Commander James Bond, 007, Licence to KillThe James Bond actors each had a different version of the character. An overall discussion of the whole character of Bond is a subject that has had entire books dedicated to it.
Forceful Kiss: His courtship is anything but subdued.
Good Is Not Nice: Connery's Bond isn't exactly a pleasant chap, but he's incredibly charming and still a good guy.
Handsome Lech: Domino and Tatiana are the only women he shows much affection to. The others are merely rides in the hay.
He was quite good with the two girls in Japan, Aki and Kissy. He seems happy to marry either of them, and is actually a little disappointed when he learns his marriage to Kissy is a sham.
The Casanova: He seduces an entire RESORT of beautiful women.
The Cast Show Off: George Lazenby is the only Bond Actor to date who is an actual Martial Artist (Black Belt in Shotokan-Ryu Karate, to be exact), not to mention being a former student of Bruce Lee himself. This he gets to spectacularly show off on several occasions throughout his turn as 007.
Chivalrous Pervert: Played straight this time: Tracy starts out as suicidal and emotionally unbalanced, but Bond gives her a reason to live.
Combat Pragmatist: Even more so than Connery, and possibly to Craig's levels. When Lazenby's Bond fights you, you're in trouble.
Continuity Nod: "This never happened to the other fella."
More like Obfuscating Blandness. He was impersonating an academic, and in fact used that intellectual angle to seduce a lot of women.
The Other Darrin: No other Bonds went through much controversy upon announcement, except for Daniel Craig more recently. George Lazenby was compared to Sean Connery constantly.
Paper-Thin Disguise: Effectively, changing his posture a bit and changing his voice a little is enough to fool Blofeld. Despite the fact that he and James Bond met face to face in You Only Live Twice.
OHMSS was set up to be a straight adaptation of the novel (as opposed to YOLT). OHMSS came before YOLT in the book, so the disguise was not paper thin.
Roger Moore
Roger Moore
Awesome, Dear Boy: Moore loved playing Bond enough to star in a record of 7 movies over 12 years. There were other reasons for maintaining him in the role though.
Badass Bookworm: Roger Moore's character compensated for not being as tough as Sean Connery by acting like 007 had an IQ in the excess of 200 and expertise on every subject in the world.
Badass Grandpa: He was the oldest and longest running actor in the series, starting at the age of 46 and ending at the age of 58.
Berserk Button: People who take pleasure in senseless murder, especially that of women and innocents. Scaramanga and Zorin both found that out the hard way.
The Dandy: Roger Moore loves his clothes, and used his own tailors for his version of Bond. Also, the tradition of Bond wearing a tuxedo in the gunbarrel sequence started with him.
Disposable Woman: Roger Moore's Bond is even more heartless than Sean Connery's version in his early films. He improved as time went on, and by For Your Eyes Only he probably had as healthy a relationship with women that he's ever had (a 16 year old girl trying to seduce him notwithstanding).
Does Not Like Guns: Roger Moore kills a ridiculous amount of bad guys on screen. 167 according to at least some counts. However, he only rarely does so using a gun. He prefers to toss them off buildings or use elaborately odd weapons like a explosive air pellet.
That said, he's also actually shot the Big Bad on at least two occasions, something other Bonds have not done.
Mood Whiplash: Like Brosnan's Bond movies would be, Moore's Bond movies were interlaced with some very serious scenes and some very silly scenes.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Roger Moore's James Bond was always playing nicer than he really was, as his many cold-blooded executions across his movies proves.
Older and Wiser: Especially in For Your Eyes Only, where he warns Melina about the double-edged nature of revenge, speaking as though from experience (having avenged his wife by killing Blofeld in the pre-titles sequence, this was likely intentional).
Honey Trap: One of the few occasions that Bond is explicitly identified as being such.
It's Personal: Sanchez destroyed Felix Leiter's life almost completely. Bond is NOT pleased.
Knight in Sour Armor: More than the previous versions, takes a cynical view toward his missions and his MI 6 superiors. That still won't prevent him from doing the right thing, whether part of his assignment or not.
The Ace / Always Someone Better: Has a habit of upstaging people (but usually the villain) at whatever their skillset is. No matter what they can do or how long they've been doing it, Bond will do it better than them with no prep time or practice.
Composite Character: Of Moore's snarky British gentleman and Dalton's gritty secret agent, with a hint of Lazenby's vulnerability and Connery's masculinity.
Deliberate Values Dissonance: Brosnan's Bond is the same arrogant chauvinist that Connery's and Moore's were, but the world around him is a lot more forward-thinking and fed up with his politically incorrect attitude.
Hurting Hero: Throughout the Brosnan films, it's clear that Bond is not a happy man.
Iconic Characters: For movie audiences who first saw Bond in the 1990s, when James Bond is mentioned, this incarnation has about as much recognition as the classic Connery original. Also because the generation that grew up with Brosnan as Bond also coincided with the branching of the franchise into popular spin-off video games, thereby increasing his exposure.
It's Personal: 006, Elektra, and Elliot Carver all get under Bond's skin.
Lack of Empathy: Subverted. Though he seems callously aloof when it comes to killing, Trevalyan strongly implies that Bond is haunted by all the men he's killed.
More Dakka: Pierce Brosnan expended more ammunition than all other Bonds combined. When he is in action, he was mostly seen with an automatic weapon.
Mood Whiplash: The Brosnan films have some of the darkest moments in the entire series; for example Bond's execution of his own lover Elektra King. Yet mixed in with this a dependency on puns and gadgetry.
Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Every villain in his movies is dispatched with one. He also delivers an utterly chilling one to the man who murdered Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies.
Product Placement: Dressed almost exclusively by Brioni (which resulted in a really obvious shot of packaged shirts in Die Another Day).
Promoted Fanboy: Pierce Brosnan decided to become an actor after his parents took him to see Goldfinger as a child, and has also mentioned being influenced by Roger Moore's performance in The Saint.
Brave Scot: As revealed by Skyfall, Craig's Bond was born in Scotland.
Not just Craig's Bond. Fleming himself was so much impressed by Connery that he canonically established Bond as a Scot.
Bruiser with a Soft Center: Despite a rough exterior, Daniel Craig's Bond still has a human side, as expressed with Vesper, Mathis and Camille.
Byronic Hero: Craig's Bond is a cold-blooded killer with severe emotional issues and a penchant for revenge, who broods over the morality of his job and losing his loved ones.
Combat Pragmatist: Notably so. No Bond fights fair, but Craig's employs everything from knives to nail guns to fire extinguishers. Probably reaches its apogee in Quantum Of Solace, in which in the space of one 35-second fight, he puts his knife-wielding opponent through two glass doors, pummels him with two different improvised blunt instruments, and finally stabs him to death with a pair of nail scissors.
Honey Trap: Seduces Solange Dimitrios to get info on her assassin husband in Casino Royale, and then paper pusher Strawberry Fields to keep MI-6 off his back in Quantum Of Solace.
Icy Blue Eyes: Which make him look even more stoic/cold-blooded, just like the literary version.
Jack of All Stats: He's athletic but can't match the Le Parkour skills of his quarry and has to use his brain, working the environment, to make up the difference.
Knight in Sour Armor: Takes a grim view of his job, as he considers murder his "employment," but refuses to let that shake his incredible loyalty to his country, MI 6, and M.
Made of Iron: Daniel Craig's Bond gets beaten up more than any other of his kind, jumps from dangerous heights and survives a heart attack but ends up fine & kicking arse the next minute.
Manly Tears: The only Bond to date to shed tears onscreen, in response to the death of M, the closest thing he had to a mother left in this world.
Turn In Your Badge: Subverted. Bond just ignores orders he doesn't like.
What Have I Become??: According to the DVD commentary in Casino Royale after he killed Obanno and his bodyguard he looks himself in the mirror while he changes his shirt asking to himself these exact words.
All There in the Manual: Judi Dench's M holds the distinction of being the only M whose name is not revealed in the entire film series (assuming Robert Brown's M was Admiral Hargreaves). A prop from the end of Skyfall reveals that her name is Olivia Mansfield.
The Chains of Commanding: Judi Dench's needs to make the hard decisions, no matter what her personal feelings are. Best exemplified in Skyfall when she orders Eve to take a shot that endangers Bond's life.
The first M (Admiral Sir Miles Messervy) was Bernard Lee. As he died before For Your Eyes Only, M is absent and Bond is briefed by the Minister of Defence and Bill Tanner. (a painting of Lee even appears on the MI 6 headquarters during the Brosnan years).
In Octopussy, Robert Brown is the new M. (possibly Admiral Hargreaves, the government official Brown played in The Spy Who Loved Me)
Prophetic Name: Besides possibly Hargreaves, all of the canonical people holding the title have last names and sometimes first names as well starting with "M".
Punny Name: "Olivia Mansfield" appears to be a pun on "I live in a man's field".
Miss MoneypennyM's secretary, who has a not-so-secret crush on Bond. Played by four different actresses in the official films.
Action Girl: Naomie Harris' Moneypenny, who acts as Bond's backup during a mission, drives like a stuntwoman, is a trained sniper, takes out two mooks with her heels and a metal suitcase and goes on to shoot a few more before eventually deciding that fieldwork isn't for her.
QCodename for "Quartermaster". He is the man who gives Bond all those wonderful toys. Played by Peter Burton in Dr. No, before being played by Desmond Llewelyn for a very long time—1963 to 1999, in seventeen of the eighteen pictures released during that time.note Live and Let Die didn't feature the character at all. When Llewelyn died in 1999, the character had already retired in The World Is Not Enough and one of his subordinates became the new Q, played by John Cleese, in Die Another Day. The character did not appear in Casino Royale, nor did he in Quantum Of Solace. He was reintroduced in Skyfall, this time played by a much younger actor, Ben Whishaw.
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He and Bond argue quite a bit, but Q's gadgets have saved Bond at least once a movie.
Vitriolic Best Buds: Llewelyn's Q and Bond really do care about each other, as seen in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Licence To Kill, and The World Is Not Enough. Whishaw's Q and Craig's Bond seem to be shaping into this, shaking hands at the end of their first scene together. They all but say to each other "I respect you now because you held your own in our verbal bout."
Felix Leiter
Felix LeiterBond's friend in the C.I.A.
An Arm and a Leg: He gets his leg fed to a shark in Licence To Kill. Perhaps as a result, he never appears again until the Daniel Craig reboot and is substituted by another American agent, Jack Wade.
Overshadowed by Awesome: A subversion for the most part, since his job is usually to provide CIA support for Bond while MI 6 handles the mission. It's played straight in Licence To Kill and the Daniel Craig films, however.
Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Notably averted. Since the producers didn't want him to become an Ensemble Darkhorse (for American audiences especially), they deliberately recast the role in every film he appeared in (except for Licence To Kill, where a familiar Leiter was considered crucial for the story to work).
Graceful Loser: Subverted in For Your Eyes Only. He takes Bond destroying the MacGuffin astoundingly well... but then again, it was a piece of British technology that he was on his way to steal, so the British ended up losing overall.
