Shaken and absurd
BOND DISGUISED AS JESUS WAS JUST ONE OF MANY PLOT LINES NOT TO HIT THE BIG SCREEN
James Bond has got himself out of some unbelievably sticky situations but disguising himself as Jesus to escape villains was among a series of “lost adventures” which never made it on to the screen, a new book has revealed.
The eccentric idea was dreamed up by John Landis, who would go on to direct films such as The Blues Brothers, when he served as an early writer on The Spy Who Loved Me.
The claims are made in The Lost Adventures of James Bond, which charts the unmade, out of print, and forgotten Bond stories. Author Mark Edlitz, a U.S. journalist, said Landis came up with the “outrageous idea for a pre-title sequence” which would have seen Roger Moore’s Bond pose as a crucified Jesus in a Spanish cathedral while running away from his enemies. The idea was said to have been given short shrift by Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the longtime Bond producer, who responded: “Are you f---ing crazy?”
The book also reveals an abandoned third film for Timothy Dalton’s James Bond which would have seen the spy take on killer robots. The fourth actor to portray 007 only appeared in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, but at least two other stories had been written with him in mind before he left the franchise in 1994.
Alfonse Ruggiero, who has written for hit television shows such as Miami Vice, created a draft of the next Bond film with the working title Bond 17. The elusive screenwriter, who took a year to track down, eventually told Edlitz that he “wanted to make Bond edgier again ... to go for hard crime and foreign lands.”
The story was inspired by the then approaching handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and would see 007 take on a Chinese villain and a “lethal security robot,” according to the Edlitz book. One possible title suggested for the unmade Bond 17 was Goldeneye, which would later become the title of the first Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan, Dalton’s successor in the role.
Another discarded Bond story, one which went back to when the spy first won his 00 status, was written between Moore’s final Bond film, A View to a Kill, and the casting of Timothy Dalton in the role. Known as Bond XV, it had many details which resonate with the series starring Daniel Craig, whose first Bond film, Casino Royale, was based on an original Ian Fleming novel.
Other forgotten ideas include an early draft of Moonraker. Comic book writer Cary Bates imagined a plot where the lead villain would hide in a nuclear submarine in the depths of Loch Ness. He also made a pitch for Tomorrow Never Dies where the villain tries to enlist Bond in a plot to reduce the world’s population.
The Lost Adventures of James Bond is available now.