Forty years and 19 movies later, James Bond remains the best-known secret service agent in the world with an undiminished penchant for freaky gadgets. As his new movie Die Another Day hits the big screen, we look at the ‘Bond Technologies
Ah! James Bond. The pulse quickens, the heart beats faster. Expectation
permeates the air. It is difficult to believe how such a pedestrian sounding
name has come to hold the promise of some of life’s greatest adventures. For
aficionados and fans James Bond means many things. Fast cars and faster women.
Impeccably tailored clothes and fastidiously prepared martinis. An unabashed
political incorrectness in a sea of politically correct humanity. But most of
all he embodies an obsession with over equipped gadgets that make no excuses for
their outlandishness.
Sean Connery As James Bond:
Dr No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983)
Hollywood has had more than its shares of super heroes with fancy gadgets—all
the way from Dick Tracy to X-men. But no character or series has exemplified the
fixation with technology, as have the Bond movies.
And not all the Bond technologies have been a figment of someone’s
imagination. In You Only Live Twice (1967) Bond uses a small helicopter called
Little Nellie that is assembled out of four small suitcases. It was actually a
autogyro designed by an RAF engineer called Ken Wallis. It could fly for 47
hours non-stop and packed a wallop of hardware. In Thunderball (1965), he uses a
Jetpack designed by Bell Textron laboratories for the US army which was
seriously considering deploying it for combat soldiers. More recently, US Army
engineers sat down and watched Goldfinger and Tomorrow Never Dies to come up
with the SmarTruck.
It started with a briefcase It began innocuously enough. The original Ian Fleming books were totally low
tech. But in the first Bond movie (Dr No – 1961) producers Albert Broccoli and
Harry Saltzman introduced an incidental character called Geoffrey Boothroyd as
the armourer for Bond’s guns. In Russia with Love that character expanded a
little and in a 5 second screen appearance came to give Bond (played by Sean
Connery) a special briefcase. It hid a throwing knife, a foldable 0.25 calibre
rifle and had a powder box that would explode if the case was not opened
properly. It wasn’t strictly high tech – CIA agents in real life were
already using something similar. But those 5 seconds were to define the
character of all Bond films thereon. The public loved it and asked for more.
George
Lazenby:
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
The armourer became the quartermaster. The quartermaster became the famed Q.
For a brief time when critics of the early movies didn’t take too kindly to
the technology theme, producers tried experimenting with a more
"realistic" version of Bond. Both movies – Goldfinger and On His
Majesty’s Secret Service flopped. The public had come to love the larger than
life movies and the gizmos. Bond has never looked back since.
The villains loved the buttons too One of the elements of Bond movies have been the larger than life villains
who rarely aspired to anything less than total world domination. The methods
they promised to use may sound convoluted but a lot of them were slight
exaggerations based on good theory.
Roger Moore:
Live And Let Die (1973), The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983) and A View To A Kill (1985)
In Goldfinger (1964) Auric Goldfinger plans to detonate an atomic bomb in
Fort Knox on the premise that if all US Gold reserves were made radioactive the
price of his gold would skyrocket. While the theory is convoluted, it works.
Gold could pick up a neutron from the blast. However, the unstable form of gold
is more likely to turn into mercury than just remain radioactive. In OHMSS,
Ernst Stavro Blofeld decides to release the "Omega" virus that would
cause infertility in all living beings. That is eminently possible though it
would take more than one strain of virus to do that.
Timothy Dalton:
The Living Daylights (1987), Licence To Kill (1989)
There are examples galore. In Moonraker( 1979) Hugo Drax produces 50 globes
of nerve gas capable of killing earth’s entire population. But would for some
reason leave animals untouched! Of course we have since learnt of nerve agents
like Tabun, Soman and VX though none of them is so selectively partial toward
animals. In A View to a Killi (1985) Max Zorin decides to demolish silicon
valley by causing an earthquake so he can take control of the microchip
industry. Again – that’s a workable idea. A five megaton underground nuclear
explosion can release seismic waves that measure 6.9 on the Richter scale.
Though of course, they wouldn’t travel too far.
An
Ode to ‘Q’
"…
If it wasn’t for Q Branch you’d have been dead long ago,"
says Q to Bond in License to Kill. And that might most probably be
true considering that James Bond wriggled out of many a sticky spot
using Q’s ingenious gadgets.
Five different actors have played
Bond across 19 movies but only two actors have played Q in all of
the Bond movies. One of them, Desmond Llewelyn, played Q in 17 out
of these and is thought of as the real Q by Bond aficionados.
By the time Goldfinger was
released, Q played by Llewelyn was a part of the Bond legend and had
developed a caustic tongue to berate one Bond after the other. From
Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan, all the Bonds have been on the
receiving end of Q’s smart gadgets and even smarter one liners
like "Pay attention Bond ... and please use this for its
intended purpose, 007" or even a supercilious " grow up,
007."
A former World War II veteran,
Llewelyn was in real life not comfortable with gadgets. He went on
record saying that gadgets ‘expire or explode’ when he touched
them.
Q always practiced what he
preached. In his last Bond movie, he tells 007 "…. Always
have an escape plan." On his insistence, the producers of the
last Bond movie included a sidekick (called R) who would take over Q’s
role after his time. Shortly after, Llewelyn tragically passed away
in car accident. He was 85 and had played Q over a span of 36 years.
Pierce
Brosnan:
Goldeneye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) Die Another Day (2002)
Increasing sophistication In recent times of course the technology has become sleeker. The laser watch
and zoom camera with a communications uplink in Pierce Brosnan’s Goldeneye.
The remote controlled BMW (again workable in theory) and high tech palm top in
The World is Not Enough. The long standing Bond theme of miniaturization that
put Geiger machines and Piton Laser guns in wrist watches. Few people even
question how many of these are workable technologies.
Bond’s lasting legacy however is not just smart technologies that may or
not may not work. It is the off-hand manner in which he used them. A sense of
life that seemed to say anything is possible. Here’s to James Bond and to
unlimited possibilities!
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