Final Thoughts - The James Bond Project

So that didn't work out as planned.

I'm not talking about the vesper martini, although that's totally on my fail list. When the James Bond Project launched, I promised that the final post (hint: this one) would feature my first run-in with Bond's official drink, but then the skies dumped a blanket of snow and tauntauns on North Carolina this last weekend, and my plan fell apart.

Now, I've lived in Canada. Yes, a temperate, wet corner of Canada, but Canada nonetheless. I'm not afraid to brave a snow storm, especially not when booze is on the line, but the people serving that booze were not so hardcore. When I finally found an open bar, the "I wish I was home right now" server wasn't about to let me go off menu, especially not in search of a drink made with now-fictional ingredients like Kina Lillet. I settled for a chocolate martini, which, judging by the look on my girlfriend's face, might as well have been concentrated estrogen.


By the following night, even that place had barred the doors, leaving a Mexican grill and its menu full of margaritas as my only option. Oh, I drank, but I never found the drink. When the ice thaws, I'll be tripping over vespers, but not this weekend, not today, and not in time for this post.

In other words, insert that old cliché about best laid plans, because it also applies to my journey through this project. As a lifelong Bond fan, I thought it would be a breeze to talk about all the great Bond films the franchise had produced in its nearly five decades of life. I figured I'd hit "the good stuff" fairly early. Imagine my surprise when I was still swimming in mediocrity halfway through. There are less decent movies than I'd thought, and only about five or six that I could recommend as films without hesitation. I still love Bond, but it turns out that I don't really love a lot of his movies.


So what's the big deal, then? Why the fan following and the 20+ years of continuity for a series with so many sinkholes? Superman and Batman faced reboots after four movies. Spider-Man only made it to three. Jason Bourne got one well-received trilogy and now faces the threat of a prequel (a reset by another name.) Harry Potter's story will end with the final book. Dirty Harry, John McClane, Rocky, and Rambo are all retired or nearly so. Why has James Bond alone endured all these years, virtually unchanged?

The answer begins in the long parade of actors playing Bond, interchangeable enough to make Eli Whitney proud. OK, we love this Bond or that Bond more than this other Bond over here, but let's be honest; the character is larger than any single actor. The producers can throw a new face on the franchise every decade like a fresh coat of paint and the public will still show up. There's no need to perpetually reboot and revamp as long as Britain produces a suitably dark and charming hunk at least once a generation.


This Dial-a-Bond approach gave the franchise room to grow into its roots, allowing a canon of characters and gimmicks to establish itself. The series may be as shallow as a tide pool, but good luck finding another franchise with this level of reverence for its history. The death of Tracy Bond still scored a reference in Tomorrow Never Dies, nearly 30 years after the character was shot. Lois Maxwell remained as Moneypenny, even as her Bonds grew younger. An entire film (Die Another Day) was assembled from scratch using only in-jokes and references.

So what does 40 years of hero continuity leave you with? Plenty of time to explore the villains, which may be the real key to the franchise's success. Longtime producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli demanded that each Bond film feature a villain more dastardly than the last, and he wasn't shy about chasing trends. If nuclear fears were on the rise, Bond would go after a rogue warhead. Energy problems in the 70s? Bond thwarts a plot to hoard limitless free energy from the world. Bond has taken a tour through our changing landscape, from the Cold War to the digital age, from distrust of the media to the planet's dwindling oil and water supplies. Is there even a precedent for such a hero, willing to stand up, put his life on the line, and sock our collective fears square in the jaw?


Oh, right.

Call it a ten-cent diagnosis, but somewhere in the back of our lizard brains we like to feel that we're in charge of things when, of course, we rarely are. Cartoons like James Bond are laughable in their perfection, but they empower people to feel like their place in the world isn't as fragile as it sometimes seems. These characters reflect our own natures, and stand in for us when tragedy and crisis keep the world from making sense.

And as long as James Bond continues to fill that role, the character's popularity could last for another 50 years. Or more.

So where does Bond go from here? I don't think anyone is exactly sure. The new Daniel Craig films are still struggling to find their sweet spot between new-style action and nostalgia. Casino Royale got it right, Quantum of Solace not so much. The third film will set the pace. Personally, I fear that the less Bond-like the character becomes, the larger the risk of permanent damage or a fall into irrelevancy. Although, to put it mildly, nobody ever made a fortune betting against the series. (Poor George Lazenby even lost one.) The only thing I can safely predict is that James Bond will return. And I'll toast my martini to that, chocolate or otherwise.

Bond #1 - Goldfinger

Without this film, there’s no Bondmania... and maybe no more Bond.


. . .AS IAN FLEMING’S JAMES BOND 007: Sean Connery

SETUP: MI6 suspects a wealthy businessman named Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) of illegal gold smuggling, and they’d like to know how he’s doing it. James Bond takes the assignment after crossing paths with Goldfinger in Miami, a meeting that left a young woman murdered by a spray-on golden tan.


BUT IN REALITY: Goldfinger is indeed smuggling, but it’s the last thing the Brits should be worried about. The real concern is Operation Grand Slam, Goldfinger’s scheme to detonate a nuke inside Fort Knox, back when US currency was still backed by gold. Bond alerts the authorities, triggering a major ground skirmish outside the fort. The bomb is defused (with 007 seconds left, of course) and Bond survives to confront Goldfinger in a private airplane, where the villain is sucked out a window to his death.

VILLAINOUS DISFIGUREMENT: Goldfinger’s only disfigurement is mental: a driving obsession with gold. He smuggles it, collects it, murders with it, and even wields a golden gun long before Bond’s nemesis Scaramanga.


THE MUSCLE: Goldfinger employs Oddjob, a thick, mute, Korean wrestler with a razor-rimmed bowler hat that can cut the heads off of stone statues. Burly, silent, and armed with a deadly gimmick weapon – Oddjob is the model for all the best Bond henchmen to come, including Jaws.


BOND GIRL AND FEMME FATALE: Two of the most famous Bond Girls in franchise history are in this film. The first is Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), famously killed by gold paint suffocation in the first act of the film. Jill’s sister, Tilly (Tania Mallet), shows up in the middle of the film to avenge her, but she meets a brutal end at the hands of Oddjob and his bowler hat. Instead of decapitation, the hat hits her with enough impact to break her neck and she drops dead in mid-stride.


Once secure in Goldfinger’s clutches, Bond meets the infamous Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). Pussy is no-nonsense, a crack pilot, and also possibly a lesbian, but Bond manages to seduce her anyway (disturbingly, see below). She immediately joins the winning team, selling out Goldfinger and aiding the feds.

“PAY ATTENTION, 007”: The first classic “Q scene”. Bond visits Q in the gadget room, where he receives his gear for the upcoming mission. Q delivers two things of note here. First, the hands-down, number-one, best Bond gadget of all time, the original Aston Martin DB5, and second, his most famous line: “I never joke about my work, 007.”


MOST EMBARRASSING CULTURAL MOMENT: The ‘60s Bond films are each guilty of at least one embarrassing lapse in judgment, but Goldfinger is so chock full of casual misogyny that I can’t choose just one moment. Bond dismisses a girl from a chat with Felix Leiter by slapping her on her ass and explaining that it’s “man talk.” He later shoves Jill Masterson by the face to get her away from his phone call, which she finds hilarious. He more or less forces himself on Pussy Galore in Goldfinger’s stables which, of course, converts her to Bond’s team (and possibly to men). Audiences at the time ate this stuff up, but these are uncomfortable moments in an otherwise great film.

BOND’S BEST ONE-LINER: “You expect me to talk?” Not a great line, but the setup for the most famous line in Bond history: “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”


WORTH MENTIONING: For once, Bond is on the wrong side of history with his musical taste, telling Jill Masterson she should never listen to The Beatles without earmuffs on…The great Gert Frobe didn’t speak English and had to play the part of Goldfinger by speaking his lines phonetically. His voice is dubbed in the final release... This film was the Avatar of its day, grossing so much money so quickly that it entered the Guinness Book of World Records. This overwhelming audience response became known, inevitably, as “Bondmania.”


OVERALL: Goldfinger is a quintessential Bond film, a movie that perfectly represents what the series is and what the franchise strives to deliver. It has action and adventure, gadgets and absurdities, sophistication and class, a world-stomping villain and a legendary lady. Goldfinger is also a required Bond film for any newcomers who want to know the series and find out what the noise is about. If only one James Bond movie survives into the next millennium, this would be the one. It’s too iconic to die.


This may seem like a surprise to some, since Goldfinger has no big aspirations to cultural infamy. It’s a saccharine piece of pop entertainment, a fantasy film built around a superspy too good to be true and a supervillain too big to exist. Auric Goldfinger (even his first name begins with AU) is like a psychotic from Batman’s rogues gallery, singularly obsessed with sticking to a theme. He collects gold to do what? Spend it? Then he’d have less and his enemies would have more. Besides, he’s got too many possessions in need of gold plating. It the ultimate insult when he kills Jill Masterson with gold paint; he must be really angry with a girl if he’s willing to part with gold to end her life.


The film’s lasting power comes from the broad, well-crafted script from Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn, but also from the magnetic performance of Sean Connery, who finally fully realizes the Bond character after spending his first two films working out the kinks. Goldfinger gives him a challenge worthy of a mega hero, lines worth saying, and then plenty of room to maneuver. The film would be nice enough with another actor, but Connery carries it on his shoulders up and over the finish line, just as Harrison Ford with Indiana Jones or Johnny Depp with Pirates of the Caribbean. Connery will never be topped as Bond, and that’s because it’s not a competition. Bond is his role, and Goldfinger proves that. Everyone else is just playing the part.

The James Bond Project

1. Goldfinger

2. From Russia with Love

3. Casino Royale

4. Goldeneye

5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

6. Tomorrow Never Dies

7. Octopussy

8. The Spy Who Loved Me

9. Thunderball

10. Dr. No

11. For Your Eyes Only

12. The World is Not Enough

13. Live and Let Die

14. Licence to Kill

15. The Living Daylights

16. You Only Live Twice

17. Quantum of Solace

18. Die Another Day

19. The Man with the Golden Gun

20. Diamonds are Forever

21. A View to a Kill

22. Moonraker

Bond #2 - From Russia with Love

The second Bond movie and the second best ever made.


. . .AS IAN FLEMING’S JAMES BOND 007: Sean Connery

SETUP: A Russian SMERSH operative named Tatiana Romanova contacts MI6 with a fantastic story. She claims to have fallen in love with James Bond from a file photograph and wishes to defect to be with him. Even better, she’ll throw in a top-secret Lektor Decoder if Bond travels to Istanbul personally to pick her up. Is it a trap?


BUT IN REALITY: Obviously, yes, of course it’s a trap, but SMERSH is innocent. The villainous SPECTRE organization, led by former SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb, has cooked this whole thing up in an effort to steal the Lektor, make a tidy profit by selling it back to the Russians, and in the process avenge Dr. No's death by killing Bond. Poor Tatiana is caught in the middle as SPECTRE plays one side against the other, and when the plan goes down, Bond has to escape across land and sea to get the Lektor, Tatiana, and himself back into friendly territory.

VILLAINOUS DISFIGUREMENT: Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) has no physical deformities, save for a passing resemblance to Yoda, but there are some mean-spirited suggestions that she's is a lesbian and that basically counted as a mental illness at the time.


THE MUSCLE: This is one of the rare Bond movies that allows the henchman to steal the show. Donald ‘Red’ Grant is an Aryan, muscular assassin trained specifically to kill Bond. He spends the first half of the film acting as Bond’s guardian angel to keep SPECTRE’s plan intact, but once Bond has the Lektor, Grant moves in for the kill. His final battle with Bond is one of the action highlights of the entire series. A true classic villain, played with perfect menace by Robert Shaw.


BOND GIRL AND FEMME FATALE: Tatiana (Daniela Bianchi) fits the early Bond Girl profile perfectly. She begins as a femme fatale, playfully luring Bond to his doom. Once she’s rolled in the sheets with our hero, her heart miraculously thaws and she repents of all her wicked ways. The role is rather standard, but Bianchi brings quirk to the performance and ends up as one of the most memorable Bond Girls from the Connery era.

“PAY ATTENTION, 007”: Not the first appearance of Major Boothroyd/Q, but the first appearance of Desmond Llewellyn in the role. He delivers Bond a stylish briefcase, which is like a one-stop shop of gadgetry. Throughout the case are a bundle of hidden objects, such as gold sovereigns, throwing knives, tear gas canisters, and even a sniper rifle. Bond gets his mileage out of the case, using it in almost every critical moment and turning it against Red Grant in their final showdown.


MOST EMBARASSING CULTURAL MOMENT: Bond’s randy Turkish ally, Kerim Bay, takes him to a gypsy camp to lay low. By a stroke of luck, they arrive just as two gypsy women throw down in a catfight/deathmatch for the hand of the chief’s son. The ladies rip clothes and claw at each other while Bond gives the situation the gravity it deserves. Bond asks the chief to settle their argument, and he does so by giving both women to Bond for the night. Even better, none of this is relevant to the plot or ever mentioned again.


BOND’S BEST ONE-LINER: After Rosa Klebb fails in her attempt to assassinate Bond with a shoe-knife: “She had her kicks.”

WORTH MENTIONING: Final appearance of Sylvia Trench, who was meant to be Bond’s frustrated regular love interest. Somewhere between this movie and Goldfinger, Bond lost her number... The novel was one of John F. Kennedy's personal favorites, and the film is reportedly the last he saw before his death... First film appearance of the villain Blofeld, although he's not mentioned in the credits.

OVERALL: Yeah, this was a close one.


From Russia with Love is one hell of a spy movie, a textbook Cold War potboiler improved by the presence of a superhero. And, make no mistake, that’s what James Bond is. The villains set up their scheme like a rat trap, coaxing the agent in with a prize (the code machine possibly, the woman definitely) and then quickly snapping the trap shut around him. The rest of the film is about watching the impossibly crafty Bond slip through the bars and dodge the broom without so much as mussing his hair. Maybe Bond can’t spin webs or hulk out, but his superpower is that he’s more awesome than you.


And he needed to be. As much as I admire Dr. No, it barely holds together as a movie. The tone is uneven, it’s bogged down with details, and really only succeeds in suggesting Bond as a character. From Russia with Love was the game-changer. Bond was cool. Bond was very cool. In fact, it’s this movie, not the superior sequel, that branded the attitude and slick machismo that made James Bond a megafranchise. There’s a reason that EA looked to this film when looking to sell a retro action game to the modern market.

Notice that I called From Russia with Love a spy movie and not an action movie, and that's important. The film drags in its early scenes, there mostly to pad out a story that boils down to “go get something and then bring it back.” In fact, it’s these dead scenes – the intrigue in Turkey, mostly – that hold the movie back from an even higher rank, because once it gets moving, it flies.

I love the train scenes in this movie. I love Robert Shaw’s Red Grant, and the way he adds tension to even a casual conversation in the dinner car, or how carefully he stalks Bond throughout the course of the movie, like the slasher in some teen horror movie. I love the exploding briefcase and the late-film chase (quietly lifted from North by Northwest’s cornfield by swapping a bi-plane for a helicopter.) I love Tatiana and her conflicted loyalties, and Rosa Klebb’s shoe knife, and the opening hedge maze with its doomed Bond lookalike. Mostly, I just love this movie.


But there’s one Bond movie I love even more.

The James Bond Project

1. ???

2. From Russia with Love

3. Casino Royale

4. Goldeneye

5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

6. Tomorrow Never Dies

7. Octopussy

8. The Spy Who Loved Me

9. Thunderball

10. Dr. No

11. For Your Eyes Only

12. The World is Not Enough

13. Live and Let Die

14. Licence to Kill

15. The Living Daylights

16. You Only Live Twice

17. Quantum of Solace

18. Die Another Day

19. The Man with the Golden Gun

20. Diamonds are Forever

21. A View to a Kill

22. Moonraker