So what's you're favorite gadget from the Bond movies, many to choose from, Odd Job's Hat, the Ski Pole gun, The Car-submarine. I go for the iconic (IMO anyway) car/submarine. Followed closely by Odd Job's hat - though how he caught is still a mystery to me, unless he caught it with a claw like motion so his fingers catch it just past the blade? So what's your favorite.
That would be thre Lotus Esprit. From what I've read Lotus got it into the film by parking it outside the office of Producer Cubby Broccoli I'm not, I felt it pushed it to far.
If we're talking gadgets like he would carry on his person, the briefcase is the winner -- it's realistic, practical, and believable. As I've gotten older, I've found myself preferring the films where Bond doesn't have lots of gadgets at his disposal: From Russia with Love, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, For Your Eyes Only, Casino Royale and Skyfall. That said, I do love the cars. The BMW 750 from Tomorrorow Never Dies is my favorite, mostly for the remote control cell phone (though i'd hate to try and drive a car via trackpad. Don't see that working out so well...).
Definitely the tricked-out Aston Martin in Goldfinger. The weapons and gizmos were believable, with the possible exception of the passenger-side ejection seat. Besides, it's a beautiful classic car. As for the villains, though it may be stretching the definition of "gadget," I've always liked Emilio Largo's yacht Disco Volante from Thunderball -- the one that jettisons its back half and becomes a fast hydrofoil. That boat was a real commercial hydrofoil with a detachable "cocoon" designed by production designer Ken Adam -- a full-scale practical effect. Nowadays it would probably be done with CGI and look like crap. As I'm sure you're aware, the car-sub from The Spy Who Loved Me is physically impossible. Where are the ballast tanks and pumps? Where do the wheels go when they retract? Where did that array of propellers and rudder vanes at the rear come from? I'm willing to suspend disbelief, but only to a point.
Though not a "gadget" per se, the single hair trick stuck to the closet door in "Dr. No" was pretty cool... ...I liked the Jet Pack for some reason...
Realism's overrated. I digg most gadgets. I'm a fan of that particular "cliché" of the genre. One that stuck to mind, though, is the dart-shooting watch from Moonraker, my first Bond film. Another, one which is often overlooked, is the Radioactive Homing Pill from Thunderball. You don't see much of it, but the idea itself is so symptomatic of the tongue-in-cheek side of the series I so love.
No it's not, not if you became a fan through the original novels. No one really expects Bond to be like Le Carre, but there are many of us who cringed as the movies became more and more ridiculous. For the record, I thought Casino Royale got the balance between the novel and pandering to the expectations of the cinema audience about right, and still did great business.
Definitely the Aston Martin from Goldfinger I loudly cheered in Skyfall when they have to go "undercover" and need an untrackable car and he opens the garage to reveal this iconic car including the old school Bond Theme from Goldfinger
Another vote for the Aston Martin. When I was a kid a local guy owned the "star" car from Goldfinger and I have sat in it, how about that?! The first Bond I ever saw was You Only Live Twice on ABC, around 1975. Little Nellie really captured my kindergarten-age imagination, and though now it looks a little flimsy and underpowered, I remember it fondly.
Mine too. I had the little Hot Wheels version of the car and played with it a lot as a kid and still had it until we moved out of our house while it was being remodeled when I was in my mid-teens.
Actually, Corgi made the toy, not Mattel. And they still have the rights, too. Both the Lotus and the Aston Martin Vanquish (Vanish) are a load of bollocks; where did anybody get the idea of Bond having a Romulan Warbird on wheels? The production company/designers should have painted it green, and have Zao's car be grey.
I don't mind if the gadgets aren't realistic, but if they're not they need to be used in interesting ways. In some of the Brosnan era films they weren't used in interesting ways at all, there were scenarios specifically contrived for the weird gadgets to be useful.
I have read Fleming's stories, and while they tended to be darker and grittier than the movies, they contained some wild ideas themselves. Moonraker introduced the kind of over-the-top imminent threat, something Dr No and Thunderball picked up, too. In Casino Royale itself, the idea of surprising gadgets is introduced by a gun disguised as a cane. The short story From A View To A Kill has a secret villain's lair hidden underground beneath some hedges. And you don't have to look further than some of the names Fleming has given his characters to know he had some humor about his work. See, I personally like the Brosnan era best, because those films (at least the first three) felt liked they had gotten the formula worked out. There was toughness, there was emotion, their was charme, there was over-the-top characters and clever action. And while the fourth, Die Another Day, had those things, too, it went from one extreme (dark and gritty in the beginning) to another (over-the-top fantastic in the end), and most people tend to forget the darkness after the fantastic. CR, I think, was propably the best one could make out of this particular story (it doesn't quite work within the established formular), I thought it should have been something special, as in 'out of the ordinary', for the series, like OHMSS was. But, having learned that the Bond series does go from one extreme to another, depending on the zeitgeist, I've made my peace with sitting these pseudo-realistic movies out, letting those who enjoy them, well, enjoy them, and waiting for the more tongue-in-cheek films that will undoubtedly follow.