Most notably, however, Quantum of Solae addresses water rights issues in Bolivia, drawing overtly on the 2000 Bolivian Water Wars for its narrative. The film merely replaces the World Bank and Bechtel Corporation of the actual water war with a military coup and a secret organization fronted by Greene Planet whose mission is to acquire and commodify environmental resources, an act which amplifies the tenets of the appropriative doctrine.
Although the film’s plot obviously parallels the Cochabamba Water Wars, however, only one review mentions this connection. Joshua Clover calls it “wholly plagiarized from the archives of reality” (8), but other reviewers focus on changes to the Bond genre and the Bond character, either praising or lamenting differences from the previous installments instead. Tobias Hochsherf’s Film and History review, especially, lauds how well the film transforms the Bond character from “gentleman spy” to “more a tough, rugged and uncompromising agent in the tradition of violent hard-boiled detective” (78). As Clover declares, “None of them manage the word “Cochabamba.”
Even though James Bond films are rarely topical, they do sometimes tackle environmental issues. In A View to a Kill (1985), for example, James Bond (Roger Moore) must stop a greedy industrialist from triggering a massive earthquake to destroy California’s Silicon Valley and corner the microchip market. In The Living Daylights (1987), Bond (Timothy Dalton) combats an organization trading clearly non-conflict free diamonds for weapons. And in The World is Not Enough (1999), Bond (Pierce Brosnan) must protect a beautiful oil heiress from a notorious terrorist.
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