After attending a James Bond film festival last April, I decided I should give the original novels a whirl - I’ve seen all the “official” Bond film at least once, I think, and was curious to see where and how they differed. I was in luck, as the Indiana Digital Media e-library had several of the Bond novels available in audiobook format, and the ones it didn’t, the local library did.
I started at the beginning, of course, with Casino Royale. The 2006 film stayed relatively true to the novel - pitting Bond against an underworld/terrorist financier in a high stakes card game. True - they changed the game from baccarat to Texas Hold’em Poker, and the Skyfleet airliner debut and the African terrorist subplots were all add-ons, and Vesper’s fate was much more dramatic in the film. However, the events of the novel would not have made for what we’ve come to expect from a Bond film - the majority of which dealt with the events of a rather complex card game. The novel does have the car chase & crash, and the torture of Bond (tho a bamboo rug beater is the implement of choice - something that 90% of the film audience wouldn’t have recognized.) as well as the shadowy organization that frees Bond and disposes of Le Chiffre - however, it is clearly identified as SMERSH (a Soviet counterintelligence agency)in the novel.
Fleming’s writing tends to the … detailed. Readers are treated to a description of Bond’s outfits (this reminded me a bit of American Psycho) as well as the settings. Bond is much more introspective in print - something a bit difficult to carry off well in the medium of film. I think experiencing his works in audiobook format kept my attention a bit better than print might have (although the narrator, Robert Whitfield just can’t get his American accents quite right).
Next up was Live and Let Die - the film goes a bit further astray from the novel here. The characters of Mr. Big and Solitaire are more or less the same (tho I had the impression that Solitaire in the novel was of mixed heritage), but he’s smuggling 17th century gold coins instead of cocaine, having found the Pirate Morgan’s secret treasure. Bond is called in and partners up with Felix Leiter again. They first meet Mr. Big at his Harlem club, with Bond coming off worse for the encounter. Bond helps Solitaire escape Mr. Big, and Bond and Leiter discover one end of the smuggling pipeline, but at great cost to Leiter* and Solitaire is recaptured by Mr. Big. Bond traces the smuggling pipeline to Jamaica, where he eventually confronts Mr. Big and in a suspenseful sequence, he and Solitaire are put at great danger before the villain meets his deserved end.
While I enjoyed both versions of Casino Royale pretty much equally, I think I’d choose the novel version of Live and Let Die over the film. By 1973, the Roger Moore Bond films were on the camp side of spy action films - the stunts were for stunts’ sake, the gadgets over the top and the quips came thick & fast. Moore is probably my least favorite Bond, despite being the one I probably saw first on the big screen.
Speaking of Moore - the novel Moonraker and the film version have virtually nothing in common, other than the name of the spaceship (which was actually a missile in the book) and the villain. Even though Fleming had written the novel intending for it to become a film, it’s probably just as well he was no longer with us when the EON production was released.
The novel has Bond pitted against Sir Hugo Drax, a millionaire entrepreneur with a mysterious background, who is, of primarily his own initiative, researching and building Britain’s first nuclear missile, the Moonraker. Bond is brought in as a favor to a friend of M’s to investigate whether Drax is cheating at high-stakes card games at an exclusive club. Bond exposes Drax, who responds with bitter rage.
Of course, Bond then gets assigned to go undercover at the Moonraker site, to investigate what seems to be a murder-suicide, but M suspects something more. With the help of Gale Brand (a much nicer name than Dr. Holly Goodhead, don’t you think?), a Special Branch agent who is also undercover, Bond discovers something sinister to Drax’s apparent patriotic philanthropy. There’s a great car chase, and some genuine suspense before Bond saves the day, but doesn’t quite get the girl.
While I understand that, by the early 80’s - the Moonraker story was terribly dated, I still think a lot of the elements of the novel could/should have been filmed as is, instead of the goofy (and also dated!) film we got. Perhaps Barbara Broccoli will return to it someday as a period piece.
My latest Bond read was the next in the series, publication-order-wise: Diamonds are Forever. The screen adaptation is a few notches above Moonraker, as more of the characters appear (Wint & Kidd, Tiffany Case, Shady Trees), they both use Las Vegas as a setting, and the basic plot of Bond tracking down diamond smugglers is true to the novel.
However, the villain is not Blofeld, but rather the Spangled Mob, an American gang run by two brothers, Jack and Seraffimo Spang. The film also adds in the whole Willard Whyte subplot, whereas the novel spends some time sending Bond up to Saratoga New York, where, in order to receive his payment for assisting Tiffany Case in smuggling the diamonds (in golf balls, not a corpse), he is told to bet on a ringer horse.
Conveniently, Felix Leiter (minus a few body parts, thanks to the events of the previous novel), who now works for Pinkerton’s is also pursuing the Spangled Mob, albeit from a different angle. I preferred this subplot, as well as the later interactions between Bond, Case (who is much more capable in the novel than the film) and Seraffimo Spang.
Spectreville (no connection to SPECTRE that I could detect) was an intriguing setting, and there were some great action sequences that would translate very well to film. Again, I wish there were a way to get a Bond film made that more closely adhered to the original story, instead of heading towards the campy territory of the Moore period. (Yes, this was a Connery film, but it was his last, and probably his worst, at least of the EON Production films. We won’t discuss Never Say Never Again :rolleyes:)
Next up is From Russia, With Love, which I may need to re-watch beforehand, to better compare the two versions.
*The punny line “He disagreed with something that ate him” comes right from the pen of Fleming, I’m afraid… tho it doesn’t appear in the film universe until Licence To Kill. However, it’s still applied to poor Leiter.
