Kill James Bond! - S4E42.5: Titane

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

KJB's first true venture into Transmasculine Cinema (the director disagrees with us but as ever you'll find us very persuasive): A young woman with a titanium plate in her head is killing, frankly, far too many people for increasingly-spurious justifications. To lay low, she steals the identity of a long-missing child, but the plan is complicated by the child's father's total commitment to her being his son. ----- HANDS OFF LEBANON Here are some fundraisers to support collective rebuilding and survival efforts on the ground in Lebanon. -Beit El-Baraka started out as a food bank, but has grown to help people afford rent, cover their essentials, and live with dignity.  https://beitelbaraka.org/donate-directly/ or donate in general https://beitelbaraka.org/donate-now/ -LiveLove was a charity for a number of other matters, but since 2024 has been solely comitted to helping people displaced by Israeli attacks. https://livelove.org/donate -Lebanese Food Bank supports displaced and impoverished people https://lebanesefoodbank.org/take-action/donate/ Solar Powered Lebanon is an initiative to restore people's power using solar panels, since larger infrastructure is at constant risk of attack. https://fundahope.com/en/campaigns/solar-powered-lebanon ----- FREE PALESTINE My friend Ahmed still needs to feed his family and afford medicine. Anything you can kick in would be hugely appreciated. https://chuffed.org/project/150817-please-help-ahmed-and-his-family-get-food-drink-and-medicine And these are some more general links you can support collective efforts with! -The Palestinian Communist Youth Union is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ ----- Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the everything app account

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly. I am joined, as always, by my friends Abigail Thorn and Devon. Cowabunt. Oh, fucking, damn it. And here I thought this was going to be a nice restrained episode, because, you know, I made us do a sort of like French art film that makes you feel bad. And, uh, no, turns out it's cars.

It's all cars. Beep, beep, listeners. Beep, beep, like Charlie X-E-X. It made me feel bad for sure, but it also made me, like, lean really far back from the screen and cover my eyes and sort of grim my teeth a lot. Incredible film. I mean, listeners, let's lay the cards out up front. If you haven't seen Titan, go see Titan.

Like, it is, ooh, a difficult watch in places. But as a movie, like, as a work of art, incredible. I'm so glad you liked it. I, the thing is, sometimes I go into an episode having a pretty clear idea of sort of what my narrative is going to be. This one, I don't know. It's a movie that I don't necessarily quite have a settled opinion

on exactly, but it is an uncomfortable watch, I will say that. I'll tell you one thing we can be certain of, is that every movie is either about 9-11 or being transgender, and this movie, it's not about 9-11. The director is incorrect. The director maintains this is

about 9-11. It's not. She doesn't maintain that it's actually about 9-11. She just maintained very explicitly. that it's not about being transgender and the director is incorrect that it is about being transgender. Yes. Specifically, it's about being a trans man. Yes.

It's not something we've ever done really before. Not really, no. A sort of transgender movie hour. Something that I think the three of us are, oh, fully qualified to talk about. There was no need for us to bring anyone else in on this. Yeah. As many of the fans suspect, Dev, you're a trans man, right? That's absolutely correct.

I will never reveal what. my gender assigned at birth was. They didn't get around to it. I was dying. I was choking to death. But, so, this is, this is Julia Dequinos, I think second movie after, after Raw. I'm getting

a lot of raw vibes from this. Yeah, because on account of it was made by the same woman is why. And I'm sure we will do raw and we'll do Alpha at some points in the future. But so this is, this is sort of my bonus pick because I think it is

really in like we're talking about cars in a way that I think really picks up on some themes of sort of like yearning and like imperfect communication and embodiedness that we've done before

and so I think there's a really fruitful opportunity there I think this movie makes an incredible follow-up piece to the Fast and Furious franchise which yes so and I mean I mean this absolutely seriously we've watched a lot of movies where women's bodies are compared to cars And this movie also does that, but in a very different way and very deliberately and very well. It's really good.

I have a little sort of fact about this that will just really sort of land that. But so we begin with engine parts and leaking metal and sort of very physical, very kind of the feeling of like a living metal of like something that is engineered but is also kind of like animalistic and feral, right? We also get, because it's a French filmist, we start with a bunch of. of like loads and loads of logos from EU film studios. The European Union contributed about $9 trillion to this. Also, one of the logos that we see at the start of the production companies just says CNC, which, hmm. Uh-huh.

Also the Belgian federal tax shelter, which it's crazy that it's called that. You need to call it a fund. You can't call it a tax shelter. Can't call it a tax shelter, man. That's where you take shelter from taxes. These metal parts are part of a moving car, a family car. And instead of engine noise coming in, we get a child sort of like imitating it, like doing the noise, while they are in the back of the car driven by their dad.

Yes, interesting that you use the pronouns they. Yes. I was also questioning what pronouns to use for this character. I guess at this point in the story, the character's name is Alexia and is a little girl. Let's go with girl. Let's do it. The movie presents it that way, yeah. The script uses she-her throughout and uses the name Alexia throughout.

Incorrectly. However, yeah. However, Julia DeCono has said that the kind of like, like the gender ambiguity, particularly with the like child actor is fully intentional, right? and you're not supposed to be able to tell without doubting, oh, this is a small boy, a small girl, right? But notably, one thing that this kid has, besides a kind of, you know, undetermined gender,

is horrible vibes. Just what if your kid was annoying? What if your kid was annoying? Can you imagine that? What if your kid was, like, annoying? And maybe a little bit evil? Hard to tell. Like, very sullen, very glary.

doing the Kubrick stare in the first frame that we see her in the movie just, you know, you don't want to start from there. Yeah, and like willfully disobedient too, we see her like, as the car is barreling down the motorway, we see her take off her seatbelt and she's like kicking the seat of her dad in the front, annoying him,

she takes off her seatbelt and starts climbing around. And he turns around in the car and tells her, put your fucking seatbelt back on, and this causes him to swerve and crash. Yeah, as a horrible, kind of sickly feeling crash. we just... Such a good fucking crash. From the outside of this like normy sort of family car

just like sliding cybers into a concrete barrier and this like kind of bloodied dent appearing on the back window where you know the kid is. It's really good because it hits the... hits this like concrete bollard and the smashing of the brake light sends this shatter of red out that isn't blood, but it's evocative of it.

I think it's also worth noticing before we move on that Alexia's sort of like misbehavior as a kid, right? Part of the reason why we're talking about her having horrible vibes is because it's not just, it's not playful, it's spiteful, you know? It's specifically like your kid is being a little shit, right, and is like kicking the back of your seat on purpose to fuck with you kind of thing. Yes. But so we then go to surgery body horror, one of the first of about 8 billion different kinds of body horror in this movie. Yeah, it's easing you in, if you can believe it, this is. Yeah, yeah.

Start on on the shallow end by putting a metal plate into her head. Yeah, fixing this sort of big titanium plate and like screwing it down into the skull. And then after the surgery, we see Alexia now with her head shaved as well, so even less gendered, wearing this sort of, I'm not even sure what you would call it like an orthopedic kind of like neck head brace. Yeah, like operator. race. Yeah. Yeah.

Apparently consciously designed to evoke a crown of thorns here, which it does. Oh, interesting. It does. Yeah. True. So the doctors tell her dad, you know, she's going to be fine. But like, because the titanium plate, it's like fixed in very solidly. It's made of titanium.

On titan, titan, French for titanium. Just be aware of like sudden impacts and maybe like emotional or very, you know, verbal changes. Brain damage to him? Yeah. I'm pretty certain it's going to be fine. Don't worry about it. She crashed into that river where Jason Momoa was gay but we're pretty sure we got around in time. The river that makes you evil if you're fished out soon enough and gay if you're not.

He was already evil I guess, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess so he passed through the evil threshold and then stayed down there long enough that he also became gay. Also became gay, yeah. It's not like too different levels as you've been. become evil and if you leave it, you're also gay evil. Yeah, which is like a worst kind of evil. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Primal. And we see when she gets out of the hospital that she doesn't resent the car for its crimes against her. In fact, she loves car. She pets the car and kisses it. It's very sweet. Which, like, I'd have gone a different car, but like, okay. Average American child.

Mad Max, war boy ass, yeah. She loves the car. The car is family, you know? Like, it's... Super family. That's what dad's iconic fucking Vauxhall whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then we smash cut forward to Alexia as a, like, older woman, by old I mean 20s.

Yeah, let's say older woman. She's un dissud recamont. Yeah. Yeah, sure, absolutely. She's like deysoe smoke show buddy. Yeah, sure, absolutely. show de smoke, I don't know. She's really hard.

She's on her way to work, though, at the Fast and Furious Meat Market. Yes, she is. Yes, that's where she works. Because this scene, and again, this is one of the things for the director, the author is not dead when she agrees with me. Julia Ducon, I was like, this is directly based on the meat market shots and Fast and Furious, right? Because those shots have this kind of equal. centralizing function of women and cars are objects that you can desire and that are sort of laid out for you and you want to fuck the car and you want to fuck the woman and you want to own the woman and you want to own the car.

Right. So she is... She's at this kind of like car showroom. I believe the old-fashioned term for the women doing this job was booth babes. I don't know what the current terminology is, but that is her job. She is like dancing super sexy on the bonnet of a Cadillac as like. like various dudes with atrocious vibes in cargo shorts watch. And they're like, you know, it's a car showroom.

There's a bunch of different women doing this on different cars. And one of the guys tries to like touch one of them and security sort of hustle him away. And the bouncer says, hands off, touch with your eyes, right? And that's sort of like you're accidentally profound bouncer, right? We're indicting the audience here. It's like this is what you're doing with a kind of a male gaze. It's what you're doing when you make a movie this way. The bouncer throwing me out, but he's also like slipping a copy of bell hooks into my coat as he throws me out.

Like he's the woke bouncer. Give me her a reading list. Yeah. But no, I think it sort of like indites the viewer as she then does this like erotic dance on the hood of the Cadillac. Yeah, and everyone's going wild as well. Yeah, yeah. They're asking her for autographs. They're asking her for selfies.

Like she's just very popular. And afterwards she, yeah. I got that. We see that as one of them snaps the selfie. she smiles just long enough to get the photo is immediately like, okay, workface off back to like the Kubrick stair. I really love that.

Still evil vibes. Les vibes, koshmadesque. The vibes are very evil. Yeah. But I do appreciate, I really like leaving the shot just long enough for us to see her just like go completely dead face, like getting off the Zoom call.

I really, I want to shout out people who are evil because they, you know, fell in that river or whatever, but working in customer service industry. I think that, because that's so much more emotional labor to have to pretend that you're not evil. And so whenever you get back home and you get to do the like, oh, you shut off the Zoom call and you get to do the sort of Sims like take evil shower thing or whatever, that must be so good. Yeah. I think it's good.

Yeah. Speaking of taking showers. Mm, yes. She goes to take a shower in the sort of locker room. And one of her co-workers, a woman called Justine, introduces her. in a kind of like hitting on her way. Yeah. And is completely no soul.

Did Kubrick stare? Evil. Yeah, because evil, right? It's like I'm trying to take my fucking evil shower. But he drops the soap. Trying to dissociate, man. And Alexia drops the soap. And her hair gets caught in Justine's nipple piercing.

Right. I mean, this is, this is, if you've ever had a nipple piercing get caught on something, It's not fun. It's really not fun. This is part of the total commitment to body horror, but it's also like, it's very funny, I think, to have this kind of very literal entanglement.

And we see that Alexia's kind of fascinated by this nipple piercing. She asks her, like, do you beep at security? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's fun. And she's taking, like, way too long to disentangle herself as well. And, like, they're both enjoying it a little bit, and then someone comes in to try to catch them, and she like pulls away really fast and you don't see it this this time, you don't see it.

No, rather inconsiderate, they just yanks it at. When she yanks it, it's like, it's a little bit sadistic on her part, kind of deliberately. And that's interesting as well. But so she leaves work and she's trying to fucking evil walk to her evil car. But unfortunately, the evil parking lot that's kind of like dark and then the car's on its own and the distance. Unfortunately, you as a sort of person, you as a subject, you might be evil, but there's a greater evil, which is like patriarchy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Abby 10,000 decibel. Men!

Men! You know, like, immediately men arrive. We can pull the drop from our next episode, Blues Brothers, which is just a guy saying into a megaphone, white men. These are like, the men who turn up at Dyke Day and harass my friends. Just like, no. Just this guy, like, literally. jogging after her down the parking lot.

He's like, it's very much approaching the tweet that's like, you're beautiful without makeup, rattling door handle. It is. It's genuinely, yeah, yeah, yeah. He starts, like, she sees him coming after her and starts running. He starts running to, she gets the car, and then he goes like, I just want an autograph.

And it's like, say that earlier on, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't sprint after women in dark parking girls. But also, he doesn't just want an autograph. He is lying because he. because she made it to the car. He is trying to bargain her up from to an autograph to

can I get you on a date. Yeah, do you want to go on a date? And eventually he hits her with, I think I'm in love with you. And then she kills him. It's crazy. But if you want to hear about this, you're going to have to go to our Patreon. And that's patreon.com slash kill James Bond

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