Too many words about James Bond

The new Bond film 'Skyfall' is due to be released in November 2012. There are two reasons why this is the first Bond release that actually excites me,

1.  Ralph Fiennes is in the film and he has shaved his head. Now lets look at some facts. The last two films dealt with worldwide conspiracies committed by criminal organization QUANTUM (a clear ripoff of SPECTRE). The current synopsis for Skyfall indicates that MI6 will be under attack and that there will be some personal cost to Bond. Only three times in the 22 films has there been any personal cost to Bond - when Felix Leiter is seriously wounded (and his wife killed) in Licence to Kill, when Vesper Lynd is killed in Casino Royale, and when his wife Tracy is murdered by Blofed in On Her Majesties Secret Service. The Daniel Craig films have probed into Bond's past, and Blofeld is the leader of SPECTRE. Therefore this means that Ralph Fiennes may very likely be playing Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

You only live twice, Mr. Bond.

2. Skyfall is a return to the single word, slightly odd titled Bond films that are generally quite good (see: Goldfinger, Thunderball, Goldeneye. No. Seriously. See them. They will be the best thing you watch all week)

Now this second point got me thinking about the quality of Bond films vs the number of the words in the titles. Personally, my favourite film is You Only Live Twice, and my least favourite is Quantum of Solace. So from a min/max subjective perspective, the theory that quality drops as the number of the words in the title increases falls apart. But, surely, there is a way to figure this out in a nonsubjective way.

SPOILER ALERT: There is. And then I did it. Because I'm awesome. And also because I've got this useless math degree I've not been using. But mostly the awesome thing.

Before we get into results, let's talk about methods, because that's how you write a scientific article and this is legit science. Legience! Our domain includes only the Eon Productions films. So those two earlier Casino Royale films and that one Sean Connery film Never Say Never Again (which is just a remake of Thunderball and I will never watch) don't count. This leaves us with the 22 Bond films that are considered canon. For a complete list, click THIS LINK

I took the ratings for each Bond film from the approved critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. I used the approved critic's ratings because the general public has NO FRIGGIN IDEA WHAT A GOOD MOVIE IS. Basically, the critic's ratings seem far more accurate to me than the general public's. Maybe that counts as confirmation bias but maybe I'm choosing to count everyone with bad taste as an outlier because seriously, fuck those guys. I assure you that 'fuck those guys' is a valid statistical method.

I'll let you decide what this
bull is up to.

Other methods employed were just your basic calculations for means (averages) and standard deviations (how far away from the average a random film is likely to be). There's also a logarithmic trendline and some r-squared stuff but not very much and I'll explain it when we get to it. It's not terribly complicated but just sounds that way.

Now, lets get into looking at the data. Sexy, promiscuous data, wearing that dress just to drive you crazy.

Hey there.

Let's start with the basics. The average James Bond film rates at 70.8 %. Here are the top and bottom five, their corresponding scores, and the starring actor. Also included at no extra cost is some commentary from me (personal bias).

The Best
 Dr. No (98%, Sean Connery)

 Goldfinger (96%, Sean Connery)
 From Russia With Love (96% Sean Connery)
 Casino Royale (94% Daniel Craig)
 Thunderball (88% Sean Connery)

As you can see, Sean Connery dominates the top Bond films. As he should. Four out of the six films he starred in are in the top five, with only the recent Casino Royale beating him out. As I mentioned before, my personal favourite is You Only Live Twice -  a Bond film written by Roald Dahl simply has to be the best thing on Earth. However, Dr. No has my favourite scene in the entire series. It's the first clip from this video

                                 

It gives us a look into not only how ruthless Bond can be but also how that ruthlessness can make him a shitty spy (he probably should have gotten the information he wanted before shooting the dude, is what I'm getting at).


The Bottom (haha bottom)
 A View to a Kill (39% Roger Moore)
 Moonraker (47% Roger Moore)
 The World is Not Enough (51% Pierce Brosnan)

 The Man with the Golden Gun (53% Roger Moore)
 Tomorrow Never Dies (54% Pierce Brosnan)

The worst films are split between Moore and Brosnan (the sixth worst is Die Another Day, another Brosnan film). This isn't surprising - both of them are in some pretty terrible films. In fact, Brosnan's popularity as Bond is pretty much just coasting on the quality of Goldeneye. But, I'm rather fond of both of them, so it's disappointing to see them so poorly thought of. Also disappointing is the fact that Quantum of Solace is not on this list. Let's get something straight, there are good Bond films, there are bad Bond films, but all Bond films have something in them that's memorable. Except for Quantum of Solace. A View to a Kill is rightfully the lowest rated but it had Christopher Walken playing the shit out of being a Bond villian and that makes it entertaining and worth watching. Quantum of Solace had nothing. The only memorable moment in that film is when the Bond girl is coated in oil but that's just a ripoff from Goldfinger.

TIME FOR SOME MOTHERFUCKING GRAPHS YO!

 This first graph is the average rating of films based off of how many words are in the title. The horizontal red line is the average rating for all James Bond films.

Sometimes I wonder why girls don't like me, and then
I do something like this and the world makes sense.

This definitely follows the trend that quality decreases as words increase, but there is an anomoly when it comes to two films. This is due to the fact that there are only two two-worded Bond films: Dr. No and Casino Royale.

This next graph uses a logarithmic trendline to show that, it's not an absurd conclusion to assume quality decreases with the number of words in the title. The blue diamonds each correspond to the top of the bars in the previous graph. The trendline is logarithmic because it had the lowest r^2 (or r-squared) coefficient. An r-squared coefficient is basically a summary of, on average, how far away your trendline is from your data. So if you have really high r-squared then your trendline is terrible. Just the worst. You should be ashamed of your trendline. The lower the r-squared is, the better the trendline fits the data. A logarithmic trendline had the lowest r-squared (as opposed to exponential or linear or other options), so that is what I used.

Ladies love it when you show
them your trendline.

Clearly, there is a decreasing trend. You can tell because the beginning of the trendline is higher up than the end of the trendline. Hypothesis proven. Chalk one up to science. Mission Successful. If I were James Bond, this would be the part of the film where M rings to congratulate me but I can't be bothered to talk to the guy who signs my paychecks and gets me million dollar cars (that I abruptly destroy) because I am too busy with sexytimes. But I'm not James Bond. So this is the part of the film where I go 'whelp, I've got all this data, what else can I do with it'.

I decided that what I could do with it was make a boxplot comparing the popularity of the various actors who have played Bond. While doing this, I came to the same conclusion that I reached three years ago. Boxplots are fucking stupid. So my graph doesn't used the traditional 'median, 1st and 3rd quartile' bullshit that typical boxplots do. No. Mine is better. The coloured boxes represent one standard deviation away from the mean. The mean is where the coloured boxes touch each other (as they show one s.d. above and one s.d. below the mean). The whiskers stretch out to the maximum and minimum values. In a couple of cases, the maximum and minimum fell within one standard deviation of the mean. I set these whiskers as equal to zero because Excel totally lost it's shit when I tried to input negative numbers. Never use Excel to graph things. Never. It is the worst.

It's very important that we talk about George Lazenby for a moment here. Lazenby only starred in one Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The problem with this is that it totally fucks up my data. You can't calculate the standard deviation from one datapoint. Also, OHMSS is a really good film. So Lazenby has a disproportionately high rating. It's doubly awkward because the worst part about OHMSS is that it stars Lazenby. He isn't a very good Bond and he wears a puffy shirt. James Bond would never wear a puffy shirt. Bow ties are cool, puffy shirts are a sin.

We've now entered the part where I feel like talking about two fan theories about James Bond.

Theory 1:

James Bond 007, is a codename. One Bond dies and another moves up to replace him.

This is a really cool theory. Really super cool. You could probably make a couple interesting films based around this idea but there is one small problem: The other films don't reflect this fact. The actors change, but the character stays roughly the same. All James Bonds love girls, take their martini's shaken, and irritate the piss out of Desmond Llewlyn. 

I've had enough of
your shit, Bond.

If you're going to have six different spies take on the same designation, you've got to expect a greater variance in character then that. Sure there's some variation, Moore is the joker, Craig is angry and inexperience, and Dalton was a burnt out killer but that's not good enough. The character's are still far too similar to believe they are fundamentally different people. There's also one other major issue with this theory. Diamonds are Forever begins with Bond hunting down Blofeld for killing his wife in OHMSS. But Connery plays Bond in Diamonds are Forever and Lazenby plays Bond in OHMSS. So either they were in a polygamous relationship together with this girl or they are, in fact, the same person. This brings us to theory number two.

Theory 2:

James Bond is a Time Lord.

In Doctor Who, a Time Lord is an alien species that is capable of 'regeneration'. When they die, it is possible for them to regenerate their energy into a new body (given that they aren't killed instantly). This is how Doctor Who explains away the multitude of actors that have starred in the show. It's an incredibly clever device because it allows for a change in the personality and appearance (goofy, serious, arrogant) of the main character while being able to keep the characters memories and overarching philosophies (martinis, that time Blofeld killed Bond's wife).

However, like with the previous theory, OHMSS fucks everything up. George Lazenby was Sean Connery's replacement and OHMSS was the first Bond film that didn't star Connery. But Lazenby only signed on for one film and the reception for it was really bad. So Connery was brought back for the film that followed OHMSS. Using the Time Lord theory, this doesn't work. Sean Connery can't regenerate into George Lazenby and then regenerate back into Sean Connery before becoming Roger Moore. That's not allowed.

At least, that's what I thought. Then I realized, holy shit, Time Lords can travel through time, duh. So clearly, at the end of OHMSS, Lazenby travels back in time and warns Connery about Blofeld. Connery then hunts Blofeld down, preventing the events in OHMSS from ever occuring (and ensuring that his wife lives, even if they aren't married and will never meet now). Then, later on down the line in his incredibly dangerous job as a spy, he regenerates to Lazenby who does nothing important enough to make a film out of and then regenerates into Moore.

There are two more things that connect Bond to Doctor Who. The first is this picture right here

This man. I want to be this man.

Timothy Dalton has played both James Bond and Rassilon, the founder of the Time Lords. So that basically proves it. The other point is just a striking similarity.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld is Bonds archenemy. He is an evil genius and in his last appearance in the series (For Your Eyes Only), he was confined to a wheelchair and dropped down a chimney stack - presumably resulting in death but at the very least resulting in a huge amount of scarring and deformation.

Now, Stavro is pretty close to the name Davros. Especially when you consider how few words in English contain the sequence 'avro'.

Davros is The Doctor's archenemy. He is an evil scientist (genius) who created the Daleks. He is confined to a wheelchair. Here is a photo comparison of the two

Both very attractive men.

I don't think that it's too unreasonable to think that Blofeld and Davros are the same person. Thus lending the Time Lord theory more credibility. I am done now.

                                                   

                                             

Death on Two Legs Pt 2

For part one click here

Grouse walked through the door to the reception at MI6 and threw his hat and jacket clear across the room, landing perfectly on the hat rack. It was impressive. It was even more impressive due to the fact that grouse don't usually wear hats or jackets but he was just that fucking suave.

"Oh, it's nice to see you again Famous", said the receptionist. She was horribly smitten by Grouse. This is because she was a girl and all girls were horribly smitten by Grouse.

"The pleashure ish all mine Tenderpensh" replied Grouse as he handed her a single rose.

Tenderpence giggled, "I'm still waiting for that ring Famous."

" We'll have to shee about that"

"Grouse, would you skip the canoodling and get in my office", M buzzed over the PA.

"Of coursh" 

Grouse entered the office. Behind the desk sat a meerkat, munching down on marmite.

"Ahh, good of you to join me double-oh-zeta, I trust you've heard the news already"

"I hear alot of thingsh", was Grouse's requisite snappy response. He actually hadn't heard the news because he had been sexin' up pretty much the entire time between the last chapter and now (yes, even on the aeroplane, there was a confused stewardess in the back). The reason why that wasn't included as it's own chapter is because this story is PG you fucking perverts.

M continued, unabashedly ignoring 00ζ's snark, "Then as I'm sure you know, last night one of our dry-docked nuclear submarines was stolen. Amongst it's cargo was 6 SLMB's capable of launching a nuclear payload to anywhere on the planet. You can understand the seriousness and delicacy of the situation?"

"I've never been a fan of delicate"

"I'm well aware of that fact 00ζ and wouldn't be talking to you otherwise... only you see, whoever has hijacked our sub is yet to contact any government, ours included. We simply cannot have some maniac out there on the loose with nuclear capabilities and have no idea who it is or what their intentions may be."

"Sho where do I come into all of thish?", mused Grouse

" Ahh, well luckily one of our videocameras managed to capture a picture of one of the hijackers before our system went down. It's a bit blurry but from what I can make out, it appears to be a smallish mouse with an eyepatch over the left eye."

"Bandicoot"

Look at that evil bastard, plotting awayawwwww HE'S SO CUTE!

"Our thoughts exactly. Now, as you have more intelligence on this particular villian than any other agent, I'm assigning you to investigate and to figure out what they could possibly want with that sub".

Grouse sighed heavily, "What you mean to shay ish that really you're jusht putting me in charge of shaving the world again aren't you? AGAIN?"

"In short yes, but there's no time to argue the point. Now if you'll go down to Q labs, there is some new field equipment that you'll need for your mission"

Grouse started down the elevator to Q labs. These were the sort of times where he really appreciated his job, when he understood why he was a super-top-secret-spy. He didn't do it for the money or the girls or the near endless supply of Aston Martins. No, he did it all for the badass elevator music.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and Grouse left the elevator to be met by Desmond Llewelyn.

"It's about time you got here".

"I've been bishy"

"Yes well, hurry along"

Desmond Llewelyn went over to a table and picked up a watch,

"Now 00ζ, this is our newest standard issue Omega Seamaster Watch, it comes complete with..."

However, instead of listening, Grouse's full attention was directed towards a gold pen that was sitting in a coffee mug on the table.

"Don't touch that!" cried Desmond Llewelyn just as Grouse clicked the end of the pen. A cyanide tipped dart flew across the room, embedding itself in a graduate student's neck. The student stared right at Grouse with a surprised look on his face before dropping to the ground dead.

Desmond Llewelyn snatched the pen out of Grouse's hand, "How many times must I tell you not to play with things. You're lucky that was just a graduate student and not someone valuable".

"I shuppose the pen truly ish mightiar than the shord"

"Quite, now if you'll come this way, you'll find that I've outfitted another Aston Martin DB5 with all sorts of handy gadgets; although it's pretty much inevitable that you'll have completely destroyed the car by the end of week. Honestly, I don't know why MI6 keeps giving these to you - half their budget must be allocated to "Cars for Famous Grouse". It's ridiculous. I could rig up a Volvo with an ejector seat and some headlamp machine guns just as easily and that thing would never get destroyed - no matter what hell you put it through. But no, instead my work is constantly being interrupted by M going, ' Oh, oh! Desmond Llewelyn, 00ζ's gone and completely wrecked a $200,000 vehicle', and that's the pricetag before my modifications mind you, 'could you pretty please make another for him?'. NO. FUCK. GET YOUR OWN FUCKING CAR YOU IRRESPONSIBLE TWAT. How the hell have you even got a driver's licence? I mean, the licence to kill I understand, you happen to be very good at killing people and just causing ridiculous amounts of mayhem in general but please please be careful with this car. If I have to build another, I may just go absolutely nutty.

For possibly the first time in his life, Grouse was completely speechless. He didn't even have a snappy comeback. Desmond Llewelyn, on the other hand, seemed to return to form just as quickly as he'd lost it.

"Anyways, this one's pretty standard. Secret glovebox, ejector seat, extendible spikes in the hubcaps, and machine guns in the headlights".

Desmond Llewelyn handed the keys over to Grouse and, in a spectacular display of indifference to instructions, Grouse put the car into reverse, gunned it to 40 miles and backed over a two foot concrete abutment without slowing down, before whipping it around 180 degrees and flying out of the garage door entrance to Q labs.

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Death on Two Legs Pt 1

WHEN WE LAST LEFT OUR HERO 

"Ahh, Mr. Grouse, it's so very unfortunate that things must end this way, however my employer is very adamant about getting you out of the way"

"And who egxshaclty ish your employer", questioned Grouse while struggling with the straps that held him to the conveyor belt.

"No no no Mr. Grouse, what do you think this is: A Bond film? No, I'll not be telling you any of our plans even though there's absolutely no chance for your escape. You never can be too careful, that is the motto of our evil underground organization and I stand by it."

"You'll never get away wi' thish Bandicoot"

"But I already have. Good day Mr. Grouse"

Bandicoot flipped the switch to the conveyor belt and then left the room. At the end of the conveyor large blades began to whir, slicing easily through pieces of lumber. The belt drew Grouse nearer and nearer till the roaring of the saws was deafening and a harsh gust cut through his feathers. Manoeuvring his wing, Grouse managed to press a button on his watch down against the side of the belt that confined him to his doom. Out of the watch shot a laser, red hot and cutting through his bonds. The blades were mere inches away now; feathers from the top of Grouse's head were getting knicked. Time itself seemed to slow down and the last precious seconds Grouse had until becoming mince passed with the yawning clarity of hours. At last, the strap broke and Grouse rolled off the conveyor belt.

" That'sh what I call cutting it closhe"

Grouse had to act quick. After a quick inspection of the steel door Grouse realized that he'd need to find another way out of this room if he wanted to escape. Ten feet above him wound the main ventilation shaft of the complex. Using his shoe to jam the saws, Grouse caused the machine to overheat and explode, sending one of the blades flying through the air, slicing the ventilation shaft in half. The fire alarm rang; Grouse had to act quick. He began making his way through the shaft, winding through the industrial complex. After crawling for about thirty feet, Grouse saw Bandicoot through a vent; standing in an office that had modestly been furnished by Ikea - but in a way that would make any interior designer cringe - and cowering in the presence of someone that Grouse could only make out as a shadowy figure sitting in a chair. Bandicoot stuttered fearfully, completely having lost that smug mocking superior English manner of speaking as he had while taunting Grouse,

"I-I searched the room sir... It seems that G-Grouse..."

"Growse vat?!" was the thick Russian reply from the shadowy figure in the chair

"He's not in the room. I t-think - I think he may have escaped"

" Escapt! You let Famous Grouse escape! He may be de only vun who could stop me."

The shadowy figure whirled round and leapt across the office desk, faster than Grouse could pick out any distinguishing characteristics, and tackled Bandicoot to the floor.

"AARGH MY EYE!

"Next time I take your whoole hed. Find Grouse before he gets away for good!".

On that cue, Grouse decided that he'd best not stick around and continued crawling down the ventilation shaft. The shaft ended at the outer wall of the building, ten feet in the air, and faced a snowy airfield. Directly beneath the shaft, guarding the airfield were two armed squirrels. As well as having arms they also carried guns and adorable little squirrel militia helmets. This made them OH SO CUTE!- but also deadly as fuck.

He wants his fucking peanuts and he wants them now.

Grouse carefully and silently removed the cover to the vent shaft. He threw the cover at one of the squirrels while simultaneously jumping down on top of the other. Both squirrels were knocked unconscious by an overdose of badass.

"Jusht thought I'd drop by", quipped Grouse - unknowingly causing heart failure in the squirrels whilst doing so. 

Unfortunately, the Control Tower saw all of this and sounded the alarm. Within seconds squirrels came dashing out onto the airfield and opened fire on Grouse as he sprinted for the nearest plane. Bullets cut through the sky all around Grouse but they were all too scared to actually hit him; instead they whizzed past inches away from him, mentally preparing the story for their friends back home even though, inevitably, their friends would never believe them. 

"Oh yeah, sure sure. I bet you did nearly kill Grouse. Went just inches past him uh-huh".

Making it through the impossibly large barrage of bullets, Grouse hopped into a single engine biplane that was preparing to take off but not before throwing the pilot out of the door.

"Niysh landing!" Grouse yelled from the cockpit as he flew off across the mountains and toward England

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