Very nice, Mr. Bond

UPDATED 11-29-06 with Answers! Highlight the yellow text after each question for the answers.

The Indestructible Mr. Jones reports on this James Bond quiz, on which I too scored a double-0 score. (Meaning, I would be a Double-0, not that I got 0 questions right.) I found the quiz slightly unsatisfying, though, so I figured, hey, why not come up with one of my own?

Answers to come…oh, when I feel like it. Ha!

1. Name the first Bond film in which M travels out into the field to brief Bond on his mission details.

You Only Live Twice. After faking his own death, Bond is brought onto a submarine in China where M briefs him. At least I think it’s China, since Bond was actually “killed” in China — but then Bond is fitted in Scuba gear and fired out a torpedo tube, so are we to believe that Bond swims all the way to Japan?

2. Which is the only Bond novel to be written in the first person?

The Spy Who Loved Me. (I should have specified the Ian Fleming novels, since other authors have written Bond books since then, and I have no idea about them. I never read Spy Who…, but I know that like many of the books that were “filmed” late in the series, the film bears almost no resemblance to the book.

3. We all know that James Bond is based in Europe, so: name the first films in which he is shown doing spy stuff in Asia, North America, South America, and Africa respectively. (There may be a little wiggle-room for the Asia answer, actually.)

Asia: You Only Live Twice (although I’m not certain if Bond does any work on the part of the Istanbul region in From Russia With Love that is across the water, on the Asian portion of Turkey).

North America: Goldfinger. (Unless one counts Jamaica as part of North America, from Dr. No, but I don’t.)

South America: Moonraker. (The location for the Goldfinger precredits sequence isn’t directly identified, as I recall; I take it to be one of the Central American banana republics, which are technically in North America.)

Africa: Diamonds are Forever. About fifteen seconds of that film’s precredits sequence takes place in Cairo. The first film that has Bond spending a significant amount of screen time in Africa would be The Spy Who Loved Me, which also takes place in and around Cairo.

4. What rank does the first M hold? (The M played by Bernard Lee. I have no idea if Robert Brown or Judi Dench, the subsequent M’s, hold the same rank.)

Admiral.

5. What rank does Q hold? (The Desmond Llewellyn one.)

Major.

Complete the following code phrases:

6. “Do you have a match?”

“I use a lighter.” (Which is followed by, “Better still”, to which one finally says, “Until they go wrong”.)

7. “The snow this year is better at Innsbruck.”

“But not at San Moritz.”

8. “In London, April is a spring month.” (Wiggle room here.)

“But in St. Petersburg we’re freezin’ our butts off.” (The scene makes clear that Bond’s ally here isn’t terribly concerned with giving proper responses to British agents, whom he thinks should just “drop it”.)

9. At whose hands did agents 002, 006, and 009 all die, respectively? (One of these has two possible answers that I know of!)

002 was killed by Francisco Scaramanga, the “Man with the Golden Gun”. I had thought that the next 002 was killed by an unnamed assassin on Gibraltar during the precredits sequence of The Living Daylights, but upon further review, 002 isn’t killed in that film: he’s shot with a paintball by an SAS officer, removing him from the simulated wargame.

006 is thought to have been killed during a mission to a Siberian munitions factory with Bond, but it’s later revealed that he survived and turned villain, whereupon Bond himself kills him.

009 is killed by one of the two knife-wielding twins in Octopussy.

10. True or false: James Bond is a fan of the Beatles.

False, at least as far as Goldfinger indicates, when Bond indicates that drinking Dom Perignon at the wrong temperature is like “listening to the Beatles without earmuffs”.

11. Excluding Dr. No and From Russia With Love (since those two tend to stand apart from the later established formulae), what is the first Bond film in which a woman Bond beds doesn’t later die?

Diamonds are Forever. In Goldfinger, Jill Masterson is killed after Bond beds her. In Thunderball, Bond does the dirty with Fiona, who later dies in his arms (good thing, too, because she’s a bad one!) In You Only Live Twice, Aki takes poison that is meant for Bond and dies. And, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Tracy Bond dies. Yes, in Diamonds, Plenty O’Toole is killed, but Bond never sleeps with her. (He’s interrupted before he can.)

12. Who calls James Bond a “stiff-assed Brit”, a “back end of horse”, a “limey”, and “Boy”, respectively?

In order: Wade in GoldenEye, Kara in The Living Daylights, Felix Leiter in Dr. No, and that irritating sheriff in The Man With the Golden Gun.

13. Only three Bond film have not featured a song whose lyrics contain the title of the film. Name them.

Dr. No, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (although the film’s instrumental main theme carries that title), Octopussy (for obvious reasons). It turns out that Casino Royale also fits the bill, but I hadn’t seen the film at the time that I wrote this quiz.

14. For which film was a version of the James Bond Theme recorded by Eric Clapton, and then not used? (This has never been released, dammit! I’d love to hear it.)

Licence to Kill, with music by Michael Kamen, whose scores for the Lethal Weapon movies featured a lot of Clapton.

15. Which film’s title contains a word in its British spelling, as opposed to the American English spelling?

Licence to Kill (“Licence” versus “License”)

16. In The Living Daylights, Bond and Kara take in an opera. What opera is it?

The Marriage of Figaro.

17. What Bond girl appears in two different films?

In Dr. No and From Russia With Love, Bond has a “girlfriend” back home named Sylvia Trench. She’s never seen again.

18. What actress plays different Bond girls in two different films?

Maud Adams is the ill-fated Miss Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun, and then Octopussy in, well, Octopussy.

19. For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy both feature an assistant in Q-branch named Smithers. The actor playing Smithers actually played a much more famous role around that same time frame. What role was that?

Jeremy Bulloch played Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Bulloch also appeared in Revenge of the Sith as “Captain Colton” (no idea who that is) and has a blog!

20. The actor who plays Bond accomplice Vijay in Octopussy would later appear in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as the Captain of what Starfleet vessel? (The fact that I know this may make me the biggest geek of all f***ing time.)

The Yorktown. Geez.

21. Plenty of women Bond sleeps with eventually die (see related question #11). But how many times does Bond himself kill a woman he’s already bedded?

Two, that I count: Fiona in Thunderball (yes, I count whirling her into the path of a bullet meant for himself as killing her, but he had to do it eventually anyway) and Elektra in The World is Not Enough (which might have been a great Bond film had Denise Richards not been involved with the project in any capacity).

OK, that’s it. I may have answers tomorrow, or I may wait until next week when I come back from hiatus.

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4 Responses to Very nice, Mr. Bond

  1. Anonymous says:

    1. You Only Live Twice

    2. Charlie Higson’s first Young Bond novel Silverfin, I believe (I haven’t read any of the books).

    3. You Only Live Twice (or possibly From Russia With Love if you count central rather than east Asia), Goldfinger, Goldfinger again, and then it gets tricky. Bond is on his way back from Africa at the start of Moonraker, and parts of Diamonds are Forever are set there, but Bond never goes there. So I’d guess Never Say Never Again or, if we’re being totally official, as late as The Living Daylights.

    4. Admiral, though he’s also a Knight of the Realm.

    5. Major.

    6: Pardon me, do you have a match?
    I use a lighter.
    Better still.
    Until they go wrong.
    Exactly.

    7. The snow this year is better at Innsbruck.
    But not at San Moritz.

    8. In London, April’s a spring month.
    Oh yeah? And what are you, the weatherman?
    or
    8. In London, April’s a spring month.
    While in St Petersburg we’re freezing our butts off!

    9. Scaramanga (first 002) or unnamed ‘Russian’ killer on Gibraltar (second 002 and 004), Bond himself, Mishka and Grishka.

    10. False, if the famous Goldfinger line is anything to go by.

    11. I assume you’re getting at the fact that Bond doesn’t apparently do it with Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, though it’s strongly implied he had sex with Dink and Bonita (the girl in the pre-credits sequence). Technically then the answer is Thunderball, since both Domino and Shrublands nurse Pat Fearing survive sleeping with Bond.

    12. Jack Wade, Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova, Shady Tree, and Sheriff JW Pepper.

    13. Octopussy (All Time High), Dr No (technically no ‘song’ as such), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (We Have All The Time In The World). Though Casino Royale (You Know My Name) would also count.

    14. Licence To Kill

    15. Licence To Kill again

    16. Dammit, this one stumped me.

    17. Sylvia Trench as played by Eunice Gayson in Dr No and From Russia With Love.

    18. Maud Adams (Andrea Anders and Octopussy).

    19. Jeremy Bulloch, a.k.a. Boba Fett

    20. The Yorktown.

    21. Twice, in Thunderball (Fiona Volpe) and The World is Not Enough (Elektra King). The first is arguable since Bond himself doesn’t kill her, just moves her into the path of a henchman’s bullet.

    I was initially considering GoldenEye‘s Xenia Onatopp, but Bond doesn’t sleep with her in spite of their ‘foreplay fight.’ I’d also argue there’s a pretty good case that Bond’s outright stupidity directly results in the death of Goldfinger‘s Gill Masterson after he has sex with her. But that’s just me.

  2. Anonymous says:

    I call shenanegans on number 11. Bond does have sex with the Shrublands nurse in the steam room, and is later shown having a rather obvious post-coital rubdown on his bed. She survives the encounters.

    Or do they have to actually be asleep to count? That’s kinda silly.

  3. Kelly Sedinger says:

    You’re misreading the question. It asks, what’s the first film after Dr. No and From Russia With Love in which none of the women with whom Bond enjoys sexual congress end up dying? And the answer I give lists the women in those films who all end up dying after sleeping with 007. I’m not claiming that in these films, one and only one woman survives sex with 007; I’m asking for the first film in which all women who sleep with him survive. OK?

  4. Anonymous says:

    Ah. Nutbunnies. Egg, face.

    Mmmm, egg.

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