Bradley Ruzicka

I want to state up front that I’m not a big movie fan. My philosophy is I tend to only watch those movies I’d be interested in seeing more than once. One of the series I’ve watched for as long as I can remember are the James Bond movies. I’ve seen each of the films multiple times and continue to enjoy watching them to this day!

Ian Fleming created the fictional character of James Bond as the central figure for his works. Bond is an intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. He’s known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander. Fleming based his fictional creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division and 30 Assault Unit during the Second World War, admitting that Bond “was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war”. The name James Bond came from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert.

Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond’s guide and he later explained to the ornithologist’s wife that “It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born”. Fleming published his first Bond novel, Casino Royal, in 1953. Between 1953 and 1966, two years after his death, twelve novels and two short-story collections were published, with the last book, The Man with the Golden Gun and the two short stories, Octopussy / The Living Daylights, published posthumously.

In 1961, producers Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman joined forces to turn Fleming’s Bond novels into feature films. Broccoli, the man most associated with the Bond franchise, was born in Queens, NY, on April 5, 1909. He first became interested in bringing Fleming’s character to life around 1959. However, Broccoli discovered the rights already belonged to Saltzman, a Canadian producer, who had long wanted to break into film. Saltzman refused to sell the rights but ultimately agreed to partner with Broccoli and co-produce the films. This led to the creation of Everything or Nothing (EON) Productions.

The two producers also created Danjaq, named after their two wives’ first names (Dana and Jacqueline), which would hold the rights to the films Eon produced. But Hollywood studios were reluctant to fund production of the Bond films, finding them “too British” or “too blatantly sexual”. Eventually, Broccoli and Saltzman signed a deal with United Artists for 100% financial backing. From the outset, the order in which Eon would produce its Bond films differed considerably from the publication sequence of Fleming’s novels and, therefore, the fictional chronology of Bond’s life as established by the books.

Starting with Dr. No in 1962 through No Time to Die in 2021, the Eon Bond series presently encompasses twenty-five movies. Even after Saltzman’s departure in the mid-1970s, Broccoli carried forward the Bond mantle until his death on June 27, 1996. Prior to his demise, Broccoli passed the torch to his daughter, Barbara, and his stepson, Michael G. Wilson. With a combined worldwide gross revenue of $7.8 billion to date, the 007 franchise constitutes the fourth highest grossing film series of all time behind only the Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.

Over the years, Bond films have won six Academy Awards including Best Sound Effects (Goldfinger), Best Special Visual Effects (Thunderball), and Best Sound Editing (Skyfall). Also included are three awards for Best Original Song; Adele’s Skyfall (2013), Sam Smith’s The Writing’s on the Wall (2016), and Billie Eiish’s No Time to Die (2021). Additionally, several popular songs produced for the movies have been nominated for Best Original Song including Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die (1974), Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better (1978), and Sheena Easton’s For Your Eyes Only (1982).

In honor of almost 60 years of films about Fleming’s fictional spy, I’m devoting a series of posts to each of the Bond eras as defined by the actor who played this most famous of all British secret agents; Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig. As Brosnan, who played Bond between 1995 and 2002, stated in the BBC documentary Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007, “Only a small group of men have played this role. More men have walked on the moon.” I’ll also be devoting one post to the Best of James Bond in which I’ll identify my favorite film from each era as well as who I believe was the best Bond, the best Bond film, the best Bond villain, and the best Bond theme song of all time.

There are two Bond movies that did not receive their own post but, for the sake of completeness, I’ll include them here.

The first is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, starring George Lazenby, released December 18, 1969. In the movie, Bond, while searching for Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, saves Tracy di Vicenzo from committing suicide by drowning and later meets her again in a casino. Bond then receives information from Marc-Ange Draco, the head of the European crime syndicate Unione Corse and Tracy’s father, about Blofeld’s Swiss solicitor. Bond continues to see Tracy in order to obtain additional information about Blofeld. Bond breaks into the solicitor’s office and establishes Blofeld is corresponding with the London College of Arms.

Posing as an emissary of the college, Bond meets Blofeld, who has established a clinical allergy-research institute atop Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps. Bond soon establishes that Blofeld is brainwashing his patients to distribute bacteriological warfare agents throughout various parts of the world. Bond is eventually caught by henchwoman Irma Bunt after Blofeld identifies him as a British agent. Bond escapes and subsequently arranges a raid on the clinic using men from Draco’s organization. The raid is a success although Blofeld escapes. Bond falls in love and marries Tracy, but she is murdered shortly afterwards by Bunt on orders from Blofeld.

Lazenby succeeded Connery after he quit the role in 1967, receiving a paltry $80,500 for his services after his predecessor was paid $1M for his last film, You Only Live Twice. Lazenby remains to this day the only actor to play 007 in just one Eon film. He was born in 1939 in Goulburn, New South Wales, migrating to London in 1963. Lazenby first sold new and used cars and later became a model prior to accepting the Bond role in 1968. He won the role based on a screen-test fight scene, the strength of his interviews, fight skills, and audition footage. However, Lazenby had never acted before.

In November, prior to the release of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Lazenby announced that he no longer wished to play the Bond character. “Bond is a brute”, he stated. “I’ve already put him behind me. I will never play him again. I much prefer being a car salesman to a stereo-typed James Bond. My parents think I’m insane, everybody thinks I’m insane passing up maybe millions of pounds. Nobody believed me. They thought it was a publicity stunt. But it’s just me doing my own thing.” According to the documentary Everything or Nothing, the feeling was mutual between Lazenby and the producers as a result of his partying lifestyle, adopted after he assumed the Bond role.

Later in life, Lazenby would say how very much he regretted that decision.

At the time of its release, the majority of reviews were critical of either the film, Lazenby, or both. However, opinions improved significantly over the years, with some critics and fans saying it’s one of the best entries in the entire Bond series. Review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 81% based on 54 reviews, ranking it the eighth-best Bond film of all time, tied with Moore’s critically acclaimed The Spy Who Loved Me. The site’s consensus states, “George Lazenby’s only appearance as 007 is a fine entry in the series, featuring one of the most intriguing Bond girls in Tracy di Vincenzo (Diana Rigg), breathtaking visuals, and some great ski chases.”

IGN also ranked On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as the eighth best film of the Bond series, Entertainment Weekly as the sixth best, and Norman Wilner of MSN, as the fifth best. Perhaps the ultimate recognition came in the 2021 movie, No Time to Die, Craig’s final Bond movie. Craig uses the line, “We have all the time in the world”, in a conversation with love interest Madeleine Swann. That line was first uttered by Lazenby at the end of his movie, just prior to the murder of Bond’s wife Tracy.

The second movie is Never Say Never Again, released October 7, 1983, starring Connery for the seventh and final time. As he was 52 at the time of filming, the storyline features an aging Bond who is brought back into action to investigate the theft of two nuclear weapons by SPECTRE. Bond, Felix Leiter, an American CIA agent, and Domino, mistress of the villain Largo, join forces and track Largo to a location known as the Tears of Allah. Bond and Leiter infiltrate the underground facility and a gun battle erupts between Leiter’s team and Largo’s men.

In the confusion, Largo escapes with one of the warheads. Bond catches and fights Largo underwater. Just as Largo tries to detonate the last bomb, he is killed by Domino, taking revenge for her brother’s death at the hands of Largo. Never Say Never Again was produced by an independent production company, one of whose members was Kevin McClory. McClory, Fleming, and Jack Whittingham previously worked on a script for a potential Bond film, called Longitude 78 West, later abandoned because of cost.

Fleming subsequently turned this into the 1961 novel Thunderball but did not credit either McClory or Whittingham. McClory then took Fleming to the High Court in London for breach of copyright and the matter was settled in 1963. After Eon started producing the Bond films, they subsequently made a deal with McClory, who would produce the movie Thunderball and then not make any further version of the novel for a period of ten years following the release of the Eon-produced version in 1965. Never Say Never Again was thus the second film adaptation of the novel Thunderball.

The film’s title is a reference to Connery’s reported declaration after 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever that he would “never again” play Bond. As the movie was not produced by Eon, many of the elements of the Eon-produced Bond films were not present for legal reasons. These included the “gun barrel sequence” where a screen full of “007” symbols appeared instead. Similarly, there was no “James Bond Theme” to use, and no effort was made to substitute another tune. Rumor has it Connery agreed to participate in this film, at least in part, as a slight to Saltzman and Broccoli.

Reviews of the movie were generally positive, both then and now. Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, was broadly praising of the film, saying she thought that Never Say Never Again “has noticeably more humor and character than the Bond films usually provide. It has a marvelous villain in Largo.” Rotten Tomatoes sampled 53 critics and judged 70% of the reviews as positive. The site’s consensus reads: “While the rehashed story feels rather uninspired and unnecessary, the return of both Sean Connery and a more understated Bond make Never Say Never Again a watchable retread.” The score is still more positive than many of the Eon films, with Rotten Tomatoes ranking it 15th among all Bond movies.

With the release of No Time To Die in 2021, ending the Craig era, what’s next for Bond? History has demonstrated that the franchise changes with the times. Al Horner, a freelance journalist, stated in a September 2021 article on BCC.com, “Every time a new Bond collects their Walther PPK and license to kill, the series tends to update itself aesthetically, politically and otherwise.” Bond is such a huge cultural entity that it “can absorb whatever the culture is doing at the time and still be a Bond movie”, agrees Andrew Ellard, a screenwriter, script editor, and Bond enthusiast.

One thing is certain. There are some things about 007 that will never change. Bond will always come down to a few central facets, believes Dr. Jaap Verheul, editor of The Cultural Life of James Bond, an anthology of academic essays on the secret agent. “The appeal is a certain formula: the gadgets, the glamour of international travel, some kind of romance and big action set pieces that aren’t shot in front of a green screen. Add to that the association of Bond with Britishness … and that, ultimately, is what makes a Bond film.” Producers Broccoli and Wilson have stated there will be a Bond 26. Says Horner, “James Bond is about to be reborn again, and after the revitalizing Daniel Craig era, the possibilities feel endless.”

To end this post, I’ve included a montage of highlights from each of the Bond eras, featuring the theme song from 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better. Just a taste of what’s included in each of the individual posts.

Enjoy!

As always, your feedback is appreciated!