Bond
villain Max Zorin
boasts that "intuitive
improvisation" is "the secret of
genius" halfway through A
View To A Kill, having just
outlined a scheme that will finish
off Bond and Stacy while neatly
wrapping up some loose ends.
Trouble is, his plan's no more
original or “ingenius” than that
of a stock villain in a vintage
Warner Bros gangster flic ("Shoot
Howe with Bond's gun, then burn
Bond up!"). The real master of
quick-thinking is, of course, our
hero 007, though it's doubtful
he'd call himself a genius for it.
When you've been polishing off
criminal masterminds for 40-plus
years, you don't need a Mensa
membership to prove you're a
bright boy.
“Intuitive
improvisation," of course, is just
a fancy term for “making it up as
you go along.” Hardly a suitable
definition for "genius" as defined
by the likes of DaVinci or
Einstein, but it may be 007's
handiest skill when it comes to
survival. In fact, Bond’s ability
to quickly assess a situation and
improvise a solution based on the
resources at hand is one of the
keys to his appeal as a character,
and the origin of some of the
best-loved scenes in the series.
Turning
The
Tables
Way
back in From Russia With
Love we see an early
example of intuitive improvisation
as Bond, in a boat with Tania,
finds himself pursued by a literal
fleet of SPECTRE speedboats.
Loaded in the back of Bond’s boat
are several drums of fuel,
presumably put there to aid Red
Grant in his planned escape (he
must have had a long way to go).
Thinking fast, Bond tosses the
punctured containers overboard and
ignites them with a flare gun,
wiping out his pursuers in a
water-borne holocaust.
Today's
audiences, jaded as they are by
over-exposure to an endless glut
of action films, would probably
see that trick coming a mile away
(hmm… those fuel drums must be
there for a reason…), but way back
in 1963 I’m betting this neat
little maneuver really came out of
left field and brought some cheers
from theater-goers. In fact, it
must still be a neat trick because
Brosnan’s Bond recycles it, with
variations, to wipe out a
helicopter in 1999’s The
World Is Not Enough.
Of
course, action films sink or swim
based on their ability to involve
the audience, and nothing is more
fun than seeing a hero outwit his
enemies. Sometimes, as with the
exploding fuel drums, the fun is
in the surprise of it all. Other
times the fun comes when we know
full well what’s going to happen
next, but the characters on screen
don’t. A good example of this came
earlier in FRWL, when
Bond, on his knees and at the
mercy of Red Grant, makes a show
of being “eager” to open his
attache case. Suspicious, Grant
tells him he’ll open it himself,
and immediately we know Bond’s got
him…brains win out once again.
Think
or
Sink
Sometimes
there are no gadgets to fall back
on, and Bond's left to cope using
whatever’s at hand in his
environment. Maybe the best
example of this comes in Goldfinger during
the
fight with Oddjob in Fort Knox.
For once, Connery’s Bond is unable
to simply pummel an opponent into
submission; Oddjob outpowers him
by a mile. That doesn’t stop Bond
from trying, of course, but when
fisticuffs, karate chops, a
makeshift bat and hurled gold bars
get him nowhere, it’s time to use
the old noodle. Nearing the end of
his rope, Bond flings the deadly
bowler at Oddjob in what looks to
be a last, desperate effort…that
fails. Tasting triumph, Oddjob
gleefully goes to retrieve his
hat, only to have Bond fry him
with a live electric cable.
This
might just be the most perfectly
staged example of “intuitive
improvisation” ever. All the
elements have been carefully set
up for us…the sputtering wires,
the iron bars, the metal hat
brim…and yet we’ve been so caught
up in the excitement of the fight,
we’re still surprised when it all
comes together. But Bond, with his
razor-sharp mind, recognizes the
possibilities and exploits them
cunningly. This last-minute
victory pulled from the jaws of
defeat ranks as one of the
greatest visceral thrills in the
series…small wonder it shows up in
virtually every “clip reel” of
series highlights. And again, the
point is Bond triumphs because he
is able to adapt to the situation
and “make it up as he goes along.”
In Thunderball,
Bond escapes from a car full of
baddies by spilling a bottle of
booze held by a passing drunk and
setting it on fire with the
cigarette lighter held by one of
his captors. Then at the dance
club, he spins his evil dance
partner into the path of an
assassin’s bullet, working the
whole maneuver into the dance.
This time, we can almost see the
wheels turning as Connery concocts
his strategy: “There’s a guy with
a gun behind the curtain…and
there’s an enemy right here in my
arms…hmm…”
Sometimes
these moments of improvisational
genius are "big," sometimes small,
but they all reinforce Bond's rep
as the ultimate survivor. In On
Her Majesty’s Secret Service,
007 has no gloves to protect his
hands, so he rips out his pants
pockets and pulls them on
instead…problem solved. In AVTAK,
Bond needs to keep up the illusion
that he’s drowned in a submerged
car, so he breathes air from a
tire until the baddies go away.
In The Living Daylights,
he transforms a cello and its case
from excess baggage into a
makeshift vehicle. And so on…
Out
of the Frying Pan…
In
a previous
article, I
discussed Bond’s seemingly
encyclopedic knowledge on all
sorts of subjects, but it’s not
his mastery of arcane trivia that
makes him a movie hero; it’s his
quick wits and adaptability. In
fact, if anything, it’s the
villains who are presented in the
traditional “genius” mold,
plotting their complex,
"fool-proof" schemes for world
domination down to the tiniest
detail. Then up pops Bond to blow
the whole thing up in their faces
with a strategy he’s just
improvised off the top of his
head…no wonder they hate him so!
In
a very real sense, the Bond films
are a celebration of intuition
over intellectualism, spontaneity
over heavy thinking, while Bond
himself represents the ultimate
ideal for modern man with his
ability to adapt to – and thus
“conquer” – a world that's
changing around us from minute to
minute. Bond is never caught
flat-footed; he's always on top of
the latest fashions, always at
home in any country or social
setting, always one step ahead of
the crowd with his cutting-edge
gadgets.
This
is a key element of the films'
appeal. For years we've lined up
to see what kind of curves will be
thrown Bond's way, confident in
the knowledge that he'll rise to
every challenge. This is one
reason why Bond movie stunts stand
apart from generic movie stunts:
done right, they're an expression
of the Bond mystique and
character. 007's knack for
salvaging hopeless situations is
something best conveyed through
actions, not words.
So
it is that we remember most fondly
those moments when Bond turns the
tables. Trapped in the middle of a
swamp and surrounded by
alligators, Bond runs across the
reptiles' backs to dry land.
Dragged behind a boat over a
razor-sharp coral reef, he wraps
the rope around a submerged
boulder, using the power of the
boat’s engine to snap the rope for
him. Chased by a heat-seeking
missile in his tiny, unarmed jet,
he manuevers the missile into
completing the job he was sent to
do in the first place. From
on-the-run to back-on-top in one
fell swoop; that’s our James.
Admittedly,
these moments haven’t come as
often in recent films, perhaps
because it’s getting harder to
come up with fresh new
predicaments after 40 years on
screen and with all those
competing action flics exhausting
every imaginable idea. But there
was a flash of the old style
in Die Another Day,
during Bond’s fast-paced car
battle with Zao. Careening out of
control in an upside-down Aston
Martin, Bond seems a sitting duck
for Zao’s coup-de-grace, but then
he opens his sun-roof and uses the
car’s ejector seat to flip the car
rightside up again.
“Survival
of
the Fittest”
“You
have a nasty habit of surviving,”
says Kamal Khan to Bond in Octopussy,
to which Bond replies, “you know
what they say about the fittest.”
And though some wags would carp
that Roger Moore was anything but
an ideal of vim and vigor circa
1983, this line is actually
spot-on. Darwin's theory suggests
that survival often hinges on a
successful adaption to one's
environment, and by that
definition James Bond is the
ultimate survivor.
Maybe
I’m just stating the obvious here,
but it hit me recently that this
is the key to the whole Bond
mystique. It’s not that he’s
prepared for everything in advance
– that would get dull in a hurry –
it’s that he can adapt as
needed when
life throws him a curve. It’s not
that he doesn’t feel fear, it’s
that through his adventures we
experience the visceral thrill of
mortal danger and the satisfaction
of a hair’s-breadth escape. Like
the ancient heroic myths, 007’s
adventures are about the ability
of an individual – albeit a rather
extraordinary one -- to triumph
over tremendous odds through his
wits and prowess.
The
films themselves have proven
equally adaptable, running the
gamut from Cold War thrillers to
epic spectacles to light-hearted
romps to high-tech showpieces,
answering – and quite often
anticipating -- the demands of
each era’s audiences with
remarkable success. Only time will
tell what other changes are
waiting for us down the road, but
it’s a safe bet the future will
find 007 up to the challenge. And
my intuition tells me we’ll be
coming along to cheer him on.
