He’s been everyone’s favourite spy. He is still everyone’s favourite spy.
He likes his Martinis shaken, not stirred. He’ll do anything for a girl with a knife. He’s prone to jumping from planes as they are being shot down from the sky and he’s been known to race his car across the end of a bridge… somersaulting through the air and landing perfectly. Hair intact. Style unscathed.
You got it. His name is Bond. James Bond. And he’s been around forever.
What is it that’s made the fifty-year-old James Bond creation one of the most enduring and incredibly popular franchises in movie history?
Since Sean Connery emerged as the first James Bond in 1962 in the thrilling ‘Dr. No’, twenty-three more James Bond movies have been released and the twenty-fourth is being filmed this month. The legendary British secret agent 007 has entertained moviegoers in a world of famous car chases, fearless stunts and extraordinary explosions, surrounded by nifty gadgets, sensual women and megalomaniac villains. James Bond has always been the epitome of sophisticated style with his chic clothes, expensive tastes, suave confidence and cocky one-liners.
Sean Connery was catapulted into heartthrob domain and true celebrity status after his portrayal of the MI6 spy in the first of the James Bond movies. Since then the role of 007 has been played by five more actors over 52 years: George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, the latest, whom many critics have dubbed ‘the best since Sean Connery’.
Has the choice of new lead actors to suit each generation as well as a change of creative direction through the years kept James Bond movies current and relevant?
Indeed James Bond himself has morphed through the years in line with shifting social norms and expectations. In the sixties he was a shameless sexist, who charmingly wooed a myriad of women into his bed and casually discarding them when duty called. Today’s Bond is possibly more serious, seduces fewer women (perhaps…) and shows due respect towards his female boss than the earlier Bond. Even Miss Moneypenny, once a soft target for 007’s unsubtle flirtation, is now a more formidable figure with no time for his chauvinistic quips.
How Did It All Start?
It was in 1954 that Ian Fleming, English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer, who had penned a few spy novels about an English secret service agent called James Bond, was noticed. Well, sort of. The American CBS television network paid $1,000 for the rights to turn the first of his James Bond novels, Casino Royale, into a one-hour television adventure. The low-budget black-and-white television show was nothing spectacular, especially in light of what was yet to come.
Then, in what has to be the luckiest move on this planet, Fleming sold a six-month option on the film rights to his publisher and future James Bond novels to Harry Saltzman in 1961. After this six-month period, Saltzman joined up with the noted Albert. R. Broccoli to form Everything Or Nothing Productions (EON Productions) to make the first Bond film. This partnership would continue until 1975. The producers of the Bond movies chose to start off with the sixth novel, ‘Dr. No’ at which point the tales had started to become increasingly elaborate and the villains flamboyantly megalomaniacal. Which, of course, is all part of the James Bond magic and appeal.
There weren’t too many Hollywood studios interested in funding the James Bond films then, most dismissing them as ‘too British’ or ‘too blatantly sexual’. Eon Productions took the risk and it paid off. To date Eon Productions, still owned by the Broccoli family, has produced all the James Bond movies, most of them at their London Pinewood Studios and at various exotic locations. With a combined gross profit of over $6 billion to date, the films produced by Eon constitute the third-highest-grossing film series, behind the Harry Potter and Marvel Cinematic Universe films.
Interestingly, Sean Connery was not Broccoli’s first choice as 007, but he was chosen after Patrick McGoohan turned down the role. Surely McGoohan has kicked himself several times ever since. The producers spotted the pretty unknown Connery in a most unlikely place: playing the role of a singing Irishman in Disney’s leprechaun fantasy ‘Darby O’Gill and the Little People’.
Connery was certainly rough and ready enough, but he needed to be refined enough to fit the worldly, suave side of Bond. The fledgling Connery was dunked into the sophisticated social scene of London and given a total image makeover including a new haircut and clothes. Filming of ‘Dr. No’ took place on location in Jamaica and at Pinewood Studios in England. James Bond had been born.
The first Bond film saw itself through with a paltry budget of $1 million and a later addition of $100,000 from United Artists. It could be said that a good investment had been made. ‘Dr. No’ made back 20 times its cost upon its initial release and $60 million over the years through theatrical re-releases. Critical reaction was mixed upon its release, but the film eventually gained a reputation as one of the best in the James Bond series. ‘Dr. No’ did lack the gadgetry and gimmicks of later Bond outings but many of the iconic features of a typical James Bond film were rooted, such as the trademark view-down-the-barrel-of-a-gun as the movie begins. Right at the start of the movie, amongst the card tables of the ‘Le Cercle’ casino in London, James Bond pronounces the immortal line of “Bond…James Bond”. Then there’s the malicious villain with his plans of world domination in the form of nuclear physicist Dr. Julius No, and the typical Bond girl personified by Ursula Andress in her iconic white bikini, as Honey Ryder. We’re introduced to a Bond quintessential quip as Honey rises from the sea and asks him, “Are you looking for shells?” to which Bond replies, “No… I’m just looking!”
So What Does ‘James Bond 24’ Have in Store For Us?
It’s been almost two years since director Sam Mendes and his crew rocked the cinematic world with the most successful of all the Bond films, ‘Skyfall’, which commemorated the James Bond franchise’s 50th anniversary, while grossing $1 billion worldwide and nabbing two Oscars to boot. This month, Mendes returns to the director’s chair for the making of the 24th James Bond movie, making him the only other director to lead two consecutive Bond films since John Glen, who made five – ‘For Your Eyes Only’, ‘Octopussy’, ‘A View to a Kill’, ‘The Living Daylights’ and ‘License to Kill’.
Until now the upcoming movie has been dubbed ‘James Bond 24’ but will hopefully earn a more riveting title before its release. Since Ian Fleming is no longer around to pen further 007 novels, the movie is based on a book written by Sebastian Faulks, in the style of Ian Fleming. The novel ‘Devil May Care’ was authored by Faulks in 2008 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ian Fleming. The book is set in 1967 and has been written as a sequel to ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’. The plot sees Bond trying to foil the plans of the chemist Dr. Julius Gorner, who harbours all sorts of evil intentions and heinous plots to devastate the modern world.
Daniel Craig once again stars as the suave spy, having signed on to star in at least two more Bond films after the success of ‘Skyfall’. However, amidst all the splendour of being Bond, it has been revealed by Craig that he was actually planning to end his stint as 007 after ‘Skyfall’, but was talked into staying. So luckily for those of us who have a thing for blonde spies with big biceps and erm… perfect torsos, we’ll get to see him doing his thing again alongside those actors who made a debut in ‘Skyfall’: Naomie Harris as Miss Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw as Q, and Ralph Fiennes as the managerial M.
Filming locations for ‘Bond 24’ are reputed to be Austria, Rome and closer to home – Morocco. Out of these three venues, Rome is the rookie, as no Bond movie has been filmed there before. A few scenes in ‘Quantum Of Solace’ were filmed in Austria, and ‘The Living Daylights’ presented some stunning scenes set in both Austria and Morocco.
The buzz is that Scandinavian actresses have been sought for the minor female roles, while the lead Bond Girl will be British. Then again, the movie grapevine also suggests that ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’ star Léa Seydoux might be in line for the female lead. ‘12 Years a Slave’ star Chiwetel Ejiofor has also been rumoured to play the film’s villain.
The Bond Icons
It’s those recurring, distinctive themes that make the character Bond and his movies so iconic. His creaseless, stylish suits, his smooth one-liners, the impossibly gorgeous women. The sexy Aston Martin. The Walther PPK. The Martinis, shaken not stirred. Bond-philes the world over can surely compile legions of lists detailing their best Bond icons.
Favourite Bond icons range from Martinis to metal teeth, exploding toothpaste to mini rocket cigarettes and a deadly bowler hat to a detonator watch. The oldest, and what has to be the most popular Bond icon, is surely the stunning silver Aston Martin DB5 that James Bond took for a few spins in ‘Goldfinger’, ‘Thunderball’, ‘GoldenEye’, ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’, ‘Casino Royale’ and again in ‘Skyfall’. The slick vehicle comes complete with machine guns hidden under the headlights and a button that releases oil to foil one’s enemies. There’s even an eject button to get rid of unwanted passengers. There are other commendable cars that dropped into various Bond movies like the Lotus in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. This nifty number, that’s delivered to Bond by Q in Sardinia, is nothing too shabby. Quite capable of transforming into a submarine, it’s also equipped with anti-aircraft missiles and is a real babe magnet.
The Bond Girls
At some point on his spy mission, Bond will meet a stunning woman, or two, or three. They could be victims rescued by Bond, fellow agents, voluptuous villainesses or crafty henchwomen. Sometimes the Bond girl in mention has even switched sides after being wooed by Bond’s magnetism and charm.
The tough Bond, who never allows a woman to get to him, has fallen in love fictionally only twice. His heart is completely taken with Tracy di Vicenzo in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. Bond and Tracy actually get married but violence and villainy put an end to that happy union. After marrying in Portugal, the newlyweds drive away in Bond’s Aston Martin and when Bond pulls over to remove flowers from the car, Blofeld and a sidekick commit a drive-by shooting that kills Tracy. In ‘Casino Royale’, Bond falls in love with Vesper Lynd, a double agent who turns her allegiance for love. In the movie she gets to save Bond’s life but unfortunately he doesn’t manage to save hers. At the start of ‘Quantum of Solace’, we meet an avenging Bond who is seeking revenge for her death.
Roald Dahl, the famous novelist, who was the screenwriter of ‘You Only Live Twice’, mentioned the formula he was given for the film: “You put in three girls … Girl number one is pro-Bond. She stays around roughly through the first reel of the picture. She is then bumped off by the enemy, preferably in Bond’s arms. The next girl is anti-Bond and normally captures him, but Bond will save himself by using his charm and sexual potency: she is normally killed mid-way through the film. Girl number three will survive and end the film in Bond’s embrace.”
Bond girls often have wildly creative and very risqué names. The most obvious, and the most controversial, would have to be Pussy Galore from ‘Goldfinger’. It was so suggestive in fact, that American censor boards refused to allow it on promotional materials and for the US market she was then referred to as Miss Galore or Goldfinger’s personal pilot. Other monikers include Honey Ryder from ‘Dr. No’, Holly Goodhead from ‘Moonraker’, Mary Goodnight and Chew Mee from ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’, Plenty O’Toole from ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, Xenia Onatopp from ‘GoldenEye’, and Christmas Jones from ‘The World Is Not Enough’.
In the more modern of the Bond movies, the women are rather more ingenious, somewhat independent and aloof. The Honey Ryders and Pussy Galores don’t grace the screen merely for the pleasures of Bond. That’s not to say that beautiful women have been banned from the Bond screen. What a bland Bond world that would be! The relationships between Bond and women have been redefined in a world where gender roles are shifting. Take Vesper Lynd as an example, who gives as good as she gets. She is one of the only women with whom Bond has a proper relationship. In ‘Quantum of Solace’ we are introduced to Camille Rivera Montes, a Bolivian agent who is seeking revenge for the murder of her family. She’s a beautiful, intelligent woman with own agenda and she doesn’t land up in Bond’s bed. Amazingly. Then there’s Eve in ‘Skyfall’, the MI6 agent who’s involved in a major slip-up that puts Bond’s life at risk. She gets to shave Bond shave with a straight-edged razor. A vision of a woman in control, her hands clutching a sharp blade, grazing his neck. Love and sex scenes in past Bond movies have been clear and unambiguous, but the scene with Eve is entirely ambiguous. Do they or don’t they? Eve is later revealed to be Eve Moneypenny, secretary to M.
The Bond Baddies:
The first Bond villains are larger-than-life megalomaniacs with preposterous plans for world domination. As the movies progress the baddies become more ‘real’ somehow, perhaps reflecting the modern world in which we live where one can never judge moral fibre from mere appearances. Some of the more notable Bond baddies include:
Dr. No is the first of the Bond Baddies. He wants to sabotage American missiles and send them off-course using directed radiowaves. He is a bad yet brilliant scientist with a Napoleonic complex of note. As a result of a radiation accident he sports bionic metal hands. His perverted villainous behavior is exemplified at a dinner party where he lectures his dinner guests on the nature of power before torturing them half to death.
Auric Goldfinger is the big and balding Baddie who aims to steal the U.S. gold supply from Fort Knox to finance nefarious activities. He is always remembered for the infamous line of, “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!” Mr. Goldfinger is surrounded by a posse of loyal henchmen and this sets a trend for later Bond movies: the main villain who is surrounded by his staunch sidekicks.
Ernst Blofeld is another quintessential sixties Bond baddie with a shaved head, North Korean-style tunic and white fluffy cat, who has a thing for feeding unfortunate minions to ravenous piranhas. We first meet him in ‘From Russia With Love’. Blofeld tries to expedite nuclear war between Russia and the United States and then attempts to nuke the world on his own. He pops up again, like a bad penny, in ‘Thunderball’, equally bent on wreaking havoc on the world. In these first two appearances, we don’t see his face, but only his lower body as he strokes his ubiquitous white cat. He appears again in ‘You Only Live Twice’, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ and ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ where Blofeld meets Bond face-to-face. In ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, Bond is besieged by a brood of Blofelds who are duplicate decoys of the villain – unfortunate aides who’ve undergone plastic surgery.
Dr. Kananga, a.k.a. Mr. Big from ‘Live and Let Die’ appears as the Prime Minister of San Monique, a drug-producing island. He dons a rubber mask to morph into his alter ego Mr. Big, the ruthless gangster who controls most of Harlem.
This badass villain has ideas of distributing large amounts of heroin for free, creating more addicts to provide a bigger market for the drugs that he will control.
Francisco Scaramanga in ‘The Man With the Golden Gun’ is a freelance assassin, often working for Castro’s secret police, in addition to being engaged in other criminal enterprises such as drug-running into the United States in partnership with the KGB. He is one of the finest shots in the world, and M authorizes Bond to assassinate the gunman – if he can.
‘Casino Royale’ pits Bond against a terrorist organization, a relevant fear in the universal mentality of the 21st century. Le Chiffre is the man villain here, a badass banker who is a financier of international terrorism. He suffers from haemolacria, causing his tear ducts to erm… weep blood. He is a ruthless and highly intelligent mathematical and numerical genius, who earns large sums of money in games of chance and probability. Le Chiffre invests his money along with his other creditors’ money in the aircraft manufacturer SkyFleet. He then plans to short the company by purchasing put options, and ordering the destruction of the company’s new prototype airliner, set to make its first flight out of Miami International Airport. Bond luckily comes to the rescue.
Other more modern villains like the wealthy businessman Dominic Greene in ‘Quantum of Solace’ are shown as real, ordinary people conveying the idea that one doesn’t need to look evil or absurd be evil. Greene heads a legitimate business called Greene Planet, which is supposedly devoted to buying up large sums of land for ecological preservation. But this baddie is secretly a member of Quantum, the same organization that appears in ‘Casino Royale’, dedicated to accruing power and influence through world finance and geopolitics. Their aim in this movie is to control various world commodities such as oil and water.
The depraved villain in ‘Skyfall’ is Raoul Silva, a former MI6 agent. A charismatic and cunning megalomaniac, he is bent on vengeance, his master-plan being to murder M for giving him up to the Chinese a very long time ago. After months of torture, he still refused to give up his secrets. On learning it was M who gave him up, he tried to commit suicide, but the cyanide didn’t work and left him disfigured. A sad, bitter baddie, abandoned by his country, he presents a new kind of enemy: the erstwhile hero turned villain… and the cyber-terrorist. This anti-hero is more of a human being than some of the larger-than-life Bond villains. Which in many ways is far more frightening and more ominous.
