I was nine years old when You Only Live Twice came out, and going to see it at my local Odeon was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my short life. I’d been waiting for this moment ever since going to see Thunderball, and was further fired up by the circus of publicity around its release – news items, trailers, collectors cards, interviews, promos, every TV show wanting to get in on the action, with items about the locations, the “girls”, the cars, Little Nellie the miniature helicopter…
So, imagine my dismay when, in his first scene, Bond is killed. One moment he’s in bed with a charming young Chinese woman and the next she presses a button, the bed folds up into the wall and two thugs with machine guns burst in and drill it full of holes. Picture my continuing horror as Bond is buried at sea, wrapped in a sail. But – wait a minute – his body’s being salvaged by divers and they’re taking him to a submarine and unwrapping him. He’s alive! Immaculately dressed in a smart naval uniform, with an oxygen mask strapped to his face, Bond rises from his cocoon like a butterfly from a chrysalis. The clue was in the title – You Only Live Twice. If you kill James Bond, he will, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, come back stronger than ever.
If you count only the ‘official’ cinematic incarnations of Bond, he’s now lived six times (as Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig), with another iteration on the way. The frenzied obsession of the British public and media about all things Bond was extraordinary in the 60s, and has continued to this day. Any piece of James Bond news is endlessly pored over, and when a new film is released, it goes off the scale – particularly if a new Bond actor is being launched, as will be the case with the next film.
But this time, something’s different. Some have been saying it makes no sense to bring Bond back again, because he was explicitly killed off at the end of No Time to Die. How many fans were sitting there at the end of the film waiting for 007 to somehow make a fabulous You Only Live Twice-style escape and fly off into the sunset with the brassy swing section of his theme music blaring out? But no. He was actually dead.
So, how can the film-makers get round that? If they’ve got any sense, they’ll simply ignore it and start again. Bond will be reincarnated in a completely
new timeline, just like Doctor Who, Batman, Sherlock Holmes, Spider-Man, Hercule Poirot…
As long as you have the kit of parts in place, Bond can be endlessly reborn. As long as you’ve got the theme music, the dinner suit, the discreet handgun, the fast cars and gadgets, the beautiful women, exotic locations, OTT stunts, M, Q, Moneypenny, explosions, bombs with timers, a Bond villain with a distinctive lair and henchman etc, then Bond will be back unscathed. He has become a mythical archetype, a hero for all generations.
This process of renewal started with the death of Ian Fleming, in 1964. It could have signalled the end of the literary Bond, but the estate had other ideas. Bond would not die with his creator. Kingsley Amis, a huge Bond fan, had already done an (unspecified) amount of work tidying up The Man with the Golden Gun, which Fleming was still working on when he died. He was the ideal writer to pen the first continuation novel, Colonel Sun. The book sold well, which encouraged the estate to continue the process, first hiring the British thriller writer, John Gardner (14 novels, two film novelisations), then an American Bond expert, Raymond Benson (six original novels, three film novelisations). Then, after a break of six years, to coincide with the reboot of Bond with Casino Royale, the Fleming estate gave the mission to respected literary authors (and fans) including Sebastian Faulks, William Boyd and Anthony Horowitz.
And the estate has been busy keeping the literary side of Bond going in other ways, with various side projects, which have been increasingly useful in giving Bond fans their fix, as the gaps between films have been growing ever longer.
In 2005, I published Silverfin, the first of my own series of five Young Bond books. More recently, Kim Sherwood has written an inventive trilogy about other Double O agents (the third volume of which, Hurricane Room, is just out this month). Respected crime author Vaseem Khan has launched a series in which a retired Q becomes an amateur detective, and next year will see the release of a series of adventures for younger readers, MW Craven’s James Bond and the Secret Agent Academy.
My own second adult Bond book, King Zero, is out in the autumn. So, despite there being no new film this year, there’s plenty to keep Bond fans happy. Right now, there’s frenzied activity around the release of the much-anticipated new James Bond videogame, 007 First Light. First Light was set up under the old regime, Eon Productions, and was designed to be a stop-gap between the end of Daniel Craig’s reign and the relaunch of the films with a new actor.
The game is designed to appeal to a new generation of fans. Bond is younger, and just starting out on his road to double-0 status. People are already as excited as if it was a new film release, and it’s been presented by the developers as just as big a deal. Details have been endlessly drip-fed, with announcements of the cast, teasers, trailers and the release of the title song (by David Arnold and Lana del Rey), complete with a very cinematic title sequence, all fluffing the fans ahead of the actual release.
It was fitting in a way (although nobody knew it at the time) that Craig’s Bond died at the end of No Time to Die, because it turned out to be the end of an era. It was the final film to be made by Eon, which, in one form or another, had made every official Bond film since Dr No in 1962. For 60 years the franchise had been something of a Broccoli family affair, but Amazon have now acquired the sole rights, and the game is the first release under their aegis.
Eon had miraculously, and lovingly, steered Bond through shark-infested waters and kept him current and relevant and exciting. The fans are waiting to see how things go with Amazon. What will the new Bond look like? How will the films work in a modern world? Will the full kit of parts be in place? Whatever happens, the next film (to be directed by the highly respected Denis Villeneuve and written by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight) will be a huge event.
God alone knows when that might be, though. In the meantime, as with the game, news is eked out so that every few weeks there will be a new announcement of some sort. What everyone’s really waiting for, of course, is the announcement of who’s going to play the new screen 007 (mainly so they can get extremely angry when it isn’t the person they would have chosen). So there’s a lot of excitement to come – and Bond, just like ‘tomorrow’, will never die.
Charlie Higson is an actor and screenwriter, and the author of six Bond-related novels. His seventh, King Zero, is on sale from 24 September
‘We wanted to honour Bond’s DNA’
Irish actor Patrick Gibson, fresh from TV roles in Dexter: Original Sin and Netflix’s Shadow & Bone, tells RT about stepping into the shoes of James Bond for videogame 007 First Light.
What was your relationship with Bond before this?
Some of my earliest cinematic experiences were with Daniel Craig’s Bond. When I started going to the movies, Craig was coming in, so it held a real personal place, which is a strange thing to then step into.
What was the casting process like?
It was similar to the film and TV auditions I’ve done. I did two self-tapes. And then we started to do chemistry reads with the rest of the cast. The final couple of rounds were two days of going in for a few hours at a time, and having many notes thrown at me, and trying to ignore that. There were maybe 100 people on a Zoom call.
How did you find your Bond?
Oddly, it didn’t feel dissimilar to previous things I’d done. What was important was to forget the canon or pop-culture nature of it. When you have such well-known material and lines, there could almost be a temptation to pander to that. We were aiming to honour the DNA of this character, and that throughline that exists across all the media. It was always a surprise, what felt quintessentially Bond and what didn’t.
Despite this being a videogame, you filmed your scenes in person, with the other actors.
Yeah, for eight hours a day. At the beginning I was wondering, “Am I going to have to exaggerate my facial expressions?” But it was the opposite. The more nuanced you can be, the more human and alive it feels.
How do the stunts and action scenes work?
I just did them all! Backflips and all… That’s why they hired me, my action prowess. Next question. Ha! No, they put my face on the stunt performers, so it’s the best of both worlds and the actors get injured less easily.
Your co-star, Lennie James, said you should be considered for the movie role, too…
Big love to Lennie for that. I mean, honestly, to work with Lennie… I was already a big fan of his work, and when I heard that he was playing Greenway [Bond’s mentor figure], a new character in this, I was really excited. And that was just really, very kind of him to say that.
Your handle on X is ‘PatrickGibson00’ – was that double-0 a coincidence?
Clearly, I’ve been trying to manifest this since I was about nine, and I thought that if I just put subtle hints out there… No, that’s funny. I actually never thought about that. But there you go. The universe works in mysterious ways. Well spotted. I haven’t killed two people, though.
Just the one?
Yeah, exactly. That was for the audition. That’s what I had to do.
007 First Light Game is available from 27 May on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S