I’ve currently only seen three James Bond films in their entirety, the first two Daniel Craig movies and most recently earlier this year The Man With The Golden Gun. But I’ve seen clips of other movies before and I watched a bunch of Bond relevant Video Essays on YouTube this year because they simply were what was trending a few times.
Bond has been a very influential franchise, so I can see Bond’s fingerprints on plenty of other media I’ve consumed. Lupin III has been called the James Bond of Japan, a few of the 60s and 70s Godzilla films are referred to as being James Bond influenced. There are direct James Bond references in the Anime Moriarty The Patriot.
What’s interesting though is how one of the key signs that something is really leaning into the Bond influence structurally is if there is a Q analogue. When Batman Begins was being hyped up Nolan was very open about the James Bond influence, and a key factor always pointed out was Lucius Fox as played by Morgan Freeman being Bruce’s Q. Nolan's love of drawing on Bond continued with Inception and Tenet which also both have their Q analogues.
And a thing I’m sure I’m not the first to notice about Q is how his role is essentially to provide Chekhov’s Guns. Professor Agasa has been referred to as Detective Conan’s Q, and it's in several of the movies that it's really on the nose, just like Q he introduces some new invention early on which then plays a key role in the climax.
The wording of Chekhov’s Gun is that because something is seen early on it should be used. But no sane person is really going around criticizing every time some innocuous detail from act one doesn’t come up later. No it’s considered good writing advice for the opposite angle, anything that plays an important role in the resolution should be set up earlier, that’s how you avoid a Deus Ex Machina accusation.
So Bond style movies without a designated Q character still have a scene or two that like Q serve the purpose of introducing something in the protagonist's arsenal that will be important later. Maybe the protagonist themselves invented whatever gadgets they’re going to use, like many non Nolan versions of Batman.
And this is why I struggle at being an actually interesting blogger. I make lots of observations like this I want to share, but they don’t always lead me to any profound revelation or theory. Rather than continuing this Chekhov’s Gun train of thought I kind of want to share other random Bond related thoughts I’ve had this year.
Ya know the Obi-Wan Kenobi parts of Attack of The Clones could be compared to a Bond movie just as much as they can to Film Noir Detective films. Ewen McGregor has a similarly dry sense of humor to Roger Moore and Christopher Lee is the villain.
I watched a Book YouTube video that separated all the Bond Novels both by which they felt were the good ones and which ones’ namesake films are a reasonably faithful adaptation of at least the same basic sequence of events. And the only novel that was both good and doesn’t have a close enough adaptation is Moonraker, which is interesting for in the Book having a villain who is a surviving Nazi War Criminal, not the most original idea for a Pulp Villain but they annoyingly keep staying relevant.
When it comes to the various pitches Bond fans keep saying they want for the next movie, I kind of hope the Period Piece idea is the one Amazon doesn’t do. Because when the Bond Novels (except maybe Thunderball) enter the Public Domain pretty much everywhere but the United States in a decade, period piece films that directly adapt those novels distinctly unlike how the Movies have typically been are exactly what people independent of Amazon will most easily be able to make without Amazon shutting it down.
So I say an old fashioned Black and White mid 50s set Moonraker adaptation is exactly what some independent filmmakers should right now begin preparing to make. In fact you can already do it in Canada. Maybe give it a different name since Pop Culture now associates that name with something distinctly NOT in the book.
My other advice for people planning to make their own PD James Bond projects in a decade is if you want to avoid Spectre because of the question mark that might still hang over Thunderball, just use Paul Feval’s Les Habits Noirs translated The Blackcoats as your international criminal secret society. Their English branch is sometimes called The Gentleman of The Night and it's leader The Lord of The Night is sometimes plotting to liberate Ireland from British rule which I mention because another Bond video I saw talked about the lack of Ireland in the Bond movies.
In some small ways certain writers have always gotten away with treating Bond like he’s quasi PD. Like incorporating the Mycroft Holmes was the original M fan theory. Is there any fictional character from the same era whose name happens to begin with the letter Q who was also a scientist/inventor?
