FromMoonrakercashing in on theStar Warshype toCasino Royaleborrowing the tone ofThe Bourne Identity,plenty ofJames Bondmovies have taken influence from other films outside the franchise. The Bond series has been around for so long that a lot of recent Bond films have been influenced by earlier Bond films.No Time to Dieharked back to the tragic love story ofOn Her Majesty’s Secret Serviceand the old formula of a climactic showdown at a villain’s extravagant lair. Butthe Bond movieshave often looked to other films for inspiration.
There are plenty ofnon-Bond movies that the Bond movies have inspired.True Liescasts Arnold Schwarzenegger in a very 007-like secret agent role. TheAustin Powerstrilogy isa great parody of the Bond franchise.Kingsman: The Secret Servicearrived as a refreshing throwback to the goofy earlier Bond movies amidst the gritty realism of the Daniel Craig era. But the inspiration goes both ways. The Bond franchise has taken plenty of influence from other movies, ranging fromScarfacetoEnter the DragontoRaiders of the Lost Ark.
8North By Northwest
Influenced Russia With Love (1963)
North by Northwestis essentially what a Bond movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock would look like. Much like a typical Bond movie, it’s a spy thriller involving mystery, intrigue, plot twists, and huge action set-pieces.Cary Grant’s suave, charismatic hero is very similar to Sean Connery’s original 007: cool, collected, sharply dressed, and devilishly debonair.North by Northwesthad a widespread influence on the action genre, and that included an impact on the second ever Bond movie,From Russia with Love.
North By Northwest
Cast
North By Northwest is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most popular films and was released in 1959. The film centers on Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), an average advertising executive in New York who is hunted by foreign spies who think he is actually a secret agent. The film co-stars Eva Marie Saint, whose character Eve Kendall acts as a love interest to Roger.
InFrom Russia with Love, there’s a sequence in which Bond is attacked by a helicopter. It’s almost identical to the iconic scene inNorth by Northwestin which Grant is ambushed by a crop-duster swooping in from above.North by Northwest’s air attack is more memorable, but they’re both exhilarating sequences.From Russia with Love’s train scenes and framing of its female lead are also pretty similar toNorth by Northwest.
7Shaft
Influenced Live And Let Die (1973)
Connery’s Bond movies all followed a pretty similar formula and stayed strictly within the confines of the traditions of the spy genre. When Roger Moore took over the role of 007, the producers began to experiment with different genres that were popular at the time. Moore’s first outing,Live and Let Die, borrowed a lot of its plot and stylistic elements from blaxploitation movies likeShaft,Foxy Brown, andSweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which were popular in the late 1970s.
Shaft
Shaft is a 1971 film featuring Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, a private detective in New York City. Shaft is enlisted by a crime lord to locate and rescue his kidnapped daughter, leading to a traverse of the criminal underworld. Directed by Gordon Parks, the film blends action and drama.
This becomes apparent early in the movie when Bond’s investigation sends him to Harlem, a common setting for blaxploitation films. Yaphet Kotto’s villain, Mr. Big, wouldn’t be out of place in a Pam Grier movie. He’s an unscrupulous New York drug lord hoping to put his rivals out of business. Drug dealers were frequently used as villains in blaxploitation movies likeCoffy, which was notable because an anti-drug stance was unfashionable at the time of the counterculture movement.
6Enter The Dragon
Influenced The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)
After serving up a Bond version of a blaxploitation movie inLive and Let Die, Moore starred ina Bond movie homage to martial arts filmsin his second outing,The Man with the Golden Gun. At the time, Bruce Lee movies likeFist of FuryandEnter the Dragonhad made kung fu films all the rage.
10 Best Fight Scenes In James Bond Movies
From Sean Connery’s brutal train fight to Daniel Craig’s intense stairwell fight, the James Bond movies are full of great fight scenes.
The Man with the Golden Gunisn’t a martial arts movie from start to finish, but it does become one during a key sequence in its middle act. When Bond poses as his latest enemy, Scaramanga, to meet suspected Thai criminal Hai Fat in Bangkok, the plan backfires as Scaramanga is secretly working at Fat’s estate.
Enter the Dragon
Enter the Dragon is a popular martial artist movie starring Bruce Lee. The 1973 film focuses on a Shaolin martial artist who infiltrates an opium lord’s fortress by pretending to be interested in a fighting tournament. Robert Clouse directed the film, which co-starred John Saxon, Jim Kelly, and Ahna Capri.
Bond is captured and brought to Fat’s martial arts academy, where his students fight to the death. There, the entire student body is instructed to kill 007, and he has to battle his way out of there. This isexactly the kind of deadly predicament that Lee would find himself inover the course of one of his movies.Enter the Dragon, in particular, is all about a death match.
5Star Wars
Influenced Moonraker (1979)
When George Lucas was trying to get his passion projectStar Warsmade, he struggled to find a studio that would finance his weird little space movie, because they didn’t think space would sell. Ironically, when Lucas finally gotStar Warsmade, it became such a monstrous blockbuster hit that every studio in Hollywood suddenly wanted to make space movies.
Moonraker departed drastically from its relatively grounded source material to send 007 out of Earth’s atmosphere for a laser battle on a Death Star-style space station.
Star Trekwas resurrected as a movie franchise,Alientook the horror genre into the cosmos, and Roger Corman made his own ripoff,Battle Beyond the Stars.Star Warsfever even affected the Bond franchise. The end credits ofThe Spy Who Loved Medeclared, “James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only.”
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
Star Wars is a seminal science fiction film released in 1977 that follows the quest of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo to rescue Princess Leia from the oppressive Imperial forces. They are aided by the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, as they strive to restore peace to the galaxy.
But after the success ofStar Wars, Eon decided to hold off on adaptingFor Your Eyes Onlyand focus on Ian Fleming’s only space-themed novel instead.Moonrakerdeparted drastically from its relatively grounded source materialtosend007 out of Earth’s atmosphere for a laser battle on a Death Star-style space station.
4Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Influenced Octopussy (1983)
Star Warsisn’t the only Lucas creation that had an influence on the Bond franchise. Lucas’ other blockbuster,Raiders of the Lost Ark, inspired one ofthe campest Bond movies,Octopussy. With theIndiana Jonesfranchise,Steven Spielberg was heavily influenced by the Bond series.
Spielberg had been turned down for the job of directing an official Bond movieon more than one occasion, but when his friend came to him with the idea for a nostalgic throwback to pulpy action-adventure serials of the 1930s, he saw an opportunity to create his own version of 007 for an American audience.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The most popular and well-received film in the Indiana Jones movie franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark follows Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones in a race against Nazi forces to recover the famed Ark of the Covenant. Aided by his former lover, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indy must work to keep the Nazis, led by Dr. Rene Belloq, from obtaining the Ark and thus becoming recipients of its power. The film is widely regarded as one of the all-time greatest movies ever made.
Poetically, after Bond inspired Indy, Indy inspired Bond. After the success ofRaiders of the Lost Ark,Eon made anIndiana Jones-style Bond movie withOctopussy.Octopussysends Moore’s 007 on an adventure through a treacherous jungle. He even swings from a vine and does a Tarzan yell.Octopussyfeatures Indy’s least favorite animal, snakes, and other exotic wildlife that wouldn’t be out of place in an adventure with Dr. Jones.
3Scarface
Influenced License To Kill (1989)
Timothy Dalton’s final outing in the role of 007,License to Kill, is arguablythe darkest Bond movie ever made. It forgoes the usual formula of Bond taking an assignment from M, going on an official mission for MI6, and taking down a megalomaniac for political purposes. Instead,Bond abandons his official MI6 mission and goes rogue to exact revenge for a personal reason. He goes after the ruthless villain who maimed his close friend Felix Leiter and murdered Leiter’s bride.
Scarface
Brian De Palma’s iconic crime drama is loosely based on the 1929 novel of the same name and follows Cuban refugee Tony Montana (Al Pacino), who begins a life of crime after arriving in Miami. It chronicles his rise from a penniless thug to one of the richest and most ruthless kingpins in the world, amassing a criminal empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The villain in question, drug lord Franz Sanchez, has a lot in common with the titular gangster in Brian De Palma’s blood-soaked classicScarface. Much like Tony Montana, Sanchez is a notorious cocaine kingpin who uses torture to get what he wants. The aptest elevator pitch to ascribe toLicense to Killwould be Bond vs. Scarface, because that’s essentially what this movie is.
2The Bourne Identity
Influenced Casino Royale (2006)
Since it began in the 1960s, the Bond franchise has been marked by pure escapism. Bond uses goofy, far-fetched gadgets, he chases supervillains with their own lairs and henchmen, and he finds himself in situations like being strapped to a table with a laser beam slowly inching its way up to his crotch.
There’s a huge disparity between real-life espionage and the escapist antics of the Bond movies. In 2002, the Bond franchise was further from realism than ever before as 007 surfed on a tidal wave and fought a race-swapping villain inDie Another Day. In the same year,The Bourne Identitycame along and reinvigorated the spy genrewith its gritty realism.
The Bourne Identity
After waking up at sea with no memory of who he once was, Jason Bourne travels the world to discover his identity while mysterious assassins try to kill him. Matt Damon stars as Jason Bourne, a character first appearing in Robert Ludlum’s 1980 spy novel The Bourne Identity. The film was followed by The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, both of which were also adaptations of Ludlum’s work.
The Bourne Identityand its sequels brought a Bond-esque superspy into the real world, with shaky camerawork and shady government conspiracies. When Pierce Brosnan relinquished the role of Bond to Daniel Craig and Eon rebooted the franchisewithCasino Royale, they imbued it with some of thatBourne-style realism.Casino Royalebrought Bond into the real world, with torture, visceral violence, and genuine spy work, and it resulted in one of the best entries in the franchise.
1The Dark Knight
Influenced Skyfall (2012)
Christopher Nolan’sThe Dark Knightchanged the face of blockbuster filmmaking. Nolan’s sprawling crime epic set on the streets of Gotham City proved that comic book movies — and big-budget franchise films in general — could be considered real cinema. It led to darker reboots of superhero franchises, likeMan of SteelandThe Amazing Spider-Man, as well as more “realistic” takes on typically fantastical properties, likeRise of the Planet of the Apesand 2014’sGodzilla.
Javier Bardem’s iconic villain, Raoul Silva, is cut from the same cloth as Heath Ledger’s Joker.
Craig’s third outing in the role of Bond,Skyfall, was yet another movie influenced byThe Dark Knight.Javier Bardem’s iconic villain, Raoul Silva, is cut from the same cloth as Heath Ledger’s Joker. They’re both eccentric sociopaths who wage psychological warfare against the heroes.
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan, is the second installment in the Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale as Batman. Released in 2008, the film follows Batman’s alliance with Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent as they combat the organized crime that threatens Gotham, facing the menacing Joker.
They’re both supposedly agents of chaos who actually have a meticulous plan. They both make surprisingly strong points, despite their questionable actions, and they both get caught on purpose. Director Sam Mendes alsotook inspiration from Nolan’s heavier, more dramatic approach to Bruce Wayneand dug deep intoJames Bond’s fractured psychology.
