James Bond

Sometime in 1994, I picked up a copy of my local newspaper and saw a huge picture of Pierce Brosnan with a headline, “Bond is Back!”

I was intrigued. I, of course, knew of James Bond, but my experience with the character was limited to the short lived animated show James Bond Jr (which had a rockin theme song) and has very little to do with James Bond himself.

I was born in the early 80’s, so I really missed out on the Bond movies before Goldeneye, but in 1994, I was eleven years old and excited to learn more about this character and thus began my love affair with 007.

It all started at my local Blockbuster, where over the course of a month, I rented every single Bond film they had. It wasn’t a complete collection, but it was close, and every weekend I’d watch three or four films and double tape them using two VCRs so I could re-watch them in the future. We actually rented so many movies that month, we became Blockbuster Rewards Gold members, a non-advertised upgrade to the traditional Rewards membership and received tickets to an advance screening of Jumanji.

While anticipating the release of Goldeneye, I also began picking up the Ian Fleming novels as well as The James Bond Encyclopedia. Truthfully, I didn’t finish many of the books, but I had an almost complete collection of the James Bond Classic Library books.

Then in 1995, Goldeneye was released, and my newfound fandom was rewarded with a fun movie and an amazing theater experience as Pierce Brosnan brought the character into the 90’s.

Over the next few decades, my Bond fandom has come and gone in waves. I’ve played all of the video games, read most of the comics, and quite a few of the new books. I’ve also gone back and read some of the classic novels. I’ve rewatched most of the movies and began collecting the VHS and then the DVDs when they were first released with a goal in mind of owning all of the movies. I never accomplished that.

The Bond blu-ray collection has sat on my Amazon Wishlist for years and on Prime Day, it finally dropped to around $60, which was price matched by Gruv with a 20% code, making it a grand total of $48. So, for under $50 I finally own all of the Bond movies (with exception of No Time to Die and Never Say Never) but I’m pretty happy with my purchase. I promised myself I’ll watch every single one of these movies to justify this purchase. This past weekend, I made it through the first three films (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger) and I’ve really been enjoying myself. Not all of the films are great, but there is a certain nostalgia for me to experience while re-visiting them and there is so much fun to be had watching the stunts, seeing the clothes, and gadgets.

Watching these first three films over the weekend really made me want to replay the Bond games from the early 2000’s. Usually when Bond video games are brought up, people talk about Goldeneye, which was great in itself, but when I think back to my favorite experience with Bond games, I think about Everything or Nothing and From Russia with Love.

Everything or Nothing was Pierce Brosnan’s final performance as Bond and featured Shannon Elizabeth, Heidi Kl, and Mya as Bond Girls. Myya also sang a great theme song for the game and William Dafoe was the villain.

From Russia with Love was Sean Connery’s final performance as Bond and featured a unique expanded version of the movie. Both games played quite similarly, and both felt very much like Bond movies.

Now, the developers of Hitman are making a Bond game which sounds like a perfect match. I can’t wait until they finally announce some details and gameplay.

Some random James Bond tidbits:

-Shirley Bassey, who sung the beloved theme song Goldfinger, recorded a song for Quantum of Solace (which is superior in my mind), but she submitted it past the deadline, so it wasn’t considered for the film.

-Garth Ennis (creator of The Boys) just finished a run of James Bond comics. They are very Ennis in content, which means graphic and a bit overly violent, but it was a lot of fun to read.

-Anthony Horowitz (writer of the Alex Rider series) wrote the three most recent James Bond novels that take place between older novels and mimic the writing style of Ian Fleming. They are actually quite good.

-Ace of Base wrote a proposed theme song for Goldeneye, but their record company pulled them from the project. The song was renamed The Juvenile and released under that title. It’s actually pretty catchy and it’s easy to see where Juvenile was used to replace Goldeneye.

-Amazon released a Bond themed competition last year titled 007: Road to a Million. The host is Brian Cox, who apparently agreed to do the series by accident. He thought he was signing up to play a Bond villain in a movie. The show itself has got to be the most beautiful reality/competition show ever filmed, but it is basically a trivia show and doesn’t make a ton of sense at times. Still, it was a fun watch for the wife and me.