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The James Bond from the books was a lot sadder. The violent and sexual wish fulfillment is still there, but Fleming was a lot more realistic about the consequences. He understands how sad Bond’s life and failure to connect with women are. In the books, the girl doesn’t just conveniently disappear at the beginning of the next movie. Fleming actually goes into exactly why the relationship ended up failing, usually because Bond is an emotional cripple. Sometimes because a hunky American Marine stole her heart, the wanker. The fact that he has no wife or children at 40 weighs on him.
And book Bond is just as effective a killer as his movie counterpart, but he takes a lot less pleasure in it. One of the books opens with ten pages of Bond brooding over a cartel sicario he had just had to stab. This man was trying to gut him like a pig, but taking his life still really bothers Bond.
Maybe this is because the books were written by a real womanizing killer.
Yeah, book Bond is still a womanizing super spy fantasy, but he also will fail to catch someone he's chasing because his massive cigarette habit causes him to fall into a coughing fit, he explicitly justifies his luxurious lifestyle as a conscious choice to steal as much back from the government he sold his soul to as possible, and ruminates about how he doesn't particularly care about Britain and he's mostly just kind of carrying on out of habit. There's an entire short story where he's just hanging out listening to a sad story about how someone's marriage fell apart. I love how darkly depressing the books are in between the set pieces.
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I’ve also heard the Bond of the books were quite different from his cinematic incarnation. Never read the books so I can’t say. Of all the Bond actors, is there one that comes closer to Fleming’s representation on him more than the others?
Growing up my Grandad had a shelf in his study that was just packed with old paperbacks that included a lot of the original Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ian Fleming books. I devoured that stuff as a teenager, and as an enjoyer of both the books and the movies I would say that one of the core differences between "Book Bond" and "Movie Bond" is that the human cost of violence is much more of a central theme in the books than it is in the movies. Book bond is quippy but it's much more "gallows humor" than "oh my aren't we having fun".
As far as actors are concerned, Connery is iconic for good reason but I think Craig in Casino Royale is the clear winner in terms of being a faithful adaptation of Fleming's character with Timothy Dalton as runner up.
Aside from concessions made for the change in time period/setting, 2006's Casino Royale is an honest adaptation of the novel with a lot of scenes like Meeting Vesper on the Train Scene and Stairwell Fight (along with it's immediate prelude and aftermath) lifted beat-for-beat from the book. Meanwhile, while neither of Dalton's outings as Bond are direct adaptations of a Fleming story, I do feel like they captured "the vibe" of Fleming's stories.
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None of them really capture Bond’s attitude to violence right. Maybe Brosnan, but his Bond is very guarded and opaque so it’s hard to tell. Physically, Timothy Dalton, he’s the spitting image of the portrait Fleming commissioned of Bond. In terms of his complicated relationship with women being closest to the books, your best bets are Casino Royale, or On Her Majesty’s Secret Secret Service. Many here will say From Russia With Love but I’ve never liked it for some reason. Ironically, I think the movie Bonds do really nail how book Bond would have interacted with a female superior: cold professionalism shot through with a hurt little boy looking for his mother.
Dalton stuck in my mind as I was writing the previous comment. A lot of people thought he was terrible but I thought he was one of the best. Connery is still in the forefront of most people’s minds, but I always thought he was intellectually clumsy and aloof a lot of the time. Dalton captured the darker and more pointed aspect of things that I always felt Bond’s character should have been. Brosnan was good too. Lazenby I have vague memories of but people have said he was one of the best ones too.
Maybe I’m just one of those guys with odd cinematic preference. I was also someone who thought First Contact was the best Star Trek film and Deep Space 9 was one of the best Star Trek shows of all time. I preferred it over TNG (which I also loved). Sisko was an excellent character and I thought a lot of the content was top tier (and yes I’m aware of how fledgling it was among the audience), but I think most people were just dead wrong about it.
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