Bond would be dead in seven minutes if this film was real life, say doctors
He’d bleed to death, break his neck ...or get cancer
AS James Bond, he is licensed to kill. But it takes a great deal of artistic licence for Daniel Craig’s character to survive his on-screen ordeals, medical experts say.
For in real life 007 would have perished several times in his most recent movie, Skyfall. The incidents that ought to have been fatal include one before the opening credits rolled that would have ‘turned his lungs out’.
Craig is clearly a lot more vulnerable than his alter-ego – he has just had knee surgery after hurting himself in a stunt for the next Bond movie, Spectre.
But Bond is not the only one to defy medical science. Writing for Total Film magazine, the experts say many characters in other top films would also have struggled to escape alive from their injuries.
They include John McClane – played by Bruce Willis – in Die Hard, the serial killer in Halloween and, perhaps more surprisingly, three of the cast of family comedy Home Alone. This is their verdict.
SKYFALL [2012]
The fifth Bond film may well have been called You Only Live Twice but in Daniel Craig’s most recent outing as Bond he should have died at least three times, according to the medical experts.
If 007 had been a mere mortal, the film would have ended after seven minutes – rather than lasting two hours and 23 minutes. Right at the beginning, Bond is hit in the chest by a shell laced with radioactive uranium, the type of weapon usually used to destroy tanks.
‘The exit wound would have shattered his shoulder blade,’ says Total Film’s medical adviser Dr Bertie Garbutt. ‘Bond would not have survived. A depleted uranium shell going at any kind of speed would’ve passed straight through him, turned his lungs inside out and killed him.’
Yet Bond survives and only five minutes later plummets off a train, 260ft into the river below. According to Dr Garbutt, such a fall would probably have broken his neck or severed his spinal cord. If he survived that, he would almost certainly have drowned.
Bond’s own medical techniques aren’t up to much, either. Thirtyone minutes in to Skyfall, he decides to remove that pesky bullet from his shoulder – not something Dr Garbutt would recommend.
Such a clumsy manoeuvre would have led to infection, unconsciousness, blood loss and severe muscle and nerve damage.
Oh, and the bits of uranium from the shell floating around his system might well have given him cancer.
Bond’s retirement would not have been a blissful one. He would have been extremely hard of hearing, thanks to the grenades and gunfire that wrecked his Skyfall estate in Scotland an hour and 54 minutes into the film.
His eardrums would almost certainly have been perforated. Only eight minutes later, a deafened Bond plunges into an icy loch and, while underwater, fights a pursuer to the death – not a prospect he was in the best shape for. ‘Fighting means he would use oxygen quickly; so it’s improbable he’d get out in time,’ says Dr Garbutt, adding: ‘Hypothermia would set in very quickly and he’d struggle to move.’
DIE HARD [1988]
John McClane, Bruce Willis’s maverick New York cop in the Die Hard series, should by rights have done exactly that – die.
A posse of baddies have rounded up a group of hostages, including McClane’s wife, in a Los Angeles skyscraper. In his bid to rescue them, McClane starts out as a bit of a softie. He’s 35 minutes into the film, when the poor lamb hits his head against a plaster wall and tumbles down some stairs.
‘The plasterboard is likely to have caused some bruising but, because he landed on top of another guy, he may have sprained something,’ says Dr Ram Moorthy, a head and neck surgeon.
Thirteen minutes later, McClane nearly falls to his death down a lift shaft, only to be saved by clinging on to a ledge with his fingertips... an unlikely prospect in someone who isn’t a trained climber, says Dr Moorthy. It’s highly possible he could have broken his fingers and dislocated his shoulder.
McClane lives to fight on. An hour and 13 minutes in, he blows up a lift shaft. Dr Moorthy says he should have suffered shrapnel and burn wounds, and a ringing in his ears.
McClane could just about have survived – and again, two minutes later, when he gashes his feet on glass fragments, if the blood loss wasn’t too bad. He might even have got over being kicked in the head many times two minutes later, although he would have suffered jaw and cheekbone fractures.
What he couldn’t have survived, says Dr Moorthy, is being shot in the shoulder. ‘More than likely, John would have lost consciousness from blood loss,’ he says.
‘And I’m not sure whether he’d have been able to defeat the bad guys. I think he would’ve died during his final battle when he was kicked in the head and shot.’
Still, McClane miraculously makes it, and indeed goes on to leap off the exploding building, smashing through a plate glass window, with no permanent injury – as the next four films in the Die Hard franchise went on to prove.
HOME ALONE [1990]
Surely this old Christmas favourite would leave all its leading players alive? Not according to London registrar Dr Keir Shiels. In his analysis, not only would poor little Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) have been a goner, so would his tormentors, burglars Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern).
When Kevin falls from some high shelves, he would almost certainly have suffered fatal head injuries.
Later, both crooks slip down some icy stairs, with Harry potentially breaking vertebrae and being paralysed. Marv’s fall is less serious but then he’s struck by a crowbar and hit with an iron.
‘With enough impact to the front of the head... potentially fatal,’ says Dr Shiels. The pair slip on toy cars, are knocked off their feet by swinging paint tins and are smacked in the head with metal spades.
No human could have survived such repeated trauma, says Dr Shiels. ‘Marv and Harry would be very seriously disabled and would probably have died from their injuries. Kevin would have died from massive head injuries when he fell from climbing shelves.’
HALLOWEEN [1978]
Life expectancy doesn’t look good for student Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) when she’s stalked by Michael Myers (Nick Castle), who’s just escaped from a nearby mental institution and put on a mask.
In fact, though, it’s Myers who gets it in the neck when, an hour and 16 minutes in, he is stabbed with a knitting needle. Dr Hannah BarnhamBrown, of St George’s, University of London, says he could have survived as long as it didn’t hit an artery.
Four minutes later, Myers gets a coat-hanger in the eye. Again, not necessarily fatal. But, she says, his luck would finally run out when he is stabbed in the chest.
‘His left lung has almost certainly collapsed and his heart has probably been damaged too,’ says Dr Barnham-Brown, ‘He could easily have dropped down dead.’
For good measure, three minutes later Myers is shot six times before tumbling from a balcony.
‘The gunshots would definitely have killed him and the idea of him getting up and escaping afterwards is laughable,’ she says.
THE new issue of Total Film is out tomorrow.