This line functions as Die Another Day’s modern echo of Goldfinger’s classic warning: “Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr. Bond.  It may be your last.”  It’s clear the writers intended this parallel when General Moon confronts a battered and imprisoned Bond.  Seeing Bond as a long-term prisoner of war looking weak and disheveled with a beard and stripped of his usual control was a genuine novelty.  It offered a rare glimpse of Bond not as the untouchable operative, but as a man pushed to the brink, and briefly suggested a more psychologically ambitious direction for the character.  This was of course totally manhandled with the rest of the campy and over-the-top Die Another Day, but I digress.

A POW-themed Bond narrative would be a bold and unconventional starting point for Bond 26, but realistically, with the next Bond expected to be cast in his late twenties or early thirties, the franchise is unlikely to revisit any storyline that centers around age or wear.  Still, the storyline remains as a great example of an “outside the box” avenue for revitalizing the series, which I think might be sorely needed this time around.