J is also also for James Bond
Bite-sized summaries of the James Bond franchise
Sean Connery
Dr No (1962): Secret agent James Bond 007 (Sean Connery) is sent to Jamaica to investigate and stop a nefarious scheme by Dr No (the only SPECTRE supervillain to have ever earned a PhD in Negativity), a feat he somehow accomplishes despite the distracting presence of scantily clad spoonerism, Ursula Andress.
From Russia With Love (1963): Bond (Connery once again) is tricked by SPECTRE (now bolstered by former agents of the Soviet counter-intelligence organisation and ludicrous portmanteau, SMERSH) into helping beautiful Russian spy Tatiana Romanova to defect, a trap he cunningly evades by having sex with her.
Goldfinger (1964): Bond (still Connery) investigates Auric Goldfinger, a Bassey-backed businessman and aspiring Fort Knox thief, who proves a formidable foe for 007, firing a laser at his testicles, threatening him with a murderous hat-wielding henchman, asking him to take the name ‘Pussy Galore’ seriously and, most insidiously of all, forcing him to play golf.
Thunderball (1965): When those troublemakers from SPECTRE steal a couple of nukes and threaten to blow up random cities unless they’re given £100 million in diamonds, Bond (yep, Connery) is sent to Tiffany’s with the MI6 Mastercard, only to instead splurge on scuba gear, which he effortlessly shoehorns into an ill-conceived underwater climax.
You Only Live Twice (1967): After Bond (still all Connery, baby) fakes his death for tax reasons, he re-emerges in a fully deductible Japanese ninja castle, where he faces off against the villainous cricket commentator, piranha pool owner and head of SPECTRE, Henry Blofeld.
David Niven (?)
Casino Royale (1967): When Bond is claimed to, in fact, be David Niven after some confusion with adaptation rights, everybody agrees to forget this version of the movie ever existed.
George Lazenby
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1967): While on leave, Bond learns how to a) ski the Swiss Alps, b) marry former secret agent Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) and c) be played by George Lazenby, a trio of activities that each end in varying degrees of tragedy.
Sean Connery 2.0
Diamonds Are Forever (1971): Bond (a returning Connery) attempts to come to terms with the murder of his wife by seeking vengeance on Blofeld, but after being distracted by body double decoys, a stupid diamond smuggling ring and some nonsense about a laser satellite, settles instead for having sex with this film’s Bond girl, Jill St John, a ploy that also works.
Roger Moore
Live and Let Die (1973): Bond (now revealed to be Roger Moore) gets embroiled in Caribbean drug syndicates, virginity-fuelled Tarot card readings and crocodile hop-skip-and-jumping, all of which are explained away as an understandable reaction to Paul McCartney’s absolute banger of a theme song.
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974): Bond (Moore again) is assigned to track down and apprehend infamous assassin, Christopher Lee, a mission to which he only agrees out of normal everyday curiosity about precious metal firearms (and, of course, the opportunity to have sex with Britt Ekland).Â
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977): When Bond (yep, Moore) learns that his next mission is to defeat the villainous Jaws, he is initially hesitant given his lack of shark knowledge, but is convinced to go ahead with it when he learns this film’s Bond girl is Barbara Bach, giving him the opportunity for some good old fashioned Beatle-cuckolding.
Moonraker (1979): Jaws is back, and this time that crazy shark turns out to once again be a human, and also a metal-mouthed henchman to the evil billionaire Elon Drax, who plans to launch a criminal space shuttle that Bond (still Moore) has no choice but to have zero-gravity sex in.
For Your Eyes Only (1981): Bond (more of Moore) is tasked with being in a movie that has a Sheena Easton song as its theme and the murder of marine archaeologists as its plot instigation, a challenge which improbably proves to be within his capabilities, and therefore celebrated by a parrot talking to Margaret Thatcher.Â
Octopussy (1983): That idiot 009 is killed while in a clown costume and carrying a fake Faberge egg, so Bond (Moore, once more) restores the good name of MI6 in the only way he knows how, by having sex with a woman who goes by the preposterous handle of Octopussy.
Sean Connery 3.0 (?)
Never Say Never Again (1983): Bond is once again Sean Connery, who, after a long, inscrutable legal battle, has the rights to once again do a film version of Thunderball, which he once again does (and then never again).
Roger Moore (epilogue)
A View to a Kill (1985): Millionaire microchip manufacturer Christopher Walken, aided by Grace Jones and Duran Duran, wants to create a double earthquake that will destroy Silicon Valley, and Bond shamefully stops him, forcing a crestfallen Moore to retire from the role.
Timothy Dalton
The Living Daylights (1987): Timothy Dalton is now James Bond and celebrates his casting by getting entangled in a) an incomprehensible KGB defection double-cross, and b) a sexy Soviet cellist, while he still can, what with the imminent end to the Cold War and all.Â
Licence to Kill (1989): Bond’s legendary ‘licence to kill’ is revoked by M, and Dalton, seeing the title of the film, assumes that he’s out of a job, which he is, but not before he goes rogue, infiltrates a televangelist cocaine ring and takes part in a desert truck chase that ends with him setting a petrol-soaked villain on fire, rather rending the revocation moot.
Pierce Brosnan
GoldenEye (1995): The first Bond film to be based primarily on a Nintendo 64 first-person shooter sees former Remington Steele, Pierce Brosnan take on the role of 007, where he is immediately confronted by Famke Janssen, Sean Bean’s henchwoman, whose go-to attack move is straddling her enemies’ heads between her thighs, a grim fate that Brosnan heroically takes in his stride.
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997): Bond (Brosnan again) investigates the sinking of a British naval ship in Chinese waters, and uncovers a plan by the megalomaniac media baron Jonathan Pryce to attack China with a stolen missile in a bid to boost news viewership, an outrageous scheme that leaves 007 with no choice but to outrate him by having sex with both Teri Hatcher and Michelle Yeoh.
The World Is Not Enough (1999): Bond (still Brosnan) faces perhaps the greatest challenge of his career (namely, taking Denise Richards seriously in the role of Dr. Christmas Jones, an American nuclear physicist), and is left bitterly envious of this film’s villain, Renard, who, in contrast, suffers only from a bullet slowly working its way into his brain.
Die Another Day (2002): Finally, Bond (my bro, Brosnan) deals with the North Korea problem, which in this new millennium manifests itself via 007 being captured and tortured for a year before later a) driving an invisible car, b) preventing the Icarus satellite from using a solar mirror to cut a path through the demilitarised zone to reboot the Korean war, and c) having sex with Halle Berry.
Daniel Craig
Casino Royale (2006): James Bond is reimagined as Daniel Craig, a construction site parkour expert, whose first mission is to fight terrorism by the rarely-employed technique of beating Mads Mikkelsen in a game of poker and/or having him torture his testicles while tied up naked in a chair.
Quantum of Solace (2008): Bond (Craig) is charged with yet another seemingly impossible mission, this time decoding what, precisely, a ‘quantum of solace’ might be, and despite his best research into both nuclear physics and counselling psychology comes up short, instead sorting out something to do with the Bolivian water supply?
Skyfall (2012): When MI6 is bombed by a mysterious hacker, Dame Judi Dench calls upon Bond (Craig again) to solve the crisis by having a massive climactic battle at his childhood home, Skyfall, and if he could get a gamekeeper involved and Adele to do the theme song, she could die a happy M.
Spectre (2015): Turns out Blofeld is back, in the form of Christoph Walz, still running SPECTRE, but now with excess interwoven backstory that claims that he and Bond (yep, Craig) are, in fact, adoptive brothers and, since Blofeld’s father loved Bond more, that’s justification for him being a cartoon supervillain, an argument to which Bond reacts by shooting his helicopter into a bridge.
No Time To Die (2021): After leaving MI6, Bond (still Craig) is recruited by the CIA to sort out Rami Malek, a former Mr Robot who is armed with a nanoscale technovirus weapon that can be targeted to precise genetic markers and/or casting decisions, a revelation that gives Craig an excuse to finally kill off 007 and escape from this franchise.
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