Fact and Fiction Behind Bond's Gadgets

bubblegoose writes "With the new 007 movie coming out soon MSNBC is running a story about some of the fact and fiction behind the Bond gadgets."

Comments

Screw James Bonde's Gadgets

[garoush]

While Bonde may have the coolest gadgets of them all, the best are those used in the movie: "The Sum of All Fears" where our hero's c-phone and PDA just keeps on working fine in the middle of a radioactive explosion. Can Bonde beat that? I think not -- he is British not an American. Go figure.

The interviewee doesn't get it

[DougJohnson]

A big part of this article is how the movie "Just doesn't get it" which is of course the biggest load.

Of course the movie gets it. What the commenter doesn't get is that the movie is about fantasy. It's not trying to be a realistic portrayal of life as a spy, it's about selling copies, giving kids a fantastical role model, and being down right entertaining. everyone (well, men) want to be Bond at some point of Bonds career or another, loads of people mimic Bond's speach. I'd say that Hollywood gets it

At least he's driving a British car again.

[m.lemur]

mmmm Aston Martin.

I'm so glad they got rid of the BMWs

Product Placement

[zuhl]

I used to enjoy the Bond flicks. They were fun. Connery was witty and all the Bonds are sleek and the women are certainly easy on the eyes.

But the last few movies seem to have been nothing more than extended commercials for huge corporations. Ericsson, BMW. etc. Convergence with a vengence. Now there never really was much of a plot or meaning in Bond films, but now they border on the ridiculous. Even the action scenes are completely subsumed by the products they are hyping. James Bond remote controling his super-neat-o BMW with his tricked out Ericsson phone.

I will see the movie and probably drool over Halle Berry, but I will never, ever buy anything that they are "advertising" in the film. Branding a product or company is fine, but I have a problem with it completely subverting a movie. And the Bond francise seems to be ONLY about pushing specific products/gadgets down our collective throats.

XXX

[Russ Nelson]

You could argue that XXX is today's version of James Bond. They even have a version of Q. I love how he modified the Pontiac with all sorts of gadgets, which were so far from self-explanatory that it needed a user's manual. So he's driving along at whatever speed while she's trying to figure out how to use the car's gadgets.
-russ

Re:XXX

[Robotech_Master]

I think that in some ways, XXX was a parody of James Bond. Just look at the opening sequence where the tuxedo-clad agent meets his end.

And the scene where XXX and the girl are racing along the highway, and she's trying to figure out the instruction manual seems to me to be an inverse reference back to The Spy Who Loved Me where the female KGB agent was able to use the weapons in the car as expertly as if she'd been trained on them, because she'd stolen the plans for the car the year before.

That female agent's code name? Triple-X.

Does anybody ever feel sorry for Q?

[CaffeineAddict2001]

He makes all these awesome gadgets and James uses them in some unintended way and they always break.

If I were Q, I'd keep the laser\toothbrush and replace it with a real toothbrush.

James would probably save the day anyway.

The Tank

[IPFreely]

Of all the gadgets I've seen in all the Bond movies, the only one that really grabbed me and made me say "I want THAT!" was the soviet tank he drove through the streets of Moscow. All the rest was tripe or too unbelieveable to even illicit interest.