James Bond Gadgets That Jumped The Shark

When a film franchise endures for more than 50 years and 23 films, there are going to be some high points and low points throughout.  The James Bond series has such moments, and a consensus among many fans is that Die Another Day, as a whole, is a low point for the series.  To be fair, a lot of people see the first third of the film as a great starting point.  It isn’t until Bond goes off to Cuba and beyond that the thing goes off the rails.

 

However, the masses are in harmony when it comes to criticism of one specific aspect of the film: 007’s vehicle.  Aston Martin unveiled their newest model, the V12 Vanquish, in the 2002 film, but due to one particular option added to Bond’s vehicle, Q Branch had renamed it the Vanish.  This was due to the fact that they had included a cloaking feature that rendered the car invisible to the human eye.

 

 

Both when the movie was initially released and up to now, the two biggest grievances about the film are the overuse of CGI and the invisible car.  I personally am completely on board with the former complaint, but as far as having an invisible car, I don’t quite see how you can demonize that particular gadget over others that have seemed just as far-fetched that came before it.

 

For those who are not as big of a fan of the James Bond series as I am, let me shed a little light on the argument I’m about to defend.  The 007 film series has always relied on gadgets to help our hero in the field.  Some movies tone down the amount of gadgets, such as For Your Eyes Only and Casino Royale, while others ramp up the technology, like Goldfinger or Octopussy.  Die Another Day is one of the movies that relied heavily on gadgets for the latter half of the film, and the vanishing car is what draws the most ire from the fan base.

 

I would like to start off and state that I am not defending the absurdity of the technical flaws with trying to spy on people in an invisible car.  Transporting the occupants to and from locations behind enemy lines in the concealed vehicle is about the only great use for such a medium of technology.  Otherwise, people would be able to hear the purr of the engine as it cruised around a military base or would walk into it when parked inside the heart of the villain’s lair.  Obviously there are better ways of spying on people than spending hundreds of millions (maybe even billions) of dollars on creating invisible cars, but I’m sure there are some great uses for cloaking devices for the future of our military.  If anything, it would be nice to be on the same playing field as the Romulans once we start exploring space like in Star Trek.

 

What I am here to defend today is the idea that Bond getting an invisible car didn’t take things too far from spy adventure to science fiction, because that is just not the case.  Were the gadgets getting out of hand and a more realistic direction need to be taken?  Yes.  But for the fandom to turn on the Bond filmmaking team because of this single gadget, that seems a bit excessive to me.  Especially since in the decade that has passed since the release of Die Another Day it has been revealed that scientists around the world are working on perfecting such a device on clothing material and vehicles.  At this point in life these things obviously aren’t perfected and don’t look as sleek as it did in the film, but the concept is available to us and given time it could be achieved.

 

I’ve come up with five other gadgets from the James Bond movies that are much more ridiculous or less attainable due to the limitations of science.

 

The first such item is Oddjob’s bowler from Goldfinger.  The hat looked rather normal, but when he took it off and launched it like a Frisbee, the audience learned of its deadly capability.  The derby’s rim was made of a thin metal that could slice stone or snap a person’s neck.  Just think about that last sentence.  It can cut away stone or break bones.  Doesn’t it seem that it should be able to do one or the other, but by being strong and thin enough to cut stone, wouldn’t it then be a decapitating device instead of merely a bone-breaking one?  In a movie where the most absurd gadget should be a car’s ejector seat, Oddjob takes top billing (billing, like the bill of a hat; get it) with his deadly derby.

 

The next gadget up for scrutiny is the mini-breather from Thunderball.  This tool, used to get much needed extra time when underwater diving, seems extremely feasible.  In fact, following the release of the movie in 1965 the military contacted the Bond producing team asking how they could get their hands on the device.  Alas, no such apparatus exists and it was all created using Hollywood editing.  The closest you will get to a mini-breather is a can of spare air in the case of emergency that can be on your person when deep sea diving.  Since no such device has ever, or likely will ever, be in existence, I’m not sure why this one doesn’t get more retractors.

 

In my humble opinion, The Man with the Golden Gun is the worst of the series.  There is little to enjoy throughout and the suspense level gets ratcheted up to about Hervé Villechaize’s height (that is just under four, in case you were wondering).  The standout moment of ludicrousness for this movie is when villain, and the film’s namesake, Scaramanga attaches a set of wings to his transportation, turning it into a flying car.  To me, the idea that attached wings can simply be clipped to a sports car and all of a sudden we are living with Doc and Marty McFly in Hill Valley, circa 2015, is nonsensical.

 

Scaramanga’s flying car was just another blunder among many mistakes found throughout a bad movie, but the Lotus submarine from the following film was something altogether because The Spy Who Loved Me is actually considered to be one of the better entries from the franchise.  In the context of the movie, Bond drives his Lotus Esprit S1 off a pier and as the vehicle is sinking to the bottom of the sea it converts at the touch of a button to a submarine.  Compared to having a car that can become invisible, I see no difference, except that within a decade the theory that an invisible car is actually obtainable, whereas it has been nearly 40 years and we are no closer to converting automobiles to submarines.

 

 

Laser guns.  How does that sound for realism in a Bond movie?  In Moonraker, sending the British spy into space wasn’t enough.  Things had to be tricked up even more with a laser gun battle between space marines and an army of henchmen.  It looks like a grand game of laser tag between floating astronauts.  It is essentially a reworking of the underwater battle from Thunderball, replacing swimmers with spacemen and harpoon guns with laser rifles.  Progress is being made to create applicable laser rifles, or ray guns, but it certainly took a while for science to catch up with the fiction found in Moonraker.