These little hiccups left him shaken, but
miraculously, not stirred.
Welcome to WatchMojo UK and today we’ll
be counting down the Top Ten Times James Bond
really should have died.
For this list, we will be focussing on those
unbelievable moments where secret agent James
Bond was facing certain death and, well, probably
should have perished, but somehow he came
out alive.
This film is home to some brilliantly outrageous
stunts.
There is a certain bike riding, skydiving,
plane catching sequence however that just
goes a little too far.
After Bond decides he will do whatever it
takes to catch a plane that is plummeting
off a cliff, he decides to hurl himself and
a motorbike off a cliff and skydive his way
down to it.
Not only is it remarkable that Bond made it
to the plane in time, but somehow he manages
the impossible and pulls up conveniently just
before crashing into the mountains.
You really are a sorcerer Mr. Bond.
It’s usually Bond himself that manages to
worm his way out of sticky situations.
But in “From Russia with Love”, a certain
someone swoops in to save the day - and surprisingly,
it’s a bad guy, SPECTRE assassin Donald
“Red” Grant.
Keeping Bond alive just long enough to allow
him to retrieve a piece of intelligence for
him, Red hangs in the wings and protects Bond.
In one particular scenario, Red takes out
a guy with a knife who is about to stab 007
in the back.
Of course our secret agent just gets on with
it.
But could you imagine - Bond unromantically
taken out by some anonymous dude with a knife.
What a waste.
There are quite a few scientific laws tested
in “Goldfinger”, electrocution being one
of them.
But what caught our attention was when Bond
is fighting for survival on a plane and suddenly
a window is smashed and the cabin pressure
drops.
The bottom line here, bad guy Auric Goldfinger
gets sucked out of a window whereas Bond,
seemingly with reaction times as quick as
a bullet, merely holds on and rides out the
storm.
Whether or not the Bond series has its science
right here isn't the topic of discussion,
but it’s pretty clear that a force powerful
enough to hurl chubby Goldfinger through the
air like a frisbee should’ve took Bond with
it as well.
Ah yes, this scene.
Something cemented in Bond folklore, unfortunately
for all the wrong reasons.
Essentially Bond is falling into the sea,
giant waves in pursuit, and equipped only
with the wreckage of his vehicle.
What does he do?
Of course he whips up a surfboard-like contraption
and windsurfs his way to safety.
Take your pick for the reasons Bond should
have been brown bread here.
Tangled parachute, hitting an iceberg, what
about drowning because he’s surfing on a
slab of bloody metal.
And let’s not start with the CGI.
Oh the CGI.
In this film’s final showdown, Bond takes
on a hotel of bad guys in order to kill villain
Greene and save Camille - and as a result,
sets the place alight, literally.
Unfortunately, Bond eventually finds himself
cornered, surrounded by flames and explosions,
and kind of of accepts his fate.
But of course, that’s not how it ends.
After somehow surviving copious amounts of
smoke in the air and heat from the flames,
Bond shoots a cannister on the wall, which
ignites yet another explosion, and which allows
him to climb out unharmed - taking the expression
‘fighting fire with fire’ to a whole new
level.
We’ve seen Bond and his vehicles take some
pretty brutal hits over the years, but nothing
quite tops the crash from Casino Royale.
Rushing off to find and rescue Vesper, Bond
cuts up the road like a bat out of hell, desperately
trying to catch up with those that took her.
To his surprise, she turns up in the middle
of the road, forcing Bond to erratically swerve
and somersault his car several times.
It really does keep going, and going.
After the wreckage comes to a halt, Bond slouches
forward unconscious, but lives to fight another
day.
Seat belts people - amazing things.
A dramatic chase scene with on-road boat riding
and underwater tie-fixing sets the tone for
this feat of survival.
After finally catching up with a fleeing assailant,
Bond finds himself hanging from a hot air
balloon, rising higher and higher into the
sky.
An impromptu explosion forces him to let go
and plummet a few hundred feet onto London’s
Millennium Dome.
For the record, the Millennium Dome is made
of solid fibreglass, and Bond falls straight
onto it, back first.
Even a textbook parachute fall wouldn't do
you much good here.
You’d crumble like soft bread.
In what is undeniably one of the saddest moments
in the entire Bond franchise, this scene see’s
the secret agent’s recently-married wife
Tracy gunned down by Blofeld and his goon
Irma Bunt.
Hit by a stray bullet, Tracy dies instantly
while sat in the passenger seat as James removes
the flowers from the outside of the wedding
car.
The astonishing thing here is that James somehow
avoids being hit, even when stood outside
the car, in clear view of his assassin and
when faced with a barrage of bullets.
Also, if they so wished, Blofeld and co. could
have just stopped and finished the job, but
for cinematic reasons, they didn’t.
For this entry, 007 wasn't such a successful
bullet dodger.
As well as being battered and bruised from
a fight atop a moving train, James also takes
a uranium bullet to the chest - and goes flying
from a bridge after getting hit by a rifle
bullet.
Potential poisoning from Uranium, a broken
back and drowning should have put Bond out
of action indefinitely.
But, as everyone loves a comeback story, James
nurses himself back to health with some heavy
drinking.
Oh, not to mention the fact that he removes
the bullet shrapnel from his shoulder, with
a knife, himself.
Nobody does it better.
Possibly the most appropriate title for a
Bond film ever, “You Only Live Twice”
sees our hero folded into a stowaway bed and
riddled with machine gun bullets in the opening
sequence.
Now, in a situation like this, you’d expect
Bond to have slipped out just before being
shot.
But shortly afterwards, we see him bloodied
and motionless.
Even the police confirm that he is dead.
Of course, Bond survives the encounter and
we are lead to believe he faked his death,
but as an audience, there’s no doubt that
we feel cheated and that the secret agent
should have been rolled in the bedsheet and
laid to rest there and then.
