With 24 official entries into the series so far and a 25th on the way very soon, there has been an incredible number of opportunities for plot holes to rear their heads across James Bond.
We’ve collected the ten biggest errors into one list. Everything from aquatic anachronisms, to killing continuity problems, there is a lot of detail to sink your teeth into with this spy series.
The Classic Fish Problem
Weirdly, this error, taken from 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, is one that appears relatively often as a film plot hole. Picture the scene: car goes underwater, car is unscathed by the h2o that surrounds it, car emerges but the protagonist is confidently holding a fish. This happens scene for scene in this particular film, but if there was enough of a hole in the car for a fish to enter, then Bond himself should have drowned pretty quickly.
And Some Shark Problems
Remaining in the watery realm, Licence To Kill treats us to a problem with an all-around more murderous fish; the shark. Towards the end of the film, Bond makes it into the laboratory, with a shark jumping out from under the stairs to dislodge them.
In a move that defies the laws of physics with incredible poise, the shark manages to stay still for a few seconds, effectively hovering. On top of this, the shark is incredibly unconvincing. Considering Jaws is from a similar time period, you’d think the James Bond creators would have been able to replicate a convincing shark?
Why Didn’t Wai Lin Take Her Handcuffs Off Earlier?
While Tomorrow Never Dies isn’t the most widely loved Bond film in the world, it does have a great chase scene towards the end, in which Wai Lin is handcuffed. This, as you might expect, makes escape a little more challenging. However, when she stops, she is able to get her handcuffs off with one swift movement. If she has this sort of ability, why didn’t she just take them off ages before, making things a lot easier?
How Do They Know Bond Is With MI6?
The first Bond film to feature Daniel Craig was a massive hit for the franchise and managed to gain back a bit of the traction it seemed to have lost during the late 90s and early 2000s. However, right at the start of the film, Bond messes up a mission in Madagascar, killing an unarmed prisoner.
However, newspapers suggest that Bond is an MI6 operative (which is true), but they have no way of knowing this. He didn’t speak to anyone, so they wouldn’t know he worked for a British company, and they certainly shouldn’t know he was a secret agent.
Flawed Airport Logic
During Casino Royale, there are, understandably, a lot of scenes in casinos. However, a lot of the action takes place at Miami airport. Airport security has been incredibly tight for many years, being taken even further in recent years. Even the most unsupported claims of terrorism would shut down an airport, so when actual terrorism occurs multiple times, it seems really weird that the airport pretty much carries on as usual.
Renard’s Fake Shock
Renard and Elektra are two of the main antagonists in The World Is Not Enough, which starred Pierce Brosnan all the way back in 1999. Towards the end of the film, Bond has to kill Elektra while on the radio to Renard.
Obviously, if he can hear Bond’s voice on the radio, he’d surely hear a gunshot, which is much louder than a voice, right? Well, apparently not, because when Bond tells him that Elektra is dead, he feigns shock.
Timing Issues In Die Another Day
One of the primary plot devices in Die Another Day is the ‘death’ of James Bond. On the same day that he supposedly dies, Colonel Moon (a very inventive name) disappears. It was no more than a year and a half between Bond’s capture and escape, but in that time, Moon has managed to pull off things that would take multiple full lifetimes for most. He manages to get knighted (which would normally require many years of service), becomes a billionaire charity doner, and undergoes a very complex procedure that turns him into Gustav. It’s very impressive that he can get all of that done.
Mexican Stereotypes
One of the more problematic things that still remains in Hollywood to this day is the stereotypical presentation of Mexican culture in film. The idea of Dia De Muertos is certainly real and celebrated in Mexican culture, it isn’t reflected accurately at the start of Spectre: parades, costumes and skeletal imagery, for example.
In fact, the real-life celebration would typically just see families gather at a grave or a home to remember the dead, rather than turn it into a huge party.
Bond’s Bullet Resistance?
Bond is flawed inherently due to its portrayal of the protagonist as a superhuman with an inability to die. During Skyfall, we see him get shot for what must be the billionth time, but not a lot comes of it. When he is shot in the shoulder, it bleeds for a while and then stops. When he is shot in the chest, he falls into a river but nothing else really happens. Considering he has just literally been shot with actual bullets from an actual gun, you might think there would be some repercussions, or at the very least some sign that something happened.
Strange Tarantula Assassination Choice
The very first film in the Bond franchise is allowed to have a few flaws, given it was made all the way back in 1962. However, tarantulas haven’t changed much since then, so this one isn’t really excusable.
One of the most famous scenes in the film sees a tarantula being used as a way of assassination. They might be scary, but their bites aren’t lethal. As such, even if the bite was able to take place, the assassination simply wouldn’t have worked.
