Bond, James Bond. The Books. The Movies. The Adventure!

Hong Kong as Seen at Night across Victoria Harbour from Kowloon ---->

Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour - in the opening scenes of "You Only Live Twice" and Kowloon - featured predominantly in "The Man with the Golden Gun" were some of the first scenes I remember from James Bond movies. I got my start with James Bond stories when our family moved to the Western Pacific Island of Guam. I did a lot of reading then--while I was in junior high, high school, and college.... and the island's closeness to the exotic Far East helped with giving my imagination more solidity. When our family traveled to Japan, I saw Japanese castles that resembled those in the James Bond movies. When we traveled to Hong Kong and Kowloon, I recognized many of the landmarks I saw there when watching James Bond movies. A more recent view of Hong Kong similar to this was in the Bond film, "Die Another Day" -- after Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan) escapes from his medical holding cell after being prisoner-exchanged with the North Koreans. He crawls up onshore and walks into an exclusive hotel to clean up. (The hotel is purported to be in Hong Kong, but from the view, Bond has come ashore in Kowloon.)

Some of the things I have always loved about James Bond adventures are the fantastic gadgets he gets to play with.

Submarines--James Bond has used all varieties of these things in his movies. In the movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond uses a submarine car (Lotus Esprit S1) to evade the bad guys who are following not only by helicopter but also a whole fleet of one-man and three-man submarines. Of course, the main plot of that movie is the fact that U.S., Soviet, and U.K. submarines are mysteriously disappearing. So, submarines play a major part in this movie. In the movie You Only Live Twice, James Bond is delivered from his death and burial-at-sea in Hong Kong to the shores of Japan by a British Navy submarine. Small mini-submarines play a part in the underwater battle scenes in the movie Thunderball, and again in the movie For Your Eyes Only. A big submarine, this time a Russian fast-attack nuclear sub, plays a part in the movie The World Is Not Enough.

Jet Backpack--James Bond uses this backpack to evade the bad guys in the movie Goldfinger.

Geiger-counter camera--James Bond uses a Nikonos II (waterproof camera made by Nikon) with a built-in geiger-counter in the movie Thunderball to detect radiation.

Cars--What Bond film would be complete without souped-up, snazzy cars? Over the years, Bond films have featured cars that include those from Alfa Romeo, AMC Hornet, AMC Matador, Aston Martin, Audi, Bentley, BMW, Ford, Lotus, Mercedes-Benz, Rolls-Royce, Saab, Citroen, and Maserati, to name a few. Some of these cars--like the Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me had submarine properties as well as built in rocket launchers, retractable bullet-proof shields, surface-to-air missiles, machine guns, and tracking devices. The "bad-guys" also had their share of souped up cars. In the movie The Man With the Golden Gun, when bad guy Francisco Scaramanga and Nick Nack use a 1974 AMC Matador to kidnap Mary Goodnight and make their escape, the car converts into a 'car plane' to fly from Bangkok to an island in the China Sea. In Die Another Day, Bond's car (Aston Martin V12 Vanquish) is equipped with the usual front-firing rockets, hood-mounted target-seeking guns, spike-producing tires, and a passenger ejector seat in homage to the original Aston Martin DB5 but had an additional "adaptive camouflage" - a cloaking device that allowed it to become effectively invisible at the push of a button.

Aircraft--James Bond adventures frequently feature certain types of aircraft--from the Royal Air Force Vulcan Long Range Bomber in Thunderball --and in the remake Never Say Never Again featured as a U.S. Air Force B1 Long Range Bomber. Sometimes Bond himself flies the planes--such as the Czechoslovak Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatross in Tomorrow Never Dies or the BD-5J, which has appeared in two James Bond movies: Octopussy starring Sir Roger Moore (he flies the plane in this movie), and later in a cameo appearance, hanging from the wall of Q's workshop in Die Another Day starring Pierce Brosnan as Agent 007.

Helicopters--Helicopters in James Bond movies are commonly used by both the bad guys and the good guys. One of the niftiest gadgets that Bond uses is "Little Nellie"--a kit-folding one-man gyrocopter sent to Japan by "Q" in the movie You Only Live Twice. This thing takes on larger bad-guy helicopters with its heat-seeking missiles, aerial mines, flares, and built-in machine guns. It was a bad-guy helicopter that tipped Bond off about the existance of a hidden space-launch base inside the extinct volcano in You Only Live Twice. In the movie Thunderball as well as in Never Say Never, James Bond is rescued from an underwater cave by a helicopter. In the movie From Russia With Love, Bond and his companion are attacked by bad guys coming at them with helicopters. In the movie The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond and his companion are attacked by a helicopter. And in Moonraker, Bond gets a ride in one of Hugo Drax's helicopters. A helicopter takes center stage in the Bond movie Goldeneye ... in which a special military helicopter that is not affected by EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) is used to sabotage and take-over an EMP-weaponized satellite and satellite control center.

Trains--James Bond seems to find himself on trains a lot. In the movie From Russia, With Love, Bond spends time on a train from Istanbul to Paris (The Orient Express?) with his Soviet defector (and the cipher machine) and he has to fight off a SMERSH agent. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond finds himself again on a train with a Soviet KGB Agent--and he has to fight off "Jaws"--an assassin sent to dispatch him. And, in GoldenEye, Bond has to do some of his fighting on a modified Soviet "black train" that houses the bad-guy's equipment and helicopter.

Space Shuttle--In Moonraker, James Bond has to do a lot of fighting in outer space--where he again encounters "Jaws".... and has Dr. Holly Goodnight helping him with his battles. Bond uses the lasers on a Space Shuttle to destroy the killer satellites that have been released upon earth by the madman Drax.

Whether Bond is swimming in an evil villain's swimming pool filled with sharks (facing them in the waters of Thailand, Vietnam, Jamaica, the Greek Islands, or Puerto Rico) or being simultaneously chased by tigers and elephants in India and Thailand, Bond gets his share of encounters with nature!

Sharks play a big role in Thunderball, License to Kill, Never Say Never, For Your Eyes Only, The Spy Who Loved Me.

Crocodiles and Alligators play a part in the Live and Let Die--and Bond uses a boat disquised/camouflaged as a crocodile in Octopussy.

Bond identifies correctly the venomous Turkeyfish, or Ptoris volitans, when posing as a marine biologist to the villain Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me.

In Octopussy, Bond again identifies the deadly Blue-Ringed Octopus in Octopussy's aquarium in her bedroom. You later get a chance to see the results of being bitten by one of these creatures.

Spiders play a part in some of the Bond movies--in Dr. No, Bond finds himself sharing his bed with a particularly nasty type of taurantula (a big hairy spider that can get bigger than a man's hand).

Scorpions are a featured bad-guy "weapon" in Diamonds Are Forever.

Bond encounters tigers in India -- along with cobras -- in the movie Octopussy.

Elephants play a part in the Bond movies Octopussy, and The Man with the Golden Gun.

The classic James Bond scene is when Ursula Andress emerges from the water and strolls out onto the Jamaican beach in Dr. No. This scene is almost replicated when James Bond spies Halle Berry emerging from the waters of Cuba in Die Another Day. Then you have Talisa Soto in License to Kill. And ... ah well, it's better to just check HERE.

Squid graphic courtesy of Squidoo Squid Graphics For Your Lenses! by GreekGeek.