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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."
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Troll... James Troll.
Trolling is a art,
John Cleese played Q's assistant in the last movie. I recall seeing him in trailers for this one. Doubtfull he'll do the funny walk though. :)
Trolling is a art,
John Cleese -- it's official. He's promoted from R (which I always figured was meant to be pronounced "Arrrrrr" like a pirate).
Design for Use, not Construction!
Cleese...John Cleese...
That's nice. Someone please wake me for the article on the Fact and Fiction Behind Bond's Women. (Especially the Fiction!)
"CIA-types and geeks love to bicker over that one." i always thought it was the dmca.
Surrender YR pattent!
"The world of James Bond is fiction. Bond wouldn't last 4 minutes as a real spy."
Spoken like a true jealous wannabe.
The speed of time is one second per second.
I'm not a huge fan of Brosnan as Bond, but one of the few high notes of his 007 career is the glee on his face while operating the BMW from the rear seat using his phone as a controller. Too bad there's probably too much concrete in that garage to get a decent cell signal. Could be Bluetooth in addition to cell, neh? I don't recommend that as an option in newer cars: I've seen how my kids drive on the PlayStation.
Design for Use, not Construction!
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.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Now if you're the type who can't help un-suspending your disbelief
I am not able to flatly deny that I couldn't be the type of person that isn't completely excluded from that set of people. Are you?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
"The girls, you could argue, are just a distraction in James Bond films."
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
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
When all else fails, piss on it. At least you will feel better in some kind of way.
Wait a second, just what is hogwash exactly?
It's the excuse the farmer's daughter uses when you ask her to the dance- Sorry, I gotta stay home and wash the hog.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Isn't that where Harry Potter goes to school?
"In that sense, the problem facing Bond filmmakers is similar to the problem faced by software companies, cell phone carriers, and other high-tech firms, who seem to only offer barely noticeable incremental improvements to technologies their consumers already have, rather than radical new products. In this sense, art is imitating life -- or at least the Nasdaq." At This point, And it's been said here on /. many times.. What is left for the younger generations to invent.. it seems that the more the tech sector grows..the less the "real" or "radical" inventions come to be a reality.. or it could just be me...
Just Limin' Mon
I believe its a Lotus Esprit Turbo with an extreme alarm system.
If you break the window the whole car will explode.
Obviously written by a Nerd.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
What does he use to keep his hair so tidy? He can be shot at roughly 40 times, jump on a bike, and jump onto a train without messing up his hair the slightest bit.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
mmmm Aston Martin.
I'm so glad they got rid of the BMWs
This quote cracked me up:
The article's here.
Triv
... all those women he sleeps with?
Oh yeah... a simple condom I presume.
"Need a condom?" "No thanks man, I got the lucky condom my dad gave me. He swears it always worked for him."
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
In other words, CIA agents rarely carry pellets which allow them to breath under water for extended periods, Earnest said.
But they do carry them on occasion? That's the coolest thing I have ever heard of.
...that Inspector Gadget was a MUCH better crime fighter than 007. Ejector seats??? Bah! Once bond gets a hat that doubles as a helicopter, then I'll be impressed!
eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
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.
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
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
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.
"Nuprin- little, yellow, different."
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I don't mind the gadgets getting a bit out of hand, but the crash/fx stuff is getting ridiculous.
:)
They need to have a little more of Bond using his wits and physical skills to survive a situation, not some gadget and car.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service and For Your Eyes Only stand out in my mind as some good examples - as does much of The Living Daylights.
Yeah...the stories are a bit over the top - so what...that's the idea...an over the top agent for an over the top situation...but give us at least some espionage, etc...
Hell...even A View To A Kill had a) bond undercover, b) surviving by sucking the air out of the tire on the Rolls, c) making a getaway on a fire truck (this I would call part of the using his wits).
Now adays he'd walk into the horse stables shouting "I'm James Bond...try to stop me...I work for MI6", have a minisub in the trunk of the rolls, and make a getaway in a Harrier while blowing up 30 cars.
BTW - can't wait for Die Another Day to open
From the article: Military designers watched Bond films for inspiration, he said, and the films gadgetry helped inspired a prototype called the SmartTruck, a technology-loaded, anti-terrorism personal mover.
I thought that the idea came from the Combat Ready Recreational Vehicle in the movie Stripes, didn't it?
John Winger (Bill Murray): "It's not the speed that's important, I just wish I hadn't drunk all that cough syrup this morning."
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Bond: What is this... Q: Its a plastic bag... You hide things in it and place it under a bridge! Bond: Wow
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.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
It was hosted by Maryam d'Abo of The Living Daylights. She went around searching for and interviewing women from Ursula Andress (of Dr. No) through Hally Berry.
It's probably not the show you were looking for (no pr0n here), but it was a good show.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
....is Pussy Galore!
I also heard a rumor that all of the McGyver gadgets/contrived solutions were tested for feasability before being used on the show. Don't know if that's true either, but I am rather skeptical about that "gate" thingy he uses to instantly travel to other worlds.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
After reading three of the original Bond books (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger) this past summer, I have come to realize that Bond really was an action character from the beginning. So, those talking about how Connery's Bond was thoughtful and dealt with more espionage, read the books.
M was constantly telling Bond to try and be more inconspicuous, but he got into too much trouble anyways. I think instead, the pacing of the original Bond films comes from the style of film making during the 60's. They used much more dramatic pacing, where as Flemming raced through much of the slower points of his books by skimming details. Whereas, when the action was going, he described every little pore on Bonds body.
I do have to note, however, I much prefer the thoughtful pacing of that era of movies instead of the non stop action of today's movies. Another example outside of the Bond area is the movie "The Day of the Jackal" and it's horrid remake "the Jackal". The original was extremely slow, but kept you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.
Taos
I have a BMW.... and trust me it does not help. Once a nerd, always a nerd.
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Also of note is that the many of gadgets in this movie have b(r)ought the film to a record for product placement.
:p
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2488151.stm
So unless a friend tells me that Bond gets rejected by Halle Barry at the end of the movie, I'm not going to pay to see it.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Go read "The Spy Who Loved Me". It's a drastic departure for what you expect from Bond. For one thing, it takes place in upstate NY (Lake George area). For another, it is written from the perspective of a Canadian woman who was educated in England and was driving from Canada to Florida and got stuck...in Lake George.
For those of you that think Fleming wrote most of the movies, it WAS true for a little while. Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and most of Goldfinger were true to the novels. Even Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service. But most of the rest were either very different from the books, or were short enough to be reduced to the opening sequence (The Living Daylights). Go spend the time to hunt through E-Bay or your local used bookstore to find them. It's worth it.
Just be sure you don't end up with a book I picked up in a used bookstore a while ago because it looked amusing: the novelization of The Spy Who Loved Me, written by Maibaum's co-script-writer for that movie. Apparently the filmmakers were uncomfortable about the movie being so different from the book, so they wanted to put something on store shelves that people would at least recognize as similar. Quite bizarre.
Many people don't realize this, but the fact is, Fleming never intended to write the James Bond books just for the sake of writing them. From the very beginning, he had his eye on lucrative TV/movie adaptations. The very first adaptation was of Casino Royale in 1959, on an otherwise forgettable CBS anthology TV series. It made James Bond American and put him in the CIA. (I saw a tape of that episode in Best Buy years ago, before I knew what it was, and I'm still kicking myself for not buying it.) The rights issues surrounding this early sale led to the subsequent Casino Royale Woody Allen parody.
When interest arose in making movies from his books (largely because President Kennedy was seen reading Dr. No), Fleming told the Broccolis, in effect, "If you can use the plot, use it. If you can just use the title, use it. I don't care, as long as you pay me."
If you're wondering how I know this, I took an intersession course in James Bond a couple years ago at my local college (Southwest Missouri State University)'s media department. It was most informative.
(Did you know that Ian Fleming also did the concept development work for The Man From U.N.C.L.E.? Or that all three leads from the Bond-copycat series The Avengers ended up with roles in James Bond movies?)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org