It started with Dr. No in 1962. Sean Connery, dressed in a suave tux, introduced himself to a glamorous brunette across a casino table. "Bond," he said, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. "James Bond."
The British secret agent was off and running for the most enduring series in cinema history: 21 "official" movies before Quantum Of Solace this month, total box office almost $US4400 million ($7080 million).
Bond's impact on popular culture means you don't have to be a fan to know that 007 has a licence to kill, drinks vodka martinis shaken, not stirred, and has prompted the sigh "Oh, James" more times than James Brown, James Packer and Jamie Durie combined.
David Arnold, who has been scoring Bond films and co-writing themes for the past decade, has summed up the formula as "action, adventure, violence, girls, gadgets and guns". After watching the first 21 movies in 21 days it's hard to disagree, other than to add that the formula also includes exotic locations, over-the-top chases, countless fantasy villains with their nattily uniformed henchmen and 007's inevitable witticisms.
Then there are the conventions loved by fans, such as the MI6 agent's flirtations with Miss Moneypenny and Q's gadgetry advice.
When Daniel Craig took over the role in Casino Royale, the Bond story went back to the early days of his earning the 007 licence. Reflecting the impact of another spy with a similar name - Jason Bourne - the series became grittier, with more realistic action and emotion. For once, the blood and bruises from all those fights and near-fatal scrapes looked real. Quantum Of Solace carries on the new direction.
Yet every Bond - bar one - has had an impact. In six movies Connery established the character as suave, witty, unkillable, resourceful and endlessly attractive to women, especially if they had a provocative name such as Pussy Galore or Plenty O'Toole
For seven movies Roger Moore brought more comedy to the series, even to the surreal point of his Bond defusing a nuclear bomb while wearing a clown suit in Octopussy. Somehow he found time to get the make-up right before stopping the timer without a second to spare. With Timothy Dalton came more earnestness; with Pierce Brosnan, more gloss and high-tech action. Only George Lazenby, who played the character just once, failed to establish a distinctive Bond.
Over the years agent 007 has survived assassination attempts by such devious measures as deadly tarantula, snake, crocodile, burial in a pipeline, crushing by a lover's legs and, just to show how dangerous being a secret agent can get, exploding dessert.
Fans all have a favourite Bond (often Connery, though Craig racked up credit points in Casino Royale), a favourite Bond girl (lots of possibilities but rarely Grace Jones) and often a favourite adversary (especially for those who grew up with Blofeld, Goldfinger, Oddjob and Jaws in the early movies).
It's a series full of memorable theme songs, gadgets and droll lines. And the greatest of all Bond moments? Here are our 10 best.
THE QUINTESSENTIAL BOND GIRL
Ursula Andress emerged from the sea like a lustrous blonde goddess in a slinky white bikini in Dr. No. She was innocently collecting sea-shells - as you do - on a mysterious island with armed guards who happened to be protecting her father's killer.
It was an entrance made all the more memorable when she introduced herself as Honey Ryder and casually mentioned that she'd killed a man who had taken advantage of her by putting a black-widow spider under his mosquito net. It certainly caught Bond's attention, with Connery joining in the calypso song she was singing.
Watching it now, the scene seems much more modest than, say, a Pussycat Dolls music video. Other Bond movies have done more provocative takes on emerging from the sea, including Halle Berry in Die Another Day.
But in 1962, Honey's arrival on No's island was a very sultry moment. Forever remembered for wearing a bikini she provided herself - she didn't like the supplied version - Andress later posed for Playboy without it.
THE JETPACK
The opening moments of Thunderball provided one of Bond's most memorable gadgets - even better than the submarine car of The Spy Who Loved Me or the many modifications to the Aston Martin that kept the resourceful MI6 mechanics busy for years. Having dispatched a cross-dressing killer attending his own funeral - if you want logical plots, you've come to the wrong place - 007 flies away with a jetpack. "No well-dressed man should be without one," he quips as he tucks his portable rocket into the boot.
Generations of fans at the Royal Easter Show have marvelled at the handiness of a jetpack ever since.
DEATH BY LASER
Goldfinger is full of classic Bond moments: the lover killed with a coating of gold paint; the modified Aston Martin with ejector seat; Pussy Galore introducing herself to Bond (who cheerfully replies, "I must be dreaming"); the manservant Oddjob decapitating a statue with his lethal hat; and the defusing of a nuclear bomb with precisely 007 seconds to go.
But the great scene had Bond strapped down with a laser about to slice him in half. "Do you expect me to talk?" he asks. Bond fans can all join in for Auric Goldfinger's response: "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die."
Rather than using the traditional ingenious device supplied by Q, Bond bluffs his way out by pretending to know all about something called Operation Grand Slam. In the moment before being sucked out of plane window, after Bond has foiled a plan to blow up Fort Knox, Goldfinger lives to regret letting Bond survive.
SPEEDBOATS IN THE SWAMP
Roger Moore's first outing in Live And Let Die saw carnage on the Louisiana waterways. Having used crocodiles as stepping stones to escape a potentially ugly end, Bond steals a speedboat and is pursued by thugs, police and the annoying Sheriff J. W. Pepper.
Boats jump roads, go across lawns and end up in odd places - a swimming pool, a ship's hold and jammed through a police car. Twenty six boats were built for the scene; 17 were destroyed during rehearsals alone.
There was a speedboat chase up the Thames in 1999's The World Is Not Enough but this one is the classic.
SKIING OFF A CLIFF
Bond's big-wave surfing in Die Another Day was one of the lamest moments in the series thanks to unconvincing special effects. But his frequent chases on skis have always been memorable. The best was at the start of The Spy Who Loved Me.
Having left the bed of a beautiful woman spying on him - he never learns - Bond is pursued by a team of armed killers as he skis down a mountain.
Shooting one with a gun inside a stock, he backflips then skis off a cliff, tumbling towards a vast valley. After a long pause to contemplate 007's certain and very messy death, a Union Jack parachute opens. Cue the theme music.
TAKING OVER A PLANE
As Bond, Roger Moore never seemed much of an athlete. In A View To A Kill, he looked more likely to go to bed with a hot cocoa than Grace Jones. But in Octopussy his 007 had one of the great mid-air action scenes.
When the smooth villain, Kamal Khan, and his offsider, Gobinda, escape in a plane with the kidnapped Bond girl Octopussy, our hero arrives at the airstrip on horseback.
Jumping on the tail of the taxi-ing plane, he climbs on the roof as it takes to the air, then avoids being shaken off during a barrel roll. After dispatching Gobinda back to earth by neatly flicking an aerial into his face, Bond clambers inside the plane and, moments before it crash-lands, jumps to safety with Octopussy. To the stuntmen who made Moore look good, we salute you.
It's awkward when the air hostess you are kissing pulls a gun on you mid-flight. It's even trickier when you're pushed out of the plane without a parachute. If you are 007, though, you can get out of even that most impossible situation.
In Moonraker, Bond plummeted towards the plane's free-falling pilot and grabbed his parachute. Then he fought off the giant, steel-toothed villain Jaws, who had come after him, and landed safely.
The only glitch was that Jaws survived by landing on a circus tent, which meant Bond then had to battle him on a Rio cable car.
WELCOME TO A CHANGED WORLD
As Bond's boss, M was always a likable officious chap until Judi Dench brought a touch of steel to the role in GoldenEye.
The producers obviously realised that women were having their doubts about Bond and his womanising ways and that even hardcore fans were wondering whether 007 was still relevant after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Dench's M quickly gave Bond, played by Brosnan for the first time, the mother of all dressings down, calling him "a sexist, misogynistic dinosaur; a relic of the Cold War" and questioning his "boyish charm". So that's how they do performance reviews in MI6.
THE BACK-SEAT CAR CHASE
Tomorrow Never Dies is one of the weakest Bond movies in terms of plot but it had two classic scenes.
In the first, Bond steals a jet carrying nuclear weapons from a terrorist arms bazaar.
Then comes a moment for back-seat drivers everywhere: a car chase with Bond steering his BMW by remote control through a car park - up and down ramps, firing rockets and dropping tacks while the car's female voice cheerfully reminds him that "unsafe driving will void warranty". After jumping to safety, Bond sends the car off the roof into - product-placement alert - an Avis office.
THE PARKOUR CHASE
After Bond earned his 007 licence with a couple of cold-blooded kills, Casino Royale really took off with the helter-skelter parkour chase - an acrobatic relative of free running - in Madagascar. Daniel Craig's Bond chased a bomb maker into a construction site, up a building, onto a crane then back to the ground again. As in the best Bond scenes, there is time for a sly joke when the bomb maker slides niftily through a high window and, instead of following, 007 just smashes through a wall.
After the villain reaches his embassy, Bond coolly kills him and blows up half the building to escape. "In the old days, if an agent did something that embarrassing, he'd have the good sense to defect," says a furious M. "Christ, I miss the Cold War."
(Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)
Media Man Australia Profiles
James Bond
