Eps 10: James Bond Just Cloned Felix Leiter

— The 000 Agent Podcast

Host image: StyleGAN neural net
Content creation: GPT-3.5,

Host

Sophia Fletcher

Sophia Fletcher

Podcast Content
Felix Leiter Jeffery Wright makes a last-ever appearance in No Time To Die, where he requests James Bonds assistance to locate an MI6 scientist missing, kidnapped by the terrorists, the men of Lyutsifer Safin. Set five years after the events of 2015s Spectre, No Time to Die finds James Bond retired from his MI6 duties, although he is pulled back into the fold by an old friend, CIA Agent Felix Leiter , and his colleague Logan Ashe , who implores Bond to locate the kidnapped scientist responsible for developing a dangerous nanoweapon. Bond scholar John Griswold notes that in the original draft of the story, Ian Fleming had Felix Leiter killed in a shark attack; when Naomi Burton, Flemings U.S. agent with Curtis Brown, protested the characters death, Fleming relented and Leiter lived, albeit missing an arm and half a leg. Strangely, the 2012 007 Legends video game, the Felix Leiter who appeared in the casino royale sequences of the film, as well as in 1989s license-to-kill sections, is played and based on the likeness of Demetri Goritsas, rather than an American actor, although the games universe is based on the Daniel Craig version of James Bond, is played by and based on Demetri Goritsas, although the games universe is based on the American version.
The 2012 game 007 Legends, however, came out in 2012 well before No Time to Die was made, and thus American actors returned to the Bond franchise. For American audiences, one of the television episodes of James Bond was recast with an American agent--Card-Sense Jimmy Bond, played by Barry Nelson--described as working for Combined Intelligence, supported by Felix Leiter; this was then, according to Jeremy Black, a reverse of the Anglo-American relationship portrayed in the books for American consumption. Felix Leiter, James Bonds CIA ally and friend, played a role in six Ian Fleming novels; Felix Leiter was introduced in a single TV episode, being slim, tall, around 35 years old, and a former US marine working with the NATO joint intelligence staff. Another new CIA character linked to Felix Leiter and Paloma suggests that he has no evil intentions -- but hes told on a official 007 site to be co-ordinating the hunt for Bond in Norway, so the jury is still out.
Perhaps in a reaction to the financial disappointments with the gentler Bond in On Her Majestys Secret Service, this movie -- bringing Connery back into the espionage fold -- offers up one of 007s meaner versions. The latter is advertised as the newest looking, bad-ass Bond girl , but she spends most of the movie throwing hysterical fits about how even the long-suffering, captive-in-her-own-rights villains girlfriend shows interest in our hero - oddly demeaning, even by the already-low standards for so many of its female characters. The sequence featuring inconveniently other agents nearly blowing Bonds cover played slightly differently in Flemings first Bond novel and movie. The books actually do lend a couple of characters to the films, such as the shady tree, Tiffanys case, and henchmen Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd.
As a result, Flemings first Bond novel is, unique amongst the series of books, the novelisation of a movie that was not made at the time. The second Bond movie is a fairly faithful adaptation of the fifth novel . When the first Bond movie did not work out, Ian Flemings turn to the first Flemings Bond novel as his eighth Bond novel -- and that is how you get the legal battles, the copyright claims, Never Say Never Again, and the rest. No Time To Die, no different from Dr. No, is nonetheless far more of a generic - though a frenzied - spy thriller, one which is slowly discovering a template for the Bond movie as it goes along.
Timothy Dalton demanded the producers to hew closer to the gritty Bond of Ian Flemings original novels. Felix Leiter, disgusted with the corruption of Gregg Beam, informed James Bond about their business dealings with General Medranos, that their window to speak was thirty seconds, and warned him of his men, which allowed him to run away at the last minute.
James Bond and another CIA operative named Paloma were able to capture the MI6 scientist Valdo Obruchev, with British agents taking Obruchev back onto a ship, where Leiter and Ash were waiting. Bond captured Obruchev and took him to a remote CIA vessel on the ocean, where they were betrayed by new, younger CIA operative Logan Ash, and Felix Leiter died in the ensuing explosion when the ship sank with Felix Leiter aboard . Suddenly, the bomb goes off directly into his face in the direction of Vesper Lind , and is led in a massive car chase by the Spectre Organization goons in the movie) and is led on a massive car chase with the SPECTRE Organization goons). He is suddenly bombed directly into Bonds face, and he is just like they were hoping to burn the James Bond legacy in the movie).