8 replies to this topic

[byline]

Might the God particle be the ultimate Bond supervillain plot to destroy ... er, the universe? OK, I know. Not sure what the point would be. The threat would certainly generate worldwide fear and panic (always good for a Bond film). But if it came to fruition, all the baddies would be destroyed too!

[Guy Haines]

On another thread some time ago I suggested a villain's plot to wipe out all human life on Earth, not, as in Moonraker the movie to replace it with a new super race but just to wipe it all out. I suggested a villain - maybe some kind of self loathing eco-fanatic - who is convinced that Planet Earth is unsustainable so long as mankind remains on it. There was a book out last year, I think, about how Earth would be without Man, which is what put the idea in my head about that as a Bond movie plot. Added to which I suggested that the people bankrolling this lunacy (Quantum? SPECTRE?) would find themselves in the end in an unlikely alliance of convenience with Bond and MI6, having put this scheme up purely to blackmail the authorities (As in OHMSS and Blofeld's biological warfare plot) only to find the man or woman who has invented the means actually means it!

[Call Billy Bob]

I could see this as a viable plot. Maybe the villain is a brilliant but deranged scientist who has perfected this "doomsday" device and doesn't care if all life is wiped out - he just wants to know if it works to prove he was right all along!

[AMC Hornet]

Did you ever notice that Fleming's novels didn't have Earth-shaking plots (except for Thunderball, which was a group effort)?  Saving the U.S. from Goldfinger grew out of Bond's original brief, which was to protect England from foreign threats.

 

To sell the movies to their biggest audience, EON added Felix Leiter to Dr. No and played up the American rocket-toppling angle. YOLT involved total war, and Blofeld's plot in OHMSS was expanded to include the world's agriculture, not just England's. Etc, etc.

 

Where the film's plots didn't involve saving the world, TV guide would still write "007 saves the world from a million-dollar assassin who has constructed a solar death ray", etc, in order to keep American audiences interested enough to watch.

 

That's why Bond saves the world - to make the plot relevant to Americans. America doesn't need a British agent saving America, but if the whole world is threatened, that includes America, right?

 

I know I'm not saying anything new here, but I had to get that off my chest. Thank you for your patience.

 

After Moonraker it was a bit of a relief not to have the whole world at risk any more - two in a row was already a bit much. The plots may have shrunk, but there was usually still an American angle (Feldstadt AFB, Silicon Valley, opium "worth half a billion dollars on the streets of New York", Key West DEA, US Generals ordering troop movements in South Korea, etc). Even where the U.S. was not directly threatened, we still have Jack Wade and Felix Leiter helping out.

 

Where am I going with this? I don't know, except to say that I don't think we need another doomsday scenario. It has to be hard on a single British agent to be expected to save the entire world on a regular basis. If Bond were allowed to collect medals, he'd have more than Idi Amin and Michael Jackson combined (although I suppose he would have lost his Order of Lenin after shooting up St. Petersburg).

 

Skyfall was a surprising success, considering it didn't concern America at all. I suppose that's the flip-side: when "this time it's personal", it doesn't matter who is involved. Let's just breathe a sigh of relief that it was a British bureaucrat who lost a secret list of agents, and be glad that nothing like that could ever happen in the good ol' US of A.

 

Perhaps after Craig has finished his run, and they cast another Pierce Brosnan type (I can hear it already: "No! No! He was so wrong!"), but for now, let's let EON go "back to [what they consider] Fleming".

[Guy Haines]

Having thought up the rather barking mad plot mentioned earlier on this thread, I must admit I tired of "save the world" plots and more particularly the lazy line that 007 saves the world in every film adventure he appears in.

 

In the books Bond's brief was almost always to save British interests threatened from abroad. Thunderball was indeed a team effort, Goldfinger was about gold smuggling from the UK initially, and Moonraker was an unusual effort, with Bond operating in Britain solely because as there were so many Germans working at the Drax plant MI6 had an interest.

 

But in the films Bond became an international hero as much as a British special agent - in some films a token "British" angle was included to justify his involvement. In TSWLM it's a Royal Navy submarine which disappears, so Bond is on the case. Would he have been if a US sub. had been snatched at the start of the story? In MR a US Space Shuttle is en route to the UK, disappears, and Bond gets involved. Suppose the Shuttle had vanished on its way to somewhere else?

 

But in YOLT - where's the British interest, other than a wish not to have a world war start? Bond just happens to be in Hong Kong, and a British tracking station detects a spacecraft landing near Japan. We Brits are involved solely because the US and the USSR don't believe us and so we decide to go our own way and investigate - just as well really, but there's no specific British interest at stake in the film YOLT.

 

Not that it matters - Bond's job is to "save the world", although I wonder if in the real world he would get a look in?

[AgenttiNollaNollaSeitsemän]

Not that it matters - Bond's job is to "save the world".

In my opinion Bond's job is to be on the side of good and rid the world of evil, not just for Britain but as a global St. George.

Edited by AgenttiNollaNollaSeitsemän, 13 October 2014 - 06:44 AM.

[Double Naught spy]

Guy Haines,

 

Although I agree in your overall premise of 007 evolving into an 'international hero' at times in the films, in YOLT however, the 'British interest' is that that they do not want the two world superpowers to begin pressing buttons and staring a nuclear World War III. 

 

Tenuous as it might be plot-wise, the UK's status as mediator between the USA and USSR at the beginning of the film inside the geodesic dome pretty much gives MI6 and Bond the needed 'excuse' to intervene. 

[Trevelyan 006]

The erosion of the modern social society would be a large (mostly untapped) dynamic to work with.

[Guy Haines]

To answer Double Naught Spy, I did say "just as well really" that Bond is sent off to Japan in the film YOLT - there's no lack of a British interest in stopping the superpowers blowing themselves and the rest of us to smithereens! I'm just saying that, unlike the books and some of the films, Bond is not being sent off because a specific UK interest is at stake, something particular to Britain. In the books, for the most part, Bond is acting on behalf of his country, and in some of the adventures this expands into a multi-national plot. The book, and film of GF is a typical example - 007 is trying to stop gold being smuggled out of the UK. Only as the story progresses does he realise there are much bigger issues at stake, such as the collapse of the US and the world's economy.