The Increasing Strangeness of James Bond Titles

Here's a list of potential titles I've come up with for my still unwritten Bond-style novel. I'd like to think that at least some of them have the Fleming touch.

The Order of the Black Bone
Backscatter
Gambling With the Gods
Spheres of Suppression
Ramrod
The Illyrian Quotient
Last Flight to Capetown
The Brisbane Manifesto
The Trebizond Sortie
Professor Hiss
Nine Miles from Mombasa
The Haiphong Gradient
The Batavian Helix
The Scimitar’s Wake
Irresistible Force
The Praetorian Dimension
The Tantric Hypothesis
Payload 56
The Presence of Malice
The Ratio of Consequences
The Anubis Equation
The Mirage of Fate
Veil of Deceit
Hard Currency
Blast Radius
Smoke and Ash
Acidbolt
A Snowball’s Chance
The Cold Edge
A Second Time for Everything
The Taste of Flames
The Holborne Effect
The Path of Most Resistance
Deep Freeze
Deadlock
No Quarter
Maelstrom

Sharky wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonraker_%28sail%29

I'll sound like a liar, but I had read about that before. So much for my memory.

Now I feel like an idiot.

Some of these have potential, IMCO:

Gambling With the Gods
Ramrod
Professor Hiss
The Scimitar’s Wake
Payload 56
The Presence of Malice
The Mirage of Fate
Acidbolt
A Snowball’s Chance
The Cold Edge
A Second Time for Everything
The Taste of Flames
The Path of Most Resistance
Deadlock

Some of the others read more like titles for chapters, Titan comic stories, or Fredeirck Forsyth/Robert Ludlum novels.

Not that I'm criticizing, P.K. - I can't for the life of me come up with anything remotely 'Flemingesque' myself.

I think those are fair observations, AMC. And, of course, you're exactly right that several of my titles resemble Forsyth/Ludlum far more than Fleming. I've got a weakness for those sorts of titles.

Backscatter. Bond's shades of choice.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

The White Tuxedo wrote:

Though I think Benson's NEVER DREAM OF DYING isn't the crappiest one I've heard.

It's my favorite Benson title. Very elegant.

It's not bad, although I'm firmly in the camp that supports a 50-year moratorium on the use of death and all its cognates in Bond film titles.

I'm not as hard on that rule as you are. Of the movie titles, we only have three that reference death/dying in some capacity: LIVE AND LET DIE, TOMORROW NEVER DIES, and DIE ANOTHER DAY. The latter two admittedly come close together, so close that I'd like to see a significant wait before any death/dying shows up in a Bond title again, but I don't feel overwhelmed by 'em overall, and I'm more put off by the lack of wit in the titles of TOMORROW NEVER DIES and DIE ANOTHER DAY than I am by their use of death/dying.

The continuation novels, on the other hand, have really overdosed on the death/dying thing, though I maintain NEVER DREAM OF DYING is the best of 'em.

Ah well, live and let live, as I always say.

And why not? Like Matt Sherman says, you only live once.

I was doing Shakespeare's Julius Caesar with a group of year 10 students a while ago, and one of Marc Antony's lines struck me as being really good for a Bond title:

Quote :

And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

I love the sound of CRY HAVOC as a Bond title. Or of any title.

AMC Hornet wrote:

Ah well, live and let live, as I always say.

And why not? Like Matt Sherman says, you only live once.

Do you know how to get in touch with Matt Sherman? I am on his mailing list, but every time I try to respond to his email address listed in the mailer, I get a bounce-back.

AMC Hornet wrote:

Some of these have potential, IMCO:

Ramrod

That one is too easy to porn parody.

Quote :

Professor Hiss

As is that one.

Quote :

Acidbolt
A Snowball’s Chance
A Second Time for Everything
The Path of Most Resistance
.

These have potential, as does Backscatter. I'd change up A SNOWBALL'S CHANCE to A COLD DAY IN HELL. I really like Acidbolt as well.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

I was doing Shakespeare's Julius Caesar with a group of year 10 students a while ago, and one of Marc Antony's lines struck me as being really good for a Bond title:

Quote :

And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

I love the sound of CRY HAVOC as a Bond title. Or of any title.

Hot From Hell works too.

We've already had two film about Bond 'raging for revenge' so I'd give that one a miss.

Shakespeare is rife with potential chapter titles - just look at how many came out of Hamlet's 'Too be or not to be' soliliquy.

Although Marc Antony's full verse specifically refers to Caesar's spirit coming back for vengeance, the "cry havoc" line actually means something else. "Cry 'havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war" is a medieval battle call; it essentially means "at my signal, unleash hell". That's all that is needed for the Bond title; the rest doesn't have to be referenced at all.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

I'd change up A SNOWBALL'S CHANCE to A COLD DAY IN HELL.

I like these ones, because classical interpretations of hell - particularly Dante's Inferno - depict hell as being covered in ice and downing in despair instead of fire and brimstone. If that could be worked into dialogue, I think it would be very smart.

Fleming titles consider for Bond 23:

Property Of Lady
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Tagline's:
Who Be The Master in this Game.
A Child in the water, A Face in the mirror, A pink cloud, Another way to die.
Let Make things better.

In Yellow: Olga Kurylenko is deadly Package of Sigarets
In Orange: When You Need Help you ask Jeffrey Wright
In Pink: Tobias Menzies: My Name is Villiers.
In Grey: Jesper Christensen is Just Mr White
In Green: And Q is Stil searching (To another place to meet)

Fleming sources:
You Only Live Twice. (Iam a big fan of the training scene's in this movie.)
Diamonds Are Forever
The Man With The Golden Gun (See Yolt)
Casino Royale (Movie)
Short stories Octopussy and Quantum of Solace (Novel and Movie)

Other sources include:

The Bond movies in general and some chacters. Twine, DAD, GE (Alec), OHMSS (Tracy) and CR (Vesper), Mathis (QOS) and Felix (Background of the chacter).
Mi6forums
James Bond Dossier 1984 From Dr no til Octopussy
BBC's Wild China.

Bond 24:

(Property Of Lady)
007 in New York
Never Send Flowers

''Risico'' can be title who there consider for Bond 24 after Skyfall, a title who present like more then earlier.
''Risico'' in Dutch mean '''Risico'' aka Risk.

Tagline's:
Jeffrey Wright As Felix Leiter
One litle tricker finger will bring you and 007 from Asian World to a world of aces, martini´s, sexy Bondgirls and the dollar.
Ladies and Gentle Men sets you bats for the biggest roulette game ever.
When you get a star walk of fame?
The Revival of a Hero or the Revival of a decate

Is 7 You Lucky Number
We have Numbers everywhere.
Dench Me To The End of Love

Elton John - Know me by know

Other tagline's (Delete in the final cut):

Bond: I give a you finger, but you think you can take the whole hand.
The first Bond movie in years where there is no place for ''M''.

Maintitle tagline (Bond 24 only):

Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson Eon Productions limited presents Daniel Craig as James Bond in 007 in New York.

Fleming Sources:

Diamonds Are Forever (Movie)
Live and Let Die (Movie)
Casino Royale (Movie)
Quantum of Solace (Novel and Movie)
And another Fleming novel (Hint in the last fantrailer i made)

Other souces include:

The Bond movies in general. LALD, Moonraker, Twine
Goldeneye: You Know the Name You Know the Number.
Mi6forums
James Bond Dossier 1984 From Dr no til Octopussy
BBC's Wild China

‪"Dance Me To The End of Love" By Leonard Cohen‬‏
''Know by Know'' by Robert Palmer (Know me by Know)
"New York, New York" by Frank Sinatra

Inspyred by songs from: Shirley Bassey, Chris Cornell, KD Lang, Paloma Faith and Andreas Johnson.

Bond 25:
(Never Send Flowers)
The Hildebrand Rarity. Title only.

Maintitle Tagline:

Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson Eon Productions limited presents Daniel Craig as Ian Fleming 007 James Bond in

Sources:

The Bond movies in general, in specialy CR, QOS, OHMSS (Country yuse), TLD, TMND, Goldeneye, Twine.
QOS Mr White: We have people everywhere.
Wikipedia

M Spinoff/Bond 23 and Bond 24 crossover:
Master Of Mystery. Mom. Subtitle: For King and Country.
Tagline: Amazing performance from Antonia Campbell Hughes and Judi Dench - Volkskrant
Biggest source: The reference in Twine to M her past with the King Family as plot for this Twine prequel and Bond 23/Bond 24 crossover playing in the 70's.

Longer a go..:

Clive Owen Bond 24 (2012):
The end of the day is not the end

Tagline:

When you think Bond is finished with his mission at the end of the day, Think again. His mission begins at the end of the day.
Bond is back on 23.59.59

Clive Owen Bond 23 (2010):
Shaken Not Stirred

None Fleming for Bond 22 with Brosnan (2008):
Never Let Them See You Bleed. First part of a quote from Desmond's Q in Twine.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

AMC Hornet wrote:

Some of these have potential, IMCO:

Ramrod

That one is too easy to porn parody.

Quote :

Professor Hiss

As is that one.

It seems somebody knows something I don't.

Care to enlighten me, Gravy?

Why did I just now realize that Skyfall is like a bad pun on Gardner's ColdFall?