Bond gadgets: fact, fiction, fun

Hard to stay ahead
Bond gadgets generally fall into three categories: miniature surveillance devices, hidden weapons, and “life savers.” While the first two categories seem to have their place in the real world, the third — what some call “Deus ex Machina” gadgets, clearly do not, Earnest said. The phrase means literally “God from a machine,” but it was a device used by Greek playwrights to suddenly resolve plots courtesy of godly intervention. The term now describes any contrived plot resolution.

In other words, CIA agents rarely carry pellets which allow them to breath under water for extended periods, Earnest said.

“So he’s in an impossible, or desperate situation, and suddenly he’s rescued. .. Let’s face it, He’s Superman. And Hollywood films are more and more like giant comic books these days.”

There has always been a pressure to impress audiences, but that was much easier in the 1960s, when few Americans had even imagined communications technologies beyond their telephones. Today’s audiences are much more sophisticated, and require bigger and bigger magic tricks to be impressed, says William S. Hammack, chemical engineering professor at the University of Illinois and a regular commentator on National Public Radio. That’s why Bond plots, and the gadgets, are getting more and more far flung.

“I’m not clear how they are supposed to be ahead of the times any more,” Hammack said. “In the past, they were showing us a new capability. Today, they can show us a phone that’s smaller than mine. Instead of saying here’s a whole new way of doing something, it’s just, ‘Here’s an improvement of what you already can do.’ ”

In that sense, the problem facing Bond filmmakers is similar to the problem faced by software companies, cell phone carriers, and other high-tech firms, who seem to only offer barely noticeable incremental improvements to technologies their consumers already have, rather than radical new products. In this sense, art is imitating life — or at least the Nasdaq.

Also making things hard on Q Branch, Bond’s fictional gadget engineer, is the increasing demands of product placement. The new Bond film will once again feature an Ericsson cell phone, this time a snazzy new model from Sony Ericsson that can take pictures and e-mail them to friends. The $1,000 phone could hardly be considered futuristic, as it will be available to consumers in January. No point in marketing a gadget through a Bond film that won’t be on store shelves for years.

A visual joy ride
All that makes Brandon, the CIA agent, nostalgic for Bond films gone by, when a gun fashioned from a golden cigarette case, a cigarette lighter, a cuff link and a pen was all you need to thrill audiences. Special effects capabilities and commercial pressures have sapped the creative energy out of Bond movies and gadgetry, he said.

“If you don’t have the imagination to take something real and find a compelling, realistic way to show it, you take the easier way around by whomping up some and smoke mirrors, so people can go on visual joy ride,” he said.

“Now, the intent is to not to do something truly realistic, it’s to create something fantastical. .. Over the last decade and a half, the equipment does too much, it’s too beyond realm of believability.”

Particularly the Deus ex Machina gadgetry, Brandon said. In real life — just as in real office cubicles around the world — technology regularly lets spies down.

“Not everybody is equipped with one liners and smooth escapes when the equipment fails, which is most of the time,” Brandon said. “If it’s really imperative that it work smoothly, that’s a guarantee that it won’t ... Murphy’s Law is definitely at play.”

But to Cork, the fact that Bond gadgets work may have been their chief contribution to society. At a time when most science fiction films were dark testaments to the onerous side of technology and science, Bond films showed technology in a fresh, positive light.

“Bond films were the first to embrace technology,” he said. “At the time, there were films like “Metropolis” or “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the nuclear paranoia films, about how technology torments us.” That same era brought the failure of the Edsel, which showed how ready the public and the press were to taunt clunky technology. ”

“Whatever high tech gadget that was supposed to make your life better, well invariably it failed. ... Bond films started out mocking that. But because (Bond’s) technology actually worked it helped us to the point where we all had cell phones and PDAs.”

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