Well I have a different perspective and appraoch towards the Bond created by Ian Flemings, after reading the 14 novels and the series of Bond Short Stories and watching every single Bond Film.
Bond is a normal man, maybe someone below than normal but who goes on and gets anything and everything moveable and immovable. When the author started with Bond, he wanted him to get the girls easily and named them strikingly normal with a lot of humour - from Honey Ryder to Pussy Galore to Octopussy. Plus, Flemings gave Bond the triats that he wished to hold when he was in the Naval. Actually Bond was is Naval before joining MI6. And 007 was inspired from John Dee, the 16th century advisory to the Queen. Dee used to sign his letter/notes to the queen '007' (meaning 'For your (Queen's) eyes only).
None of the movies were sincere to the book. Here are a couple of them :
1/ Gin + Vodka + White wine (Known as Vesper Cocktail) => Bond Drink.
Duing Dr.No, Smirnoff signed a promotional contract with the producers and presuaded them to remove the 'Gin'. From then, none of Bond movies shows him having Gin
2/ Bond's favourite card game is Baccarat. Casino Royal (Original) & couple other in the Bond series sees him playing this game. But in the upgraded version on Casino Royale (2006) they play Texas Hold 'Em.
(And Bond has a child ... ha ha, that the movies try to hide !)
The point was never how true the adaptation should be, but how well it was adapted each time differing itself with time leaping around for 50 years now. And Daniel Craig is younger than the series itself. While conceiving the project Dr. No, the makers wanted a face, that suited the character description of the author (who worte the character keeping in mind his own brother). (I do not wish to go into the origins/skin colour as it does not interest me). They looked for a new face which was yet to be seen in such roles for the sterotyped audience. Sean Connery was signed when he was known as the actor from Walt Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People (LoL). And I also wish to precise that Ian Fleming wanted a very normal name to his character and when he heard another author's name 'James Bond', he immediately took it in for any reason other than noble & good.
The Bond series was rejuvenated several time with lot of contemporary ideas, but Bond always lived the same. As I have already mentioned in the Foreign Film Thread, our period can be coined as the Dark Age of Superheroes. People have enlarged their thoughts, in the process shrank to relate anything and everything with reality. Can Superman Cry ? Yes he can ! Can Batman be defeated ? Oh Yeah. The Dark Age of Comics took a great toll over the taste of the movie goers, that they even killed Batman ! So Bond underwent such a change, but still never modified. Bond and his films are still very humouristic.
There is so much to talk about Bond, his romance, the action, evolution, etc ..., maybe sometime later I will let you know what I think about the various actors who starred as Bond, under what circumstances, the reception of the films, the failures and the decision to walk away. And you got to add Gerard Butler to that list. For the records, the first actor who featured as James Bond is Barry Nelson => 1954 American TV Episode called Climax! which was the adaptaion of Casino Roayle.
Barry Nelson From Climax!
In the meantime, introduce yourself to Nick Carter, an awesome US Spy who lived during the same time as Bond, and he got more girls than James !
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