Pre-title credit sequence missions
sirso
Posts: 209MI6 Agent
I was thinking that it would be a good thought experiment to imagine what the various pre-title credit sequence missions on some of the Bond films were about. For example, what was the mission purpose Bond was on in, say, Moonraker's pre-title credit sequence, or The Spy Who Loved Me? Did the missions end at the point that the pre-title credit sequences ended, or were the pre-title credit sequence just clips and not dénouements?
Maybe this has already been discussed here.
Comments
a couple of them we know from the books.
chapter 1 of Goldfinger, Reflections in a Double Bourbon, tells the backstory of why Bond was in Mexico blowing up an opium lab and hanging round a café. Scotland Yard has already identified the local importer in London, and because the source was in another country, not their jurisdiction, Bond was sent to Mexico to eliminate it. The café Madre de Cacao was being used for local dealing, you could buy it from a waiter.
in Christopher Wood's novelizations, the two pre-credits sequences are both explained. in James Bond, the Spy Who Loved Me, Bond has been picked up by a woman in a casino while on leave, and invited to "her" remote chalet, where he discovers a corpse in the cupboard (not shown in the film), tipping him off that this is an assassination attempt. In James Bond and Moonraker, he was on an Unseen Mission in Dakar, which M has ordered him to abandon because something more important's come up. The private plane has been sent by M but hijacked by unknown enemies before it left the ground, and we're told Bond has been targeted in similar ways before since the Stromberg affair.
Thanks for that background information. I haven't read those two books.