golden Touch: How The Bond Films Conquered The World.