Hollywood welcomes 007 at Oscars as Bond kisses Britain bye-bye

Anyway, after a montage of clips from all 25 Bond films and zero from the three Austin Power movies, which is certainly a choice. But the actual performance kicked off with Margaret Qualley dancing with a parade of men in tuxedos, and any one of them could be the next Bond. Qualley was followed by a trio of singers, reclaiming three Bond classics for those stars and stripes. Singer Lisa of Blackpink took the stage first, performing “Live And Let Die” and didn’t even change the lyrics to “Lisa Let Die,” which must have been tough. Then Doja Cat performed Shirley Basse’s “Diamonds Are Forever” and did a pretty kick-ass job of it. Finally, Raye sang “Skyfall,” the Oscar-winning track from Skyfall.

It was all very lovely, but a bit ironic considering James Bond has never been a Hollywood property. One of England’s greatest cultural exports, we’ve been watching foreign films like some sort of snooty art school dropout this whole time. But now that Amazon owns it, Hollywood finally has their grubby mitts on Britain’s best boy. So we’ll consider this entire thing a changing of the guard (just like at Buckingham Palace), another American revolution, except this time, America will only take over a movie franchise instead of the world’s most expansive imperialist project. All this, and we still have John Lithgow’s Dumbledore to look forward to. Hooray for Hollywood!