I know the one in the novels isn't as he's just a drunk who hates his job. And there also seems to be varying degrees of the character depending on which actor you watch - but primarily here in the early years (Sean Connery).
I mean he has dozens of meaninglessness flings with women, doesn't mind hitting them, kills people with absolutely no remorse, and drinks a lot. I was reading up on sociopaths for school and he seemed to fit the textbook definition
My answer would be yes. The best evidence for that would be in Dr. No, where he kills Dent. Bond could easily have called the police to come pick up Dent, who could have been interrogated for that matter. Instead, he makes a wisecrack and puts couple of slugs into him unnecessarily. It was the first time the good guy in a movie committed a gratuitous, cold-blooded murder, and there really has been nothing like it since.
shareWould say James does have morals but he does push the boundaries between right no wrong. I think he killed dent for the attempt ion his life,
shareIf I'd just witnessed an actual sociopath attempting to put 6 slugs (actually 7, including the last attempt) in me, then I too would be grateful for a licence to kill. (Even if I could just pick up the phone instead.)
Please click on 'reply' at the post you're responding to. Thanks.share
I think it's the sheer coldness of the kill that's creepy. There's no anger, no quips, just flat out murder of an unarmed man, followed by blowing on the supressor to cool it down.
shareyou cant be sympathetic and be in his line of work.
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The thing is though Bond knew he had no more bullets left. He was toying with him as he had no reason to shoot him anylonger, he just chose that Dent was of no use to him.
shareBond is a government agent, so he's a legal sociopath.
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The thing is though Bond knew he had no more bullets left. He was toying with him as he had no reason to shoot him anylonger, he just chose that Dent was of no use to him
Who said anything about letting him go? I'd figure putting him in custody to be interrogated would have been far better solution rather than killing him.
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Whit a gun with no bullets, a fact Bond was aware of. And besides killing him wasn't that smart either from Bond, as he could have interrogated him in order to get more info about Dr. No's lair. But no, he just killed him despite he knew that at that moment he was no threat to him at all.
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Exactly, 007 has a license to kill. Turning Dent over to the police would have been a waste. Bond as an agent with MI6 isn't concerned with obeying laws. His orders are to accomplish the mission- period. Now he can't be reckless (to avoid undue attention to himself) but nothing he did struck me as being some crazy, insane person.
As for sleeping with numerous women, it comes with the territory. In Thunderball he tells Fiona he tells her he did it for Queen and country. He has to use whatever means he finds necessary. WTH is wrong with that?
Sociopathic don't mean one's crazy or insane. And indeed - when a man kills for a living, he has to be at least somewhat sociopathic, no question there. Hopefully I'm not being overly optimistic in assuming most people wouldn't be able to do Bond's job for moral reasons as much as athletic ones. Killing folk ain't no joke once you stand there with a gun in your hand... however easy inconsequential it's made to look in glammed up spy movies.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
More to the point, is Ian Flemming a pathetic drunken wimp?
You're such a special *beep* Oh wait . . . no you're not.
sharewell, if he kept being remorseful about killing people it would make it jolly difficult to do his job. and the flings woth women aren't meaningless, he seems to enjoy them. As for hitting them - the books were written, and the early films were made, before this modern obsession about men never hitting women no matter what - which come to think of it is odd anyway, considering we're all supposed to be equal nowadays. You'd think there'd be less squeamishness about hitting them nowadays, rather than more. And he never appears to me to drink excessively.
shareThis question is so stupid. I weep for the future of humanity...
shareJames Bond is an orphan whose parents died when he was very young. This left him with a sense of displacement. He didn't fit in anywhere and he had a detachment from people. It makes him the perfect secret agent as he has no attachments. When you are trained as an agent, they teach you to be dispassionate and detached. That's easier if you've been that way all your life. Killing is a very traumatic event if you aren't mentally trained for it, but the OSS was the best. They kind of touch on this in Casino Royale (2005) in the very beginning. The first kill is the hardest, the rest come easier. They reference this type of mentality in Gross Point Blank as well when Martin says he fit a certain psychological type that the Army was looking for.
Interestingly, Fleming was the same way. He was a drinker, used women like toilet paper and never looked back.
I used to be in a military unit whose mission got them into some tricky spots in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'd be really surprised how war affected people differently. Some just kind of shrugged off the killing, some couldn't stop seeing the horror and many of them turned to drink and drugs. I would be really curious to see a study done on the mental makeup of these folks to see if there was a common thread (orphans, abused as children, etc) for those who didn't seem affected by it. I bet Bond would fall into that category.
My memory foam pillow says it can't remember my face. I can tell its lying.
There must be studies of that sort out there. Suicide and PTSD are common and unfortunate issues that affect a lot of returning soldiers. It would be irresponsible if the military was not trying to study that to mitigate it.
shareTwo key characteristics of a sociopath is a high excitement threshold (needing to go to extreme lengths to get a bit of happiness) and a lack of awareness toward one's consequences of their actions.
I wouldn't say James Bond is either. He's simply just an imperfect man in a violent stressful job.
Althrough you're right about the first one (and Bond fits in, he's going to extreme willingly and not so fascinated about anything really), the second is wrong.
Sociopaths are well aware about the consequences of any of their actions. And it's actually the only thing that stops them, as they don't have much of authority guide and no moral guide at all in most cases. They just wouldn't like to be punished.