8 times the series chased action movie trends

The arrival of No time to die marks the 25th entry into the James bond film franchise, a race for the screen measuring almost 60 years. What can 007 attribute this longevity to? The ability to attract a new actor to the role every few years helps. So does the endless appetite of film audiences for the jet set, high-flying stunts, and weird villains.

Bond also endures because, like any good secret agent, his skills include mimicry and flexibility. The series that started a wave of gadget-equipped spies in the 1960s showed no qualms about swimming in the wake of the action blockbusters that followed, like Star wars, Christophe nolan‘s Black Knight trilogy, or Indiana Jones. It can be shameless in the pursuit of a cinematic trend, like the garb of Blaxploitation adopted by Live and Let Die. Elsewhere, changing tastes point to the right person at the right time-as the nervous energy of the Bourne’s identity channeled into the first Daniel Craig bonds.

As Carly Simon sings at the beginning of The spy who loved me, nobody does it better. It’s just that sometimes James Bond has learned doing the things he does in other movies.