Yogesh Raut writes the popular trivia / criticism blog The Wronger Box (http://harpo84.blogspot.com) and hosts the Recreational Thinking podcast. He spends his days popularizing the BBC game show Only Connect and his nights proving that every fact in the known universe can be substantively linked to Marjorie Merriweather Post.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign 

— “Signs” (1971), Five Man Electrical Band

To those of us with backgrounds in academic film studies, a “sign” isn’t just where you have to do better than a rolling stop if you want to pass a driving test. It’s the basic unit of cinematic language, the fundamental way through which movies convey meaning, as described by pioneering French semiotician Christian Metz (1931-93).

Metz laid films out along two major axes: the syntagmatic axis, which is the sequence of unfolding signs (i.e., narrative structure) and the paradigmatic axis, which contains all the possible signs that can be placed at each point on the syntagmatic axis.  This is a particularly useful scheme for analyzing James Bond films, where (especially pre-Daniel Craig) the syntagmatic axis is usually as rigid as kabuki. Variations along the paradigmatic axis — like setting 1967’s You Only Live Twice in an exoticized version of Japan versus setting 1983’s Octopussy in an exoticized version of India — are what give Bond movies their individual flavor, and it is through consequential paradigmatic variations — like making the main “Bond girl” a hyper-competent Soviet or Chinese agent (The Spy Who Loved Me, Tomorrow Never Dies) or a CIA-trained scientist (Moonraker) rather than a mere decorative damsel — that the series demonstrates an ability to change with the times.

So when a movie like the 2002 Vin Diesel vehicle xXx comes along, aping the Bond formula to a T, it is tempting to dismiss it as a mere clone. After all, look how closely it hews to the general description identified by Umberto Eco way back in 1965: “Bond is sent to a given place to avert a ‘science-fiction’ plan by a monstrous individual of uncertain origin and definitely not English who, making use of his organisational or productive activity, not only earns money but helps the cause of the enemies of the West. In facing this monstrous being Bond meets a woman who is dominated by him and frees her from her past, establishing with her an erotic relationship interrupted by capture, on the part of the Villain, and by torture. But Bond defeats the Villain, who dies horribly, and rests from his great efforts in the arms of the woman, though he is destined to lose her.”

And yet … what if Christian Metz was right? Perhaps we can learn something from Diesel’s Xander Cage by examining the paradigmatic choices that xXx helmer Rob Cohen and scripter Rich Wilkes make.

Appearance

xXx opens with an agent in a very Bond-esque tuxedo (Thomas Ian Griffith) getting easily sniped because he sticks out like a sore thumb at a Rammstein concert. The message is clear: Looking like James Bond doesn’t get you as far as it once did. So instead we have the notably racially ambiguous Diesel, first seen posing as a valet labeled “Mexican,” and, as his love interest, the chiseled and butch Asia Argento. Both are covered in ostentatious tattoos.  While xXx does not skimp on servicing the male gaze, Cohen’s camera also takes time to ogle Diesel’s well-muscled torso, a form of quasi-equal-opportunity objectification that, in 2002, had yet to make its way into the Bond canon.

The villain (Marton Csokas) is stereotypically sleazy and, as expected, coded as “Eastern.” But Xander’s authority figure, Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), is a far cry from M, and not just because he’s Black. His face is visibly scarred, a quality typically associated with villains in the Bond franchise. He’s also accompanied by a much younger Q figure (Michael Roof) who provides Xander with a 1967 Buick GTO, a muscle car that roars in brash contrast to Bond’s Aston Martin finesse.

All this makes clear that we’re not watching your dad’s 007. But can xXx’s overall aesthetic be summed up in a single word? Yes.

X-Tremism

It’s no coincidence that Xander Cage is frequently referred to onscreen as “X,” and it’s no mystery what that syllable is meant to connote: extremeness, by which I mean a deliberate effort to be louder, hipper and edgier than what came before. You can hear it in the deafening metal soundtrack. You can see it in the throngs of female extras clad in skimpy thongs practically designed to make Bond-girl bikinis look modest. You can glimpse it in the cameos by Tony Hawk, Mike Vallely, Carey Hart, Brian Deegan and Mat Hoffman, all veterans of … no, not the Olympics, but the X Games.

Most of all, though, it comes through in the stunts. Bond stunts have typically grown out of bourgeois leisure activities like driving and skiing, but xXx’s stunts purposefully mimic BASE jumping, BMX freestyle, skysurfing, snowboarding, jet-skiing, paragliding. The “List of extreme sports” (that’s literally what Wikipedia calls it!) goes on.

Rebelliousness

It’s not just the Buick; Cage broadcasts his American-ness with a Stars-and-Stripes parachute, an obvious riposte to the Union Jack unfurled in Rick Sylvester’s legendary The Spy Who Loved Me ski jump. Maybe there’s no deeper meaning to this nationalistic identity-signaling.

But take another look at Xander’s reflexive distrust of authority and his repeated clashes with Gibbons. Classic Bond installments drew clear lines between James Bond, operating on Her Majesty’s secret service, and foreign “other”-ed bad guys. When Scaramanga in 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun declares that he and Bond are “the same,” Bond replies, “There’s a useful four-letter word, and you’re full of it.”

Xander, meanwhile, fits right in with Anarchy ’99, the villainous gang described to him by Gibbons as “dirty, dangerous, tattooed. Your kind of people.” He’s more comfortable among those he’s meant to obliterate than those whose orders he obeys. But in the end, what keeps Xander on the side of the angels is exactly what codes him (in our culture’s eyes) as “American” — his refusal to endorse violent terrorism and his willingness to sacrifice his life for the greater good.

Taken as a whole, it’s possible to see in xXx an ethos that doesn’t so much copy Bond as repudiate it, replacing paternalism with youth, blind loyalty with rebellion, restraint with excess, gender binaries with androgyny, and post-colonialism with post-racialism. Eco famously argued that Bond stories function through a set of internal oppositions; by the same token, xXx can be seen as functioning through external opposition, simultaneously deconstructing and reconstructing the Bond formula.

Coda: An Influence on Bond?

So what did the makers of Bond learn from xXx? In 2006, Casino Royale remembered to put Bond’s ripped physique on display. Between the Black Moneypenny introduced in 2012’s Skyfall and the Black female 007 in this year’s No Time to Die, the franchise is now a lot more welcoming of diversity. Skyfall also saw the introduction of a new Q as youthful and nerdy as his xXx counterpart, as well as a new M who bears some striking similarities to Gibbons: He’s closer to Bond’s age, has a prickly and antagonistic relationship with Bond and foolishly dabbles in morally ambiguous intrigues while remaining capable of heroism when the moment calls for it. xXx never became the money-minting franchise its studio probably hoped for, but I think a case can be made that it successfully shifted the moral center of the Bond universe.