From "blunt instrument" to glamorous super spy

The drawing above is Ian Fleming's original concept of James Bond. It is a far cry from Sean Connery, to say nothing of George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. It fits perfectly with what Fleming envisaged Bond to be: "A blunt instrument," as Fleming put it.  A "dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened."

It is not hard to find precisely that in Fleming's 007 Bond novels. He has no fancy gadgets, nor does he have the Teflon of his cinematic counterparts. He can dish out hard knocks and kill shots, but he also bleeds easily. In fact, at the climax of the book version of The Man With The Golden Gun, he himself is seriously wounded by a derringer shot from the villain Scaramanga. However, because Bond is a "blunt instrument," he blasts Scaramanga into oblivion before he passes out and later wakes up in the hospital. He is also unconscious after the climax of the book version of Dr. No, being sailed all the way to safety by the lovely Honey Rider. No making out with her in this version, James.

But when the movies trained their camera lenses on Fleming's novels, Bond began a radical change in appearance and mood. Thanks in no small part to the rugged good looks of Sean Connery, he took on the air of a dashing super spy. Connery still kept Bond's ruthlessness (best shown in his fight with Robert Shaw in From Russia with Love), but women who would have found Fleming's vision unappealing swooned over Sean's Bond. Things got so crazy for Connery that he stopped going to Bond film premieres after a female model got into the Aston Martin he was driving to the Paris debut of Goldfinger.  

And speaking of that flick that gave us "the man with the Midas touch," Bond underwent another change thanks to the full-fledged debut of Q Branch and Major "Q." Boothroyd. In the book version of Goldfinger, the Aston Martin Bond drives only has reinforced bumpers and a secret compartment for a pistol. Thanks to the vivid imagination of the movies, the film version Aston Martin came loaded for bear with machine guns, ejection seats, etc.  That is a device for a demigod, not a blunt instrument! Finally, Bond’s penchant for making snappy quips came to the fore in Goldfinger’s film version. Gems like “He blew a fuse” in regards to the demise of a certain bad guy named Oddjob gave Bond a sense of humor that Fleming’s print counterpart sorely lacked.  

So Bond finally shed his blunt beginnings and became a glamorous super spy. But come to think of it, Daniel Craig's looks are even more rugged than Connery's. He could truly be the actor who came closest to how Fleming thought Bond looked.

Image courtesy Wikimedia.