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James Bond: A Geek Life Special

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We know his name.  We know his number.  His exploits all across the globe are the stuff of legend.  Today, his filmed adventures officially turn 50 years old.  He’s Bond, James Bond.  He is the greatest agent of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, code named 007, and carries a license to kill.  He’s also the subject of my new Geek Life Special!

Geek Life Special #6: James Bond

Ian Fleming

My fascination, and subsequent obsession, with the character James Bond has been around since before I can honestly remember.  It seems he was there before my love of cartoons, and certainly before my love of other things like comic books or even Doctor Who.  He was created by British author Ian Fleming and made his first appearance in the 1953 novel Casino Royale.  During World War II, in which Fleming served in the intelligence division of the Royal Navy, he drew inspiration for Bond from several other intelligence agents that he was associated with during the war.  It’s also fairly well known that Fleming also drew from his own experiences and his own personality – including having Bond being stationed in Jamaica where Fleming himself lived and wrote the novels from his Goldeneye estate.  Before the end of the war, Fleming told a friend that he planned to become an author and write the “spy story to end all spy stories.”  It’s definitely arguable if he did that, but, boy, did he create the spy that all others that came after would be compared to on a conscious and subconscious level, and he’d take one of the most famous fictional names in all of human history from the actual name of an American ornithologist who wrote a book about birds of the Caribbean that Fleming owned.

As mentioned before, Bond first appeared in Casino Royale, a gritty novel that evolved around the British secret agent bankrupting a Russian spy and fifth columnist, Le Chiffre, in a high stakes game of baccarat.  While the book didn’t feature a great deal of action, it made up for it plenty in tension and a memorable scene that involved a chair with a whole in it, a naked Bond, a stick on a fulcrum, and Bond’s family jewels.  It also featured a particularly memorable final sentence in which Bond tells his contact, “The bitch is dead now.” in reference to a woman he had fallen in love with that had actually been blackmailed into double crossing him.  It’s not like any other book in the series, and certainly would not be how we would come to know him in the films that had been released prior to the recent Daniel Craig films (that began with the first “official” adaptation of this very novel).  Bond was portrayed not as a playboy or a particularly suave man.  He was cold, calculating, and duty bound most of the time.  There were times in which his temper would get the best of him and he would be fiery and angry.  It would be safe to say the Hollywood version of Bond would be more of an adaptation of the name alone and rarely used direct adaptations of moments in the novels as scenes in the movies.

The novels sold well and would serve as a substantial source of income for Fleming – at least well enough for him to write 12 novels in all about Agent 007 and a couple collections of short stories.  However, in 1961, Time Magazine published a list of John Kennedy’s favorite novels.  In that list, JFK included Fleming’s From Russia with Love.  Sales of Fleming’s novels soared and, suddenly, James Bond was a household name.  It was only a matter of time before the character would make his big screen debut.

American film producer Albert R. Broccoli, nicknamed “Cubby” by his friends, would be the one that would launch James Bond into the stratosphere of superstardom.  On October 5th, 1962, the first film, Dr. No, premiered and its success was out of this world.  This wouldn’t actually be the first time Bond had been adapted into a live action production.  The same year in which Casino Royale was published, the hour-long television program Climax! did an adaptation with Barry Nelson starring as American spy “Jimmy Bond”.  The program featured mostly the baccarat game between Bond and Le Chiffre.  Fleming had hoped to produce his next to novels, Live and Let Die and Moonraker, the same, but nothing had come to fruition.  Bond had also been featured in daily comic strips in England, but it wasn’t until 1961 in which Broccoli, and producing partner Harry Saltzman, would make the deal to go into production with their series of Bond movies.

The immediate, and insane, success of Dr. No soon led to a run of movies that would go down in film history as the most well known, and, adjusting for inflation, most profitable film franchises ever.  In quick succession, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball would each be released in consecutive years and each would earn more money at the box office than the one before.  The series made Sean Connery, the first film James Bond, a mega star.  By the time 1967′s You Only Live Twice had been released, though, Connery was wanting out of the part.  This would be short-lived, but started a tradition among the Bond franchise.

Sean Connery, the immortal face of Agent 007.

Connery did leave the series following You Only Live Twice.  Replacing him would be Australian model George Lazenby.  Lazenby would only star in only one film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  There have been conflicting reports as to why Lazenby only appeared in one film, ranging from disputes on set between producers and Lazenby to a perception that Bond would be seen as outdated in the liberated 1970s.  However, this is a film that is generally considered to be the most underrated films by the biggest of Bond fans, including myself.  While there are some silly moments and things that have to make you wonder if the makers were making some sort of conscious effort to have the characters around Bond know this was a different guy or not, there is a truly dark element to this movie.  Bond is portrayed much more like his novel counterpart, and the film ends unlike any others.  After finally settling down, James Bond actually gets married to the Contessa Tracy di Vicenzo.  As the two pull away from the wedding party, they pull over for a nice quiet moment as newlyweds.  A car speeds by carrying Bond’s longtime nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blowfeld.  Blowfeld attacks attempting to kill Bond, but the bullets instead strike Tracy, killing her.  This is something that will come back in the pre-title sequence in For Your Eyes Only, and in brief conversation between newlywed friends of Bond’s in Licence to Kill showing some sense of continuity in a series that rarely referred to previous films.

1971′s Diamonds Are Forever would feature a return by Sean Connery to the role that made him a legitimate movie star.  It would also be the first of those times in which Tracy’s murder at the hands of Blowfeld would have consequences.  The pre-title sequence in this film would feature James Bond tearing through Blowfeld’s people until he eventually finds the man who killed his wife and, basically kills him in cold blooded revenge.  While this entry in the series would serve to be one of my least favorites, this sequence reminds me that, oh yeah, James Bond has a license to kill and has been known to use it out of revenge more so than as a means to an end on a mission.  Yes, I said it…  James Bond has been a flat out murderer before, and it’s pretty awesome when you get to see that.

As the longest running actor in the role, Roger Moore would shape the series for a whole new generation.

Connery left the role again, this time, in terms of the official series, for good.  It was now time for Broccoli to find a more permanent replacement.  When Roger Moore was finally given the role to appear in 1973′s Live and Let Die, the series would not only find its longest running Bond, but also take on a wholly new lighthearted angle to serve as a departure from Connery’s portrayal.  It would work to a certain extent.  Moore would become the face of the character for a new generation.  Purists tend to believe that Connery would be the only true Bond, but no one could deny that Moore’s films would be incredibly popular and profitable.  Live and Let Die would serve to be the favorite film for many.  After The Man with the Golden Gun failed to really impress fans (to this day, it’s still my very least favorite film for the entire series), Moore returned in 1977′s The Spy Who Loved Me and that film would prove to be one of the very best in the series.  Cashing in on the success of Star Wars, Broccoli decided to hold off production of For Your Eyes Only to make Moonraker.  While many would point at this as being a truly preposterous movie since it launched Bond into space (yeah, that’s for real, dude, they really sent Bond into space), it was the highest grossing Bond film of all time until GoldenEye hit the screens in 1995.

As the 1980s dawned, Moore would appear in three more Bond films, For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), and A View to a Kill (1985), before finally retiring from the role.  By this time, Moore was nearing the age of 60, and had felt it was starting to appear as if the action scenes were getting too unbelievable for a man of his age.  For The Living Daylights (1987), Broccoli finally cast Timothy Dalton to play 007.  This was the third shot to bring him into the series.  The first came after Connery left the first time, but Dalton felt he was too young to play the role.  He was approached again toward the end of the 70s, but the actor didn’t really care for the lighter direction of the series (though, he obviously didn’t mind the direction Flash Gordon took).  In 1986, Broccoli turned to Dalton again, but this time it was after Pierce Brosnan was unable get free of his NBC contract to play TV’s Remington Steele.  Even though Dalton was a longtime friend of Broccoli’s, the third time was a charm, even if the actor had been the second choice after being twice before considered the first choice to play the part before.

The fourth actor to play the role of Bond, Timothy Dalton.

Dalton’s run would only last for two films and was, at best, considered rocky.  The Living Daylights would come after an incredibly successful run from Moore.  If Dalton originally thought following Connery was a tough gig, it might have proved to be nothing compared to following Roger Moore.  Coupled with his second film, 1989′s Licence to Kill, Dalton’s run didn’t quite feature the same stunts and over the top production values as Moore’s seven films that had done wonders at the box office.  Dalton’s portrayal of the spy would be considered much closer to the portrayal of the character in Fleming’s novels.  It was thought to be a complete departure from what people had gotten used to.  Dalton was grittier and seemed to be more serious when Moore, or even Connery, would have been a little more glib.  It’s tough for me to convince my friends of the quality of these two movies.  This is mostly because I’m of the Roger Moore generation.  All of my friends were more used to Moore’s interpretation of the character, or had grown up watching Connery’s films from television airings or watching them with their parents.  Most of us had been so used to that portrayal and hadn’t really read any of the Bond novels from 20-30 years prior.  Ultimately, Dalton had a tough sell to the American audiences.

At this point, I need to take a break to point out some very important notes about Timothy Dalton, his movies, and the series in general.  Even though it was far from being the first Bond movie I ever saw, Licence to Kill was the first Bond movie I saw in the theaters as a kid.  For this reason, this movie still ranks incredibly high in my list of favorite Bond movies.  It’s one I have very fond memories of from being a 12 year old boy sitting in a darkened auditorium.  Of all the movies I’ve talked about in this Geek Life series, this is the one that really brings up the most fond memories.  It came during a time that was my most aggressive exposure to the series.  I couldn’t get enough of the movies and exhausted my mom’s wallet and Blockbuster Video membership renting all of them that I could.

Licence to Kill was also the first Bond film to not be based on a Fleming novel or short story.  This would remain the case until 2006 when Casino Royale was finally adapted into this series.  Unfortunately, there would be an even more dubious reputation for this movie.  Licence to Kill was the biggest failure of any Bond film.  Blamed on a poorly conceived marketing campaign, the film failed at the American box office.  While it did do well in foreign markets, and would gross the average to be expected for any film in the series, the poor showing in America would appear to be a warning siren that Bond had fallen out of the favor in a world that was changing fast with what appeared to be lowered tensions between the Western and Eastern worlds.  It’s important to point out that the financial failure of this movie did not kill the series, nor did Timothy Dalton signal the end of the franchise.  It would be legal battles involving the sale of MGM/UA, who had distributed all of Broccoli’s Bond films to date, to a company that had planned to sell the rights to televise the series without Broccoli’s company’s permission.  Broccoli had planned a seventeenth Bond film with Dalton still in the role for 1991.  Pre-production began in 1990 while the legal problems persisted, but would eventually cease.  In 1993, Dalton was ready to return to the role for a film to start production in 1994, but when that fell through yet again, Dalton retired from the role.  Little did we all know that a refreshed and renewed Bond series was about to explode onto screens.

GoldenEye (1995) brought Bond back to the screen with a new vigor.

With Dalton retired from the part of Bond, Broccoli quickly approached and signed Pierce Brosnan to star in 1995′s GoldenEye.  After six long years of waiting, a new Bond film for a new generation taking place in a new Post-Cold War world would finally happen.  The results were astonishing.  Even in the face of stiff box office competition from Disney’s Toy StoryGoldenEye would sell a hell of a lot of movie tickets and quickly top the list of highest grossing Bond films – a record that would fall with each subsequent film to be released since to this very day.  GoldenEye was also accompanied by one of the most well-loved Nintendo64 games and would, for a very long time, serve as the highest selling DVD during the early days of the home video format.  It also happens to be my very favorite of the series, and will likely never be topped.

What Brosnan brought back to the role was much of what people loved about Connery’s films and not so much the lighter elements from Moore’s.  The character was brought back to more of the suave, yet rugged, spy confident in his abilities.  These were more like the earlier films in the sense that the threats felt real and, while still sensational in nature, weren’t overly diabolical as they seemed in the Moore run.  It showed that there was still a place for Bond in the Post Cold War Era.

Even though the box office numbers remained positive with each one making more than the one before, it didn’t take long for the series to start to slow down again.  1997′s Tomorrow Never Dies seemed to suffer a bit from a lackluster villain (a Ted Turner-like media mogul hoping to start World War III so his network can broadcast it).  1999′s The World Is Not Enough, though a film I will defend tooth and nail as being the last of the “classically made” Bond movies was slammed for having Denise Richards star beside Brosnan as a nuclear physicist.  In some ways, it was a call back to the days of Roger Moore’s Bond films featuring sexy women in roles that seemed against type, but most couldn’t get past her casting in this type of role.  I often wondered if another person in the role of Christmas Jones would have made much of a difference or if it was simply a case where the world wasn’t really interested in having a young, sexy girl play a character like hers, but instead just having a woman that appears to fit the role while being simply pretty in favor of outright sexy.  Die Another Day (2002) would serve to be Brosnan’s last film.  Perhaps more different than any other film in the series, Die Another Day showed an honest attempt to make a Bond film that used the same style of editing and production value of some of the series’ contemporaries.  It was a style that wasn’t terribly befitting of Bond.  To me, it always seemed like something was off with that film.  Instead of a Bond film that was rich in story with a few emotional notes, this one almost felt more like an impersonation of a Bond film.  It seemed more like a collection characters – a sexy American agent, a powerful magnate who was really just a vengeful maniac, a henchman with a physical deformity, a double crossing woman, and a Bond who could no longer be trusted after being captured by North Koreans – set within a world of stuff happening.  While not my least favorite film in the series, it really had the flimsiest plot and script of any film in the series.

For the first time in his long screen history, it was time for James Bond to get a reboot and makeover.  For over 40 years, Bond was the world’s greatest spy.  He toppled evil organizations, stopped the world from being destroyed, and stopped World War III from happening.  There really was only one thing we’d never seen – his origins as a spy.  We had never seen what made him the hero he had become by the time Dr. No had come around.  The series, now under the direction of producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli since Cubby’s death in 1996, would do just that.  2006 saw the release of Casino Royale starring new Bond, Daniel Craig.  Craig would be a brand new interpretation of the world famous spy.  While this interpretation of the character would revisit some of what was attempted in Dalton’s run, it really is the most true to the original Fleming Bond from the novels that had been seen yet.  Bond was colder and seemingly haunted by demons of his past but also completely unrefined as an agent.  In the pre-title sequence of this movie, and its, for the first time ever in the series, direct sequel Quantum of Solace, we’re not shown the trademark “gun barrel” opening.  While that would finally make its appearance at the end of the latter of the two films, we see Bond on a mission.  In Casino Royale, we see the two assassinations that would reward him his “double 0″ status.  The opening sequence in Quantum of Solace featured a continuation to the finale of the first film along with a pretty cool car chase.

Daniel Craig would bring a new “cool” to 007.

What made Craig’s films so cool was we got to see him struggle his way though his missions.  He gets beat to hell.  It’s been pretty rare to see Bond bleed, and we get that in spades in these two movies.  Instead of being a spy who could handle missions of both large and delicate scale with a certain amount of class and demure for the greater good, this version of Bond was rough around the edges and often more of a sledgehammer when a situation required an ice pick to chip away until he found what he needed.  He runs through walls, he blows up an embassy, he creates a massive security scare on a runway in Miami, and he flat out opposes one of the greatest poker players in the world when he really doesn’t even think of all the possible outcomes and consequences.  We see certain glimpses of what Bond will become, but even his recognizable theme is used sparingly in these films.  For young and old, it was literally a re-introduction to the character.  What’s more is that there’s room to do whatever the filmmakers want to do with the series.  If they want to start remaking films that had previously been done like Dr. No or even Goldfinger, they can.  If they just want to continue making movies to connect Craig’s films to the start of Connery’s, they can do that too.  The sky’s literally the limit.  We’ll just have to see what Skyfall brings us in Craig’s third outing as Bond.

I’ve used the word “official” a few times, and I suppose I should explain why.  There are two movies that feature the character of James Bond aside from that original television adaptation of Casino Royale that weren’t produced by EON Productions (Broccoli’s production company).  The first of these is a 1967 film version of, what else, Casino Royale.  Let’s not mince words here…  Avoid this movie at all costs.  It’s a poorly conceived spoof of the types of spy movies the Bond series inspired in the 60s.  It starred David Niven, Peter Sellers, and Woody Allen.  I kid you not, Woody Allen is in this movie.  Each actor played a different type of James Bond character.  The idea is the name is passed down from one spy to another like a title.  There’s only one thing memorable about this heap of garbage and it is the surprisingly up-beat and well composed theme used in throughout the movie.  If you hear the piece of music, you’ve likely heard it before from somewhere and just didn’t know it came from this movie.

Connery returns to the role of Bond in the 1983 “unofficial” Bond film, Never Say Never Again.

The other “unofficial” Bond movie actually has a ton of connections to the real series.  Long story short, the novel Thunderball actually began as a screenplay written by Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory.  When Fleming ended up turning it into a novel when the movie didn’t happen, McClory sued.  It would be a long standing battle between everyone involved with Fleming and EON Productions who made the 1965 Thunderball film.  Eventually McClory decided to make a James Bond movie outside of EON Productions called Never Say Never Again.  It was produced by Warner Bros. and starred Sean Connery as an aging 007 wrapped up in yet another international event.  What’s more is that it is nothing more than a remake of Thunderball.  It features little of the things that we recognize as Bond trademarks.  No opening sequence, no memorable theme song, and a production value lower than the regular run.  It’s a little hollow.  Sure, it has beautiful women in it, including an early screen performance from Kim Basinger, and it did have Connery returning to the role that he made famous, but it’s nothing like the original film this movie resembles.  It’s a recognizable film because of its star and the time in which it came out, but most don’t realize that it’s not truly part of the actual series.

For a while, Sony had tried to acquire the rights to do their own film series for the character.  Though they had always been denied that chance, this had come about during a time of uncertainty for the series we all grew up on and it seemed to be a bold faced attempt to kill the series from MGM/UA.  There was a brief time of conflict between the fans of the series.  I was part of the camp that would have rather seen no new Bond movies if MGM/UA was no longer involved.  Another group of people wanted to wanted to see the Bond series evolve with the times and be more modern or relevant.  The problem I always saw with that was that is what made the series so special.  The series existed in its own universe.  It wasn’t hampered by the typical studio influence to always reach out to a particular demographic.  EON Productions made a film series that had always been more about its own style and traditions than anything else.  It made the series something special.  We could always expect a particular production value, cool action sequences shot in traditional ways, gadgets that had a quality of fantasy to them, and, of course, a bevy of gorgeous women everywhere.  It just seemed to me that a studio taking full charge of a Bond series would cater less to what made the series unique in the first place in exchange for always catering to an age bracket that would eventually make the films made for specific people and not for everyone as this series has been.

This battle has been since resolved as Sony and MGM have co-produced each of the films in Craig’s run, still leaving EON in full control of the series.

To me, that’s the real key to my love of this series.  It’s not so much about the mystique or sexiness of the character.  Sure, every man, even if they aren’t that familiar with the character, wants to be James Bond.  We all want to be the man who could walk into any situation with a confidence in knowing he could always say the right thing, or beat up any tough guy in the joint, or sleep with any woman he wants regardless of her marital status, sexuality, or allegiance.  What makes James Bond so special to me is that he’s the one character that, at any moment, I could pop one of the films into the DVD player and watch with my dad and truly enjoy every moment of it.  It’s a character that gets passed down from one generation to the next so much easier than anything else.  I dare say it’s easier to pass the pure love of the series and character than even Star Wars.  My dad and I can talk about any number of movies at length.  He can tell me about why he loves From Russia with Love more than any other film in the series, and I can understand why.  I can return that with why I love GoldenEye so much and he can understand why.  It’s a series of films that any two people can come together, and even if they don’t entirely agree on what film is the best of the series, they can simply have fun talking about the movies.  It’s a film series that seems impervious to arguments.  Everyone finds something special in each film that they can point to as being cool or memorable and anyone else talking to others about the topic will appreciate the pure feelings people have about the series.  The common thread between fans isn’t about agreeing on the quality of particular films, but the traditions and expectations that are typically seen and met throughout the series.

In this article, I could have focused on a handful of the movies from the series that meant more to me.  I could have even given you a list that ranked the films from “worst” to “best”.  I even came prepared to talk about some of those purely quirky things that have only ever really worked in this series like how often the total suspense of who the bad guy was in the movie is immediately thrown out the window (see Moonraker for some classic examples of a bad guy and henchman who is immediately portrayed as real sons of bitches).  I could have explained why Goldfinger was the film that changed the genre of action forever and why it’s considered, by many, to be the best of the series.  There were so many directions I could have taken with this article because that’s how important the series is to fans and the film industry.  Instead, I found it so much more fun to talk about the series as a whole and how each era seemed to have a life and personality of its own.  I admit that I often used Wikipedia, or other sites, to help get certain dates or particulars about the history of something right when I’ve done these Geek Life articles.  If nothing else, it was simply to help jog my memory of a particular event.  This article didn’t require that hardly at all.  I often surprise myself how much information I’ve retained about James Bond over the years.  Just when I think I have forgotten something about the series or particular movies, the moment I start thinking about whatever that is, it seems that knowledge I thought was long ago forgotten comes out of nowhere as if my mind just needed to access that file that I backed up somewhere on a hard drive.

For as much as I love comic books, or the Washington Redskins, or Star Trek, or Doctor Who, James Bond is the thing that I chose to get a tattoo representing my love.  It’s something that will stick with my all my life.  It’s a shame that Ian Fleming, who passed away in 1964, didn’t live long enough to see how truly important his character would eventually become to the world.  He may have created a series of spy novels that on a literary scale will always be adored, but I’m not sure if he had any idea that his character would have a huge impact on film audiences for decades beyond his death.

That brings us to the close of this issue of Geek Life.  The regular, bi-weekly series has been done for a while and I was able to find six more topics I could do as these specials to keep the meme going, but now it’s time for a break – or possibly even closure.  This series of articles has actually lived on beyond its original intention.  Even though there have been changes to my life that have come and gone, I just really enjoyed continuing to share those things that have been a major part of my life.  In some ways, ending with James Bond feels like the right thing to do, but I know as soon as I publish this article, I’ll probably find something else that I realize I should have done an article on.  For now, I’ll hit the dusty trails with a “So long…” that isn’t so much a goodbye for the series, but instead a crack in the door that could allow for a possible return.  Either way, I appreciate everyone’s support of the series and all the comments that have come along.  It’s been a great deal of fun and I’m glad others seem to have enjoyed these ramblings as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.

To find out more about what this series of articles are all about check out What is Geek Life? To see what other topics I’ve written about, check out the Geek Life tag!


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