Destruction of Property and Injury During Bond Chases
Dovy
Posts: 206MI6 Agent
Is there ever any indication as to who takes financial responsibility in all those wild chases for the destruction of people's property around the world when 007 is chasing his enemies, or his enemies chase him? We see how many cars, buildings, boats, etc are destroyed. Surely MI6 has to have a way of compensating all those innocent people for damages caused in Bond's chases!! Not to mention the repeated physical punishment Bonds gets constantly. It's a wonder he isn't brain damaged and in a wheelchair at best just from one film itself!
Comments
It is kind of amazing that no-one innocent seems to get killed. I think Quantum of Solace might be one of the few occasions where we see bystanders get hurt (there's a lady shot in the crowd, and that lorry driver in the PTS was not okay!) and it did feel a bit weird.
Yeah I never quite understand the Q-boat-through-the-restaurant bit - how much is Bond in control of that sliding boat? It seems to have little rocket engines but he can't steer it very accurately as it has no wheels; if it hurtled towards a table full of grannies there wouldn't have been much he could do! 😅
That guy he knocks off the steel frame in the building site at the beginning of CR definitely dies (he explodes!).
Whats the most reckless thing he's done in a built-up area I wonder? 🙂
Perhaps this?
When he flew the car off from the carpark he had no idea where it would land or how many people were below.
Perhaps M's MI6 needs to perform some 'risk: benefit' analyses on different hypothetical scenarios as part of their training programme, issuing guidance to OO agents on whether to abate or plough ahead with violent action in particular situations.
For example, in TWINE, given the risks to life and limb, Bond might have been more restrained in his use of Q's boat and its weaponry during his pursuit of the Cigar Girl along the Thames, perhaps waiting for helicopter crews to take over the tracking operation and coordinate a multi-agency interception.
Typically, though, it's Bond who's being chased - and not on home turf. Bearing in mind the significant risks of collateral damage during a pursuit, or diplomatic incidents, the question of how much value Bond places on saving his own life or evading capture in any given case should hinge on his professional evaluation of how important it might be to King and Country to escape and make a report on whatever it is he's found out about the enemy and their plans during his skirmish with them. He's usually justified in doing whatever it takes to get away. OHMSS is a good example, as Bond is chased by SPECTRE heavies through crowds of Christmas tourists. He needs to report what he now knows about the bigger picture of Blofeld's plot.
Incidentally, on this question of 'the bigger picture', I find interesting the argument in SP between M and Bond when M reprimands Bond over his unauthorised destruction of a block in Mexico City during the Day Of The Dead festivities. It's a no brainer. Bond is right. He foiled Sciarro's terrorist operation. As he says, better a block than an entire stadium. (And Bond was working secretly on the posthumous orders of the new M's predecessor, as we find out.)
At the end of the day these are Bond films, not reality, so of course we do want to see wanton destruction, thrills and spills - within the parameters of the genre. I go along with @emtiem's comment about QOS being a weird - I'd say disturbing - outlier in pointing, briefly, towards collateral damage in terms of the injury or death of innocent victims caught up in the film's initial chases.
In the World is Not Enough Bond is diagnosed with a collar bone injury and yet he goes in to protect Elektra (what a name). I think it's the first time I can recall that Bond was to be out of commission for physical injury since 1962. But of course he ignored it. It isn't hard to imagine how many physical injuries he should have had from just one single film itself. No pulled muscles, strains, no arthritis. Just the tipp of the iceberg.
I don’t think he’s ever had an iceberg injury.
I think collateral damage on film is best represented in Team America: World Police.
Yes good point about the building(s) being demolished in Spectre - it's hard to imagine no-one got hurt there!
Now that I have started watching Casino Royale I can't but wonder who is to pay the innocent owners and bystanders for all the property destroyed in the chases.....
Their Insurance companies.
The question is how would all these people know who to contact, and how any insurance company would be willing to pay for such unpredictable damage that would repeat itself constantly year after year with who knows how many M16 00 agents?!
Collateral damage. It’s perfectly acceptable.