Whenever an action movie becomes a huge hit, there is always a rush to emulate the movie’s heroes. Whether you’re shopping for movie merchandise or real-life items like cars, firearms, and clothing, people get into a movie wholeheartedly. Martial arts movies are no different, as people rush to the local dojo to train in the art that helped the hero save the day. Most honest martial arts instructors will explain that it takes years to learn a martial art and that those movies are rarely a good example of how a martial art actually works. Filmmakers are rarely satisfied with reality and feel the need to improve even the most impressive real-life situations. However, the exception is when knowledgeable people are involved in a project and its creation and reality become part of the fantasy.
The James Bond series is a good example of a mixture of fantasy and reality. The fantastic side of James Bond is that he is able to accomplish what normally requires a whole team of agents to perform espionage tasks in real life. He doesn’t have to deal with any of the dirty or boring parts of intelligence gathering (ie sitting in an awkward spot, drinking coffee, and waiting extremely long periods of time). Many CIA and British MI6 agents will tell you that much of what they do is boring, but he can still turn extremely dangerous in the blink of an eye. For many agents, a mission involves traversing the muck of some third-world hellhole and not dining at the best restaurants in some of the world’s most beautiful cities.
What the fictional 007 draws from reality are his martial arts forms. With the exception of one movie, You Only Live Twice, where 007 learned Ninjitsu (taught to Sean Connery by real-life martial arts expert Donn Draeger), the British spy’s martial art of choice in over 20 movies is combat judo. The martial arts form allows Bond to take on much larger opponents and use his weight against them in personal combat. In From Russia With Love, Bond was able to take on a well-armed assassin and turn the tables thanks to his judo training. For a spy facing an ever-changing battlefield, pre-WWII judo is the perfect choice as it allowed him to be flexible and different techniques can be seen scattered throughout the movies. This form of judo is nothing more than practice and for a spy operating alone in the field there are no second chances. Bond was able to quickly defeat the enemies and continue with the mission.
The reality of the world of James Bond comes from its creator Ian Fleming, who drew on his many adventures and experiences in the world of espionage. Before Fleming wrote twelve novels and nine short stories with James Bond, secret agent 007, he would have plenty of adventurers of his own. Educated at both Eton College and Sandhurst Military Academy, Fleming also learned languages and worked as a stockbroker and journalist. Like Bond, he enjoyed many activities such as scuba diving, mountain climbing, car racing, as well as smoking and drinking. When World War II began, Fleming was an army reservist who was part of the famous Black Watch regiment, but was transferred to the intelligence branch of the Royal Navy by its director, Rear Admiral John Godfrey. As his favorite character, she would rise to the rank of Commander and participate in the planning of many operations in the European theater of war.
Many of the code names for these operations would later become names in Bond novels, and several of the characters in his books are said to be based on real people Fleming met while working in the British intelligence community. No one is exactly sure who Bond was based on, but it is believed that it was a combination of several colorful characters that Fleming knew. He also helped establish the structure of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which would later become the CIA. During this time, he was exposed to many commando units that used judo as part of their unarmed combat training. Fleming commanded his own raider unit and made sure to include judo as part of his training.
Although Fleming is only rumored to have trained a secret Camp X in Canada that trained spies and commandos in hand-to-hand combat, assassination techniques, and sabotage, a recent book says it is more likely that he visited. What is clear, however, is that Fleming learned well from what he saw, and brought it into writing from him. Fleming, who helped create the modern intelligence agency, would spend the postwar years creating a fictional world of spies and terrorists.
Although the fictional Bond’s martial art of choice is still taught to intelligence agents and remains the best choice some 50 years later. The Special Air Service Regiment (SAS), the branch of the UK Special Forces, still uses many of the commando tactics learned in World War II today. World War II combatants including Judo have stood the test of time on screen and on the world’s battlefields. Fleming and his companions couldn’t afford to look good on a mission. They needed what worked against the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, and judo was the choice of the founders of modern espionage.