Static Thoughts - James Bond Jr.

This latest weekend has marked the premiere of Spectre, he fourth film in the Daniel Craig run of James Bond films and continuity that started with Casino Royale in 2006.  At time of writing I haven’t seen it yet but given that I write about nerdy pop culture jazz on the Internet I’m basically contractually required to get in on the fun.  The only problem is that I don’t have a dedicated movie column and James Bond actually hasn’t really spread far beyond the realm of film.  

Unlike a lot of similar heroes he’s never branched out into comic books despite his widespread popularity and longevity James has never made it to television…well, almost never.  Yes, today we’re discussing the ignominious classic of the early ‘90s James Bond Jr., an animated show set smack in the middle of the dead years between Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan that brought James Bond to the small screen as well as comic books, video games, and action figures. 

James Bond Jr. premiered in September 1991, right in the middle of the 6 year hiatus the series went through between the Licence to Kill and GoldenEye.  The basic gist of the show plays a lot like an early draft of Kingsman before they added all the interesting parts and the stuff ripped off from Harry Potter and Ender’s Game.  The titular James Bond Jr. is attending the Warfield Academy, a finishing school for children with Bond related family history.  Aside from Bond there’s I.Q. the grandson of Q from the main movies and Gordo Leiter, the possible son of Bond’s CIA associate Felix Leiter.  Those are actually the only characters with Bond associations though as, for some reason, all the other students seem to just be part of England’s upper crust.  I’m not exactly sure what the thinking was with this set-up as the show ends up having to constantly contrive reasons for Bond to be called away from school to fight evil and it probably would’ve been easier to just have him and his classmates actually be in training as part of some secret global spy agency. 

Each episode follows pretty much the same format with Bond and friends stumbling into some villainous situation, usually while on vacation just to make the Warfield Academy setting especially pointless.  From there the gang becomes embroiled in solving the problem of the weak and opposing the forces of SCUM, the far less competent version of Spectre that has chosen to oppose James Bond’s nephew.  Speaking of, that particular relationship is actually never clarified as James Bond Jr. is constantly referred to as James Bond’s nephew even though the name “junior” is usually reserved for someone’s son.  It’s also never confirmed who Junior’s mother is or on what side he’s related to James.  Personally, I subscribe to the James Bond codename theory and my guess is that this is the son of Roger Moore Bond, who was the brother of Stacy Bond, the wife of George Lazenby’s Bond.

The weirdest thing about the show has got to be its cavalcade of villains as they’re all actual Bond villains.  Aside from a handful of dopey originals like Captain Walker D. Plank most of the villains on the show are from Bond movies including Jaws, Oddjob, Nick Nack, Goldfinger, and Dr. No.  I get that James Bond has one of the most interesting rogues galleries in fiction but it’s just very strange to see characters from across the franchise’s history thrown together to fight James Bond’s high school aged nephew, especially given how much this messes up any conceivable time scale of the show. 

All of the villains are also given horrendous redesigns, with Jaws now sporting an entire lower Jaw of steel, Oddjob in some kind of hideous tracksuit and gold chains, and Dr. No has been reimagined into a supremely racist Fu Man Chu type “yellow peril” villain.  What’s really weird though is that we know James Bond exists in this continuity, he’s mentioned numerous times and we actually see his handy work on a few occasions, yet he never steps in to handle any of his many foes schemes, in fact he doesn’t seem to even be aware of what’s going on, as if he’s retired from active duty.  That possibility, aside from fitting in with the “James Bond is a code name” theory, also fits with the opening theme song lyrics that claim that James Bond Jr. is now “heir to the name,” so it’s possible we’re actually seeing a new James Bond in training, specifically the Pierce Brosnan James Bond. 

Aside from the many weird continuity questions the series raises there’s really not very much to James Bond Jr.  The show’s group format and colorful villain set-up makes it feel like a really bad example of Captain Planet backwash though Junior’s collection of hangers on isn’t anywhere near as diverse as the Planeteers or even the Burger King Kids Club.  Actually the lack of diversity isn’t that surprising as a lot of the show’s episodes are kind of shockingly racist.  The emphsis on globe trotting adventure means we hop around to a lot of poorly realized foreign locals populated by horrendous stereotypes of the actual inhabitants, the worst offender being ‘The Hungry Dunes’ which features racism against both Muslims and Asians. 

The show’s most interesting as the first and, to my knowledge only, attempt to apply the James Bond branded franchise aesthetic to a merchandise and productions outside the films.  In the ‘60s James Bond walked hand-in-hand with Star Trek and the Adam West Batman show as the forerunners of modern franchises, with all three series contributing to the notion of super-merchandisable and toyettic props that could fit into a visually cohesive franchise identity.  For Batman it was his utility belt arsenal, for Star Trek it was the pile of technological doodads the Enterprise crew relied upon, and for Bond it was the various gadgets provided him each mission by Q. 

Given the limitations and sensibilities of the time both Bond and Star Trek were considered too adult to be worth producing merchandise for but the aesthetic principals they pioneered remained in place for decades after that era faded so it makes sense that someone would eventually approach the possibility of applying the golden age Bond aesthetic to a more merchandisable series.  Ultimately James Bond Jr. ended up a failed experiment in that regard and with good reason.  The Bond franchise has always been about the fantasy of rich opulence and all the entails and at the end of the day that’s a fantasy that appeals to adults not to children, trying to make James Bond entertaining to kids because he’s afforded luxury and sophistication would be like trying to sell Bond to adults by making him a space hero who fights shape shifting bad guys in sci-fi power armor and thanks to Moonraker and Die Another Day we all know how that works out. 


if you liked this article please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter