From Moonraker cashing in on the Star Wars hype to Casino Royale borrowing the tone of The Bourne Identity, plenty of the Bond movies have often looked to other films for inspiration.
There are plenty of a great parody of the Bond franchise. Kingsman: The Secret Service arrived as a refreshing throwback to the goofy earlier Bond movies amidst the gritty realism of the Daniel Craig era. But the inspiration goes both ways. The Bond franchise has taken plenty of influence from other movies, ranging from Scarface to Enter the Dragon to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
8 North By Northwest
Influenced Russia With Love (1963)
North by Northwest is essentially what a Bond movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock would look like. Much like a typical Bond movie, it’s a spy thriller involving mystery, intrigue, plot twists, and huge action set-pieces. Cary Grant’s suave, charismatic hero is very similar to Sean Connery’s original 007: cool, collected, sharply dressed, and devilishly debonair. North by Northwest had a widespread influence on the action genre, and that included an impact on the second ever Bond movie, From Russia with Love.
North By Northwest is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most popular films and was released in 1959. The film centers on Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), an average advertising executive in New York who is hunted by foreign spies who think he is actually a secret agent. The film co-stars Eva Marie Saint, whose character Eve Kendall acts as a love interest to Roger.
- Cast
- Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Cary Grant, Leo G. Carroll, Jessie Royce Landis
- Director
- Alfred Hitchcock
In From Russia with Love, there’s a sequence in which Bond is attacked by a helicopter. It’s almost identical to the iconic scene in North by Northwest in which Grant is ambushed by a crop-duster swooping in from above. North by Northwest’s air attack is more memorable, but they’re both exhilarating sequences. From Russia with Love’s train scenes and framing of its female lead are also pretty similar to North by Northwest.
7 Shaft
Influenced Live And Let Die (1973)
Connery’s Bond movies all followed a pretty similar formula and stayed strictly within the confines of the traditions of the spy genre. When Roger Moore took over the role of 007, the producers began to experiment with different genres that were popular at the time. Moore’s first outing, Live and Let Die, borrowed a lot of its plot and stylistic elements from blaxploitation movies like Shaft, Foxy Brown, and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which were popular in the late 1970s.
Your comment has not been saved
Shaft
- Release Date
- June 25, 1971
- Runtime
- 100 minutes
- Director
- Gordon Parks
- Writers
- John D.F. Black
WHERE TO WATCH
Shaft is a 1971 film featuring Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, a private detective in New York City. Shaft is enlisted by a crime lord to locate and rescue his kidnapped daughter, leading to a traverse of the criminal underworld. Directed by Gordon Parks, the film blends action and drama.
- Cast
- Moses Gunn, Richard Roundtree, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, Gwenn Mitchell, Lawrence Pressman, Victor Arnold, Sherri Brewer, Rex Robbins, Camille Yarbrough, Margaret Warncke, Joseph Leon, Arnold Johnson, Dominic Barto, George Strus, Edmund Hashim, Drew Bundini Brown, Tommy Lane, Al Kirk, Shimen Ruskin, Antonio Fargas, Gertrude Jeannette, Lee Steele, Damu King, Donny Burks
This becomes apparent early in the movie when Bond’s investigation sends him to Harlem, a common setting for blaxploitation films. Yaphet Kotto’s villain, Mr. Big, wouldn’t be out of place in a Pam Grier movie. He’s an unscrupulous New York drug lord hoping to put his rivals out of business. Drug dealers were frequently used as villains in blaxploitation movies like Coffy, which was notable because an anti-drug stance was unfashionable at the time of the counterculture movement.
6 Enter The Dragon
Influenced The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)
After serving up a Bond version of a blaxploitation movie in Live and Let Die, Moore starred in a Bond movie homage to martial arts films in his second outing, The Man with the Golden Gun. At the time, Bruce Lee movies like Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon had made kung fu films all the rage.
10 Best Fight Scenes In James Bond Movies
From Sean Connery's brutal train fight to Daniel Craig's intense stairwell fight, the James Bond movies are full of great fight scenes.
The Man with the Golden Gun isn’t a martial arts movie from start to finish, but it does become one during a key sequence in its middle act. When Bond poses as his latest enemy, Scaramanga, to meet suspected Thai criminal Hai Fat in Bangkok, the plan backfires as Scaramanga is secretly working at Fat’s estate.
Your comment has not been saved
Enter the Dragon is a popular martial artist movie starring Bruce Lee. The 1973 film focuses on a Shaolin martial artist who infiltrates an opium lord's fortress by pretending to be interested in a fighting tournament. Robert Clouse directed the film, which co-starred John Saxon, Jim Kelly, and Ahna Capri.
- Cast
- Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Ahna Capri, Bob Wall, Shih Kien, Jim Kelly
- Director
- Robert Clouse
Bond is captured and brought to Fat’s martial arts academy, where his students fight to the death. There, the entire student body is instructed to kill 007, and he has to battle his way out of there. This is exactly the kind of deadly predicament that Lee would find himself in over the course of one of his movies. Enter the Dragon, in particular, is all about a death match.
5 Star Wars
Influenced Moonraker (1979)
When George Lucas was trying to get his ion project Star Wars made, he struggled to find a studio that would finance his weird little space movie, because they didn’t think space would sell. Ironically, when Lucas finally got Star Wars made, it became such a monstrous blockbuster hit that every studio in Hollywood suddenly wanted to make space movies.
Moonraker departed drastically from its relatively grounded source material to send 007 out of Earth’s atmosphere for a laser battle on a Death Star-style space station.
Star Trek was resurrected as a movie franchise, Alien took the horror genre into the cosmos, and Roger Corman made his own ripoff, Battle Beyond the Stars. Star Wars fever even affected the Bond franchise. The end credits of The Spy Who Loved Me declared, “James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only.”
Your comment has not been saved
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
- Release Date
- May 25, 1977
- Runtime
- 121 minutes
WHERE TO WATCH
Star Wars is a seminal science fiction film released in 1977 that follows the quest of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo to rescue Princess Leia from the oppressive Imperial forces. They are aided by the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, as they strive to restore peace to the galaxy.
- Cast
- Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, Phil Brown, Shelagh Fraser, Jack Purvis, Alex McCrindle, Eddie Byrne, Drewe Henley, Denis Lawson, Garrick Hagon, Jack Klaff, William Hootkins, Angus MacInnes, Jeremy Sinden, Graham Ashley, Don Henderson, Richard LeParmentier
- Director
- George Lucas
But after the success of Star Wars, Eon decided to hold off on adapting For Your Eyes Only and focus on Ian Fleming’s only space-themed novel instead. Moonraker departed drastically from its relatively grounded source material to send 007 out of Earth’s atmosphere for a laser battle on a Death Star-style space station.
4 Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Influenced Octopussy (1983)
Star Wars isn’t the only Lucas creation that had an influence on the Bond franchise. Lucas’ other blockbuster, Raiders of the Lost Ark, inspired one of the campest Bond movies, Octopussy. With the Indiana Jones franchise, Steven Spielberg was heavily influenced by the Bond series.
Spielberg had been turned down for the job of directing an official Bond movie on more than one occasion, but when his friend came to him with the idea for a nostalgic throwback to pulpy action-adventure serials of the 1930s, he saw an opportunity to create his own version of 007 for an American audience.
Your comment has not been saved
Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Release Date
- June 12, 1981
- Runtime
- 115 Minutes
WHERE TO WATCH
The most popular and well-received film in the Indiana Jones movie franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark follows Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones in a race against Nazi forces to recover the famed Ark of the Covenant. Aided by his former lover, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indy must work to keep the Nazis, led by Dr. Rene Belloq, from obtaining the Ark and thus becoming recipients of its power. The film is widely regarded as one of the all-time greatest movies ever made.
- Cast
- Alfred Molina, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliott
- Director
- Steven Spielberg
Poetically, after Bond inspired Indy, Indy inspired Bond. After the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Eon made an Indiana Jones-style Bond movie with Octopussy. Octopussy sends Moore’s 007 on an adventure through a treacherous jungle. He even swings from a vine and does a Tarzan yell. Octopussy features Indy’s least favorite animal, snakes, and other exotic wildlife that wouldn’t be out of place in an adventure with Dr. Jones.
3 Scarface
Influenced License To Kill (1989)
Timothy Dalton’s final outing in the role of 007, License to Kill, is arguably the darkest Bond movie ever made. It forgoes the usual formula of Bond taking an assignment from M, going on an official mission for MI6, and taking down a megalomaniac for political purposes. Instead, Bond abandons his official MI6 mission and goes rogue to exact revenge for a personal reason. He goes after the ruthless villain who maimed his close friend Felix Leiter and murdered Leiter’s bride.
Your comment has not been saved
Brian De Palma's iconic crime drama is loosely based on the 1929 novel of the same name and follows Cuban refugee Tony Montana (Al Pacino), who begins a life of crime after arriving in Miami. It chronicles his rise from a penniless thug to one of the richest and most ruthless kingpins in the world, amassing a criminal empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Cast
- Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Loggia, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Miriam Colon, F. Murray Abraham
- Director
- Brian De Palma
The villain in question, drug lord Franz Sanchez, has a lot in common with the titular gangster in Brian De Palma’s blood-soaked classic Scarface. Much like Tony Montana, Sanchez is a notorious cocaine kingpin who uses torture to get what he wants. The aptest elevator pitch to ascribe to License to Kill would be Bond vs. Scarface, because that’s essentially what this movie is.
2 The Bourne Identity
Influenced Casino Royale (2006)
Since it began in the 1960s, the Bond franchise has been marked by pure escapism. Bond uses goofy, far-fetched gadgets, he chases supervillains with their own lairs and henchmen, and he finds himself in situations like being strapped to a table with a laser beam slowly inching its way up to his crotch.
There’s a huge disparity between real-life espionage and the escapist antics of the Bond movies. In 2002, the Bond franchise was further from realism than ever before as 007 surfed on a tidal wave and fought a race-swapping villain in Die Another Day. In the same year, The Bourne Identity came along and reinvigorated the spy genre with its gritty realism.
Your comment has not been saved
After waking up at sea with no memory of who he once was, Jason Bourne travels the world to discover his identity while mysterious assassins try to kill him. Matt Damon stars as Jason Bourne, a character first appearing in Robert Ludlum's 1980 spy novel The Bourne Identity. The film was followed by The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, both of which were also adaptations of Ludlum's work.
- Cast
- Chris Cooper, Brian Cox
- Director
- Doug Liman
The Bourne Identity and its sequels brought a Bond-esque superspy into the real world, with shaky camerawork and shady government conspiracies. When Pierce Brosnan relinquished the role of Bond to Daniel Craig and Eon rebooted the franchise with Casino Royale, they imbued it with some of that Bourne-style realism. Casino Royale brought Bond into the real world, with torture, visceral violence, and genuine spy work, and it resulted in one of the best entries in the franchise.
1 The Dark Knight
Influenced Skyfall (2012)
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight changed the face of blockbuster filmmaking. Nolan’s sprawling crime epic set on the streets of Gotham City proved that comic book movies — and big-budget franchise films in general — could be considered real cinema. It led to darker reboots of superhero franchises, like Man of Steel and The Amazing Spider-Man, as well as more “realistic” takes on typically fantastical properties, like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and 2014’s Godzilla.
Javier Bardem’s iconic villain, Raoul Silva, is cut from the same cloth as Heath Ledger’s Joker.
Craig’s third outing in the role of Bond, Skyfall, was yet another movie influenced by The Dark Knight. Javier Bardem’s iconic villain, Raoul Silva, is cut from the same cloth as Heath Ledger’s Joker. They’re both eccentric sociopaths who wage psychological warfare against the heroes.
Your comment has not been saved
The Dark Knight
- Release Date
- July 16, 2008
- Runtime
- 152 minutes
WHERE TO WATCH
The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan, is the second installment in the Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale as Batman. Released in 2008, the film follows Batman’s alliance with Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent as they combat the organized crime that threatens Gotham, facing the menacing Joker.
- Cast
- Nestor Carbonell, Eric Roberts, Ritchie Coster, Anthony Michael Hall, Keith Szarabajka, Colin McFarlane, Joshua Harto, Melinda McGraw, Nathan Gamble, Michael Vieau, Michael Stoyanov, William Smillie, Danny Goldring, Michael Jai White
- Director
- Christopher Nolan
They’re both supposedly agents of chaos who actually have a meticulous plan. They both make surprisingly strong points, despite their questionable actions, and they both get caught on purpose. Director Sam Mendes also took inspiration from Nolan’s heavier, more dramatic approach to Bruce Wayne and dug deep into James Bond’s fractured psychology.
James Bond
- Created by
- Ian Fleming, Albert R. Broccoli
- First Film
- Dr. No
- Latest Film
- No Time to Die
- Films
- James Bond 26
Summary
The James Bond franchise centers on the fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond, also known by his code number 007. Created by writer Ian Fleming in 1953, Bond has been featured in novels, films, television, radio, comics, and video games. The film series, produced by Eon Productions, is one of the longest-running and highest-grossing franchises in history, known for its blend of espionage, action, and sophisticated style.
Your comment has not been saved