So, Daniel Craig is going to play a stormtrooper in Star Wars: Episode VII. Pretty weird, right? Nope. The world of secret agent 007 and that galaxy far, far away is more tangled up than you might have thought. There are now going to be seven Star Wars movies and we all know James Bond’s number is 007. So, here are seven connections between James Bond and Star Wars that are for your eyes only and everyone else’s eyes, too. Uselessful minutia ahead!
In Casino Royale; Darth Vader Plays Frankenstein’s Monster
In 1967, a spoof film of James Bond stories titled Casino Royale featured multiple James Bonds: one played by David Niven, one by Bond actress Ursula Andress, one even played by Woody Allen, and one played by… Darth Vader. Years before he would stride onto that Corellian Corvette, the man who occupied Darth Vader’s costume—bodybuilder David Prowse—had his film debut threatening “James Bond” in Casino Royale, dressed as Frankenstein’s monster. (Prowse was somehow not approached for the “real” Casino Royale in 2006. I guess they decided the Frankenstein’s monster stuff wasn’t needed.) If you want to get really weird, Eva Green, who was in the “real” Casino Royale with Daniel Craig, now stars with a different Frankenstein and a different Bond (Timothy Dalton) on Penny Dreadful.
The Director of the BEST Star Wars Movie Directed the WORST Bond Movie
Irvin Kershner famously directed and probably helped save The Empire Strikes Back. He’s a cinematic god for everything he did on Empire, which we know would have probably been bad had Lucas directed it. Weirdly, Kershner’s other big forays into famous franchises weren’t as well-received. He directed the sequel to Robocop, Robocop 2, which most people know is just kind of okay. But, the weirdest thing of his whole career is easily his directorial work on Never Say Never Again. This movie features Sean Connery as an embarrassing and aging James Bond. This movie was actually in direct competition in 1983 against another “real” James Bond movie, Octopussy. Somehow, a movie called “Octopussy” is waaaay better.
Both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn Turned Down the Role of James Bond
Can you believe there was once a time when Liam Neeson didn’t want to do action movies? Apparently it was in 1994, right before Pierce Brosnan made his debut as Bond; the studio wanted Neeson as 007. Then as the sun set on Brosnan’s tenure in 2005, apparently EON Productions approached Ewan McGregor, hot off his Revenge of the Sith gig to play Bond. He apparently turned it down because he didn’t want to be typecast as a badass. Again.
General Veers Messes With Bond in For Your Eyes Only
Consummate English character actor Julian Glover has played a lot of bad guys. He’s the villain in perhaps the most loved Tom Baker Doctor Who story “City of Death,” and also plays the villain in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Notably, Julian Glover also shows up in The Empire Strikes Back as General Veers, the guy who drives the AT-AT walker which manages to blow up the shield generator on Hoth. BUT, he also played the primary villain Aristotle Kristatos in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
George Lucas Wanted to Make a James Bond Movie
This one is slightly apocryphal, but supposedly Steven Spielberg and George Lucas wanted to do a James Bond movie for real, but Lucas felt he had “something better.” That something better turned out to be Indiana Jones, which was probably not a movie that would have been greenlit if it weren’t for the success of Star Wars. Although we know Han Solo and Indiana Jones are NOT the same character, and that Indiana Jones isn’t really James Bond nor is Indy really Bond, it’s still fun to squint and pretend that Sean Connery’s James Bond is Han Solo’s father.
Moonraker Was Made Because of Star Wars
At the end of the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, audiences were told that “James Bond Will Return in For Your Eyes Only,” but he didn’t. At least not right away. Instead, the next 007 flick after The Spy Who Loved Me was Moonraker. Deviating from the Earth-based action of the novel substantially, the film Moonraker features James Bond in space, and lots and lots of lasers. (It contains two boat chases, too!) Moonraker was released in 1979, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this Bond was made in direct response to the success of 1977’s Star Wars. And I’d love to say the big space battle at the end of Moonraker is on par with Star Wars, but that’s only because I don’t want to hurt Moonraker’s feelings.
The Force Awakens Was Shot in James Bond’s Home Studio
While we know a lot of The Force Awakens was shot on location around the world, any of the sound stage stuff was filmed at Pinewood Studios in London. This is a change for Star Wars, but also interesting because it’s where nearly all the Bond films have been shot. With this in mind, Daniel Craig lurking around the Star Wars set starts to make a lot more sense.
Add your own Bond/Star Wars connections below!
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and Other Geeky Truths, forthcoming from Plume Books on November 24th. His writing has appeared with The New York Times, The Awl, Electric Literature, VICE and elsewhere. He is a longtime contributor to Tor.com and lives in New York City.
Leave us not forget that Christopher Lee played both “The Man With the Golden Gun” AND Count Dooku.
And, for the record, NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN is far from the worst Bond film. It may not be part of the official sequence, but I’d rate it above OCTOPUSSY, FROM A VIEW TO A KILL, LICENSE TO KILL, and even the original THUNDERBALL . . ..
Greg! How could I forget that!
Agree with Greg on Never Say Never Again. compared to the drivel of Bond movies in the late 70s and all thru the 80s, it was flipping great
Great article. But if you think Empire is the best SW film, you are revealing that you are under 40 and didn’t see them in the theater in sequence ;)
Another Star Wars connection about Moonraker is that the filmmakers originally wanted Industrial Light and Magic—Lucas’s effects house—to do the effects for it. But ILM wanted way too much money for it. (Weird to think of a James Bond movie having budgetary constraints, given how much they’ve blown on the last few, but back in the day, they did.)
So, the Moonraker filmmakers turned to various low-budget camera tricks, like blocking out parts of the film and shooting multiple exposures, to depict all the space battles. The space shuttle takeoff, which anticipated a real shuttle takeoff by several years (the shuttle had originally been supposed to be flying at the time Moonraker was in theaters, but it got pushed back), was filmed by filling the shuttle model with salt, punching holes in the bottom, and rolling the cameras in slow motion.
And that’s not even going into the way they invented a whole new kind of parachute (that would fit under the jackets of the stuntmen) so that they could film the opening sequence. Yes, that’s right, nowadays that kind of thing would all be done in CGI (though the skydiving sequence in Iron Man 3 was a laudable exception). But they didn’t have CGI back then. The only way to shoot it was to throw people out of the plane for real. Over and over again.
And really, it’s easy to scoff at Moonraker now, but did you know that, at $210 million, it was the highest grossing movie of the entire Bond franchise all the way up until Goldeneye? It still ranks as 7th highest grossing overall, or 8th highest when adjusted for inflation. Despite all the sci-fi silliness, it actually has a reasonably solid espionage plot, seeing Bond investigating all over the world.
But even leaving aside that silliness, Moonraker has some of the most amazing special effects of the entire franchise, both for what they did and how they did it. The space battle effects may be a little dated now, but they were remarkable for their day.
He’s a cinematic god for everything he did on Empire, which we know would have probably been bad had Lucas directed it.
Yes, because Lucas did such a poor job with A New Hope just before it. NOT!
I’m amazed nobody mentioned that Boba Fett works in Q Branch in the Moore era. Lobot gets dropped down a chimney in FYEO as well…
@6
From the stuff I’ve read, a Lucas did make A New Hope work. But her name was Marcia Lucas. Many a good movie has been rescued in the editing room.
@@.-@: No, I don’t think there’s any doubt Empire was the best SW movie and I’m 44. The original (which I still refuse to call “A New Hope”) was more important culturally and to me personally, but I could say the same about other movies as well simply because I saw them as a child and seeing them impacted my life in one way or another.
The wizened Palpatine and Blofeld.
I just watched The Spy who Loved Me. The back tunnels Bond used to escape made me flash back to the tunnels where Luke found Leia and then went down into trash compactor room. I stopped the show and saw both came out in 1977, but both used same set designers. I’m assuming Star Wars took longer to edit since so much special effects, etc, so maybe James Bond got a reused idea for the set! Pretty interesting that the villain’s liars look so streamlined like spaceships from Star Wars New Hope! Take a look at The Spy who Loved Me. The similarities started before Star wars came out because of the set crew.