James Bond is known for being a ladies’ man, but in Skyfall, he makes a sexually suggestive remark regarding his past with men. “We can either devour each other… or eat everyone else,” Javier Bardem’s sinister Raoul Silva tells 007 after being tied up and having his shirt unbuttoned. He continues to touch Bond’s neck and legs, remarking that this is the “first time for everything.” Bond smiles as a result of this. He asks, “What makes you think this is my first time?” It’s the most homoerotic scene in an action film since Top Gun, and one of Daniel Craig’s greatest Bond scenes. However, it was almost deleted from the final cut.
“I remember the studio telling us to eliminate that line, and we protested, ‘No, no, no.’ In the Apple TV+ documentary Being James Bond, producer Barbara Broccoli says, “We resisted.” “That phrase, simply the whole place shook it that night of the premiere… I recall looking at the studio executive and saying, “See, I told you.” “I think there’s a massive homoerotic undertow in a lot of Bond movies,” Skyfall director Sam Mendes remarked. Have you seen the movies where the hunk is frequently tethered by rope? You don’t say anything.
Pierce Brosnan, who played Bond before Craig, has claimed that a homosexual Bond would be “interesting viewing,” but he doesn’t know “how it would work.” Barbara would never allow a gay Bond to exist in her lifetime.” We’ll always have Skyfall, at the very least.
