Bond, James Bond: Sean Connery

Growing up, my first experience with James Bond was the marathons that TBS (or some similar channel) would do a few weekends a year. I first saw a “new” Bond movie when I saw The World Is Not Enough at the Regal Henrettia (who says keeping your movie tickets is a waste of time?) When I bought the James Bond Collection, my intention was to fill in the gaps in my Bond movie knowledge, but life got in the way, and that set sat on my shelf for over two years. With no Summer School this summer, I have a lot of free time to get through all 24 movies in that set, plus Daniel Craig’s final Bond film, “No Time To Die.” This is not going to be a review of every movie. I may have time off, but I don’t have the time to do 25 reviews before the back-to-school professional development week at the end of August. These will be my thoughts and impressions of each version of Bond and how the character changes (if he does) over the course of 25 movies.

The first actor cast as James Bond was Sean Connery, and from the five I have watched, he is very clearly the template for the character in all his incarnations. As I was reading up on the character, I found that many actors were considered for the role before Sean Connery was chosen. Cary Grant was the No.1 choice, but he only wanted to do one more, so they kept going down the list until they got to Connery. I want to visit the universe where Cary Grant was Bond! Connery has this suave, cool-under-pressure persona that even the more modern Bonds have. Now, in some cases, we see that this is a bit of a facade he puts on for this spy work. For example, when Goldfinger has him strapped to a table, and a laser is threatening to cut him in half, we see that drop, and Bond becomes more desperate. We see his wheels turning on how to get out of this. What little bit of information does he have that he can use to entice Goldfinger to turn off the laser?

One of the interesting things is to watch the movies evolve. Nowadays, having an artist write a Bond song is a huge deal, but it wasn't until “Goldfinger” that we got an opening song. Likewise, the other hallmark of a Bond movie, the opening title sequence featuring silhouettes of women dancing, was not introduced until the second movie, “From Russia With Love.” He gets his Walther PPK pistol in his first movie, the classic Aston Martin, and gadgets in “Goldfinger.” It is cool to watch all the pieces fall into place to get to what is the classic Bond iconography.

I was actually surprised at the connective tissue that these movies had. SPECTRE has a role in most of these movies; a woman he meets at the beginning of “Dr. No” is back at the beginning of “From Russia With Love” and even mentions that he went off to Jamaica in “Dr. No.” I have not seen all the movies; in fact, I have seen fewer than I thought I would thus far (I had only seen “Dr. No” and “Goldfinger” before), but I was always under the impression that they were more standalone stories. Again, I have not seen all of these, so maybe I am wrong, and my TBS viewings of these didn’t allow me to see those connections.

One thing that really stuck out for me, in a bad way, was the womanizing. Bond is good-looking, he’s smooth-talking, and carries himself with such confidence. All this just makes the ladies fall for him instantly. Over and over again. It usually takes just a sentence or two, and they are ready to hop into bed with him. I understand that these are from the late sixties and that they are part of the Bond character. It is also not lost on me that the target audience of these movies is male, and seeing Bond fight the bad guys and sleep with any woman he wants plays into the typical male fantasy, but it is kind of icky to watch in 2026.

The other thing that hasn’t aged well is some of the effects. I am specifically referring to “Thunderball” here. In the opening scene, James gets away on a jet pack, which looks terrible and lame. The other bit of that movie I didn’t like was the underwater scenes. I am sure that for 1965, they were great and could be fun, but in 2026, they are slow and unexciting.

Next Up: This is going to be tricky. The next two Bond movies feature two different actors playing Bond. George Lazenby in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and then Connery returns in “Diamonds Are Forever.” My plan is to talk about both those movies in one post before getting to the rest. Luckily, the remaining actors played the character in more than one movie, so I can easily look at their tenures as Bond in more detail.