James Bond and the Sloths

When my brother and I were in our teens, we decided to write an epic poem one day. It was to be about three sloths.

“But pronounced ‘sloaths’,” my brother decreed.

“Fair enough,” I allowed, since it was really his story more than mine.

There were three sloths [pronounced ‘sloaths’],  it began.

Noddy, Shoddy and …

We threw some names around for the third sloth, rejecting them all one after one, until one of us suggested Phyllis.

“OK,” said my brother, “but I’m going to spell it my way. F-I-L-I-S.”

So:

There were three sloths

Noddy, Shoddy and Filis.

They dined upon something and something and fish

And leftovers which they put in a dish.

One day in a pretty sun-dappled glade

Shoddy and Filis happily played.

My memory of the exact words is a bit hazy at this point, but they narrate how a witch called Paprika turns up and says hello.

“Come to my cottage and have some tea,

It’s not very far away,” said she.

The prospect is certainly enticing, and after a brief consultation, Shoddy and Filis accept the invitation.

So off they went, though not very fast,

And as the sun set, they got there at last.

Thinking of tea and cakes galore

They arrived at Paprika the witch’s front door

 At this point, Filis gets a sense of foreboding.

A cottage tucked away in the wood

Something was wrong here, and this was not good.

“After you,” Paprika invites, holding the door open for them. They toddle over the threshold, only to find the door being slammed behind them and Paprika cackling madly outside, gloating, “Now I’ve got you!”

But:

Through the woods flew little Noddy!

Off to rescue Filis and Shoddy!

“Hold on,” I said. “Shouldn’t we explain that Noddy was watching from the trees, so he knew Filis and Shoddy were with the witch, and  they left a trail of breadcrumbs or something? We should explain how he knows to come and rescue them.”

My brother scoffed. “No, no,” he said. “We don’t want to go turning this into a whole complicated detective story, with spying and breadcrumbs and encrypted radio contact and suchlike. Filis and Shoddy were in danger, so Noddy came to rescue them. End of story.”

And so Noddy rescued Filis and Shoddy. The end.

This was all brought back to me the other day when I went to see the latest James Bond film, Skyfall. Having noticed some remarkable parallels in style and content, I am now wondering if I can unearth the Three Sloths script, smooth out a few wrinkles, and submit it as a proposal for a future Bond film. 

I had never seen a James Bond film before – I had always assumed it wouldn’t really be my thing – but had been assured that this one wouldn’t disappoint.

“The great thing about it,” I was told by someone who had seen it, “is that you know James Bond can’t die because otherwise there wouldn’t be a film. So you just sit back and enjoy the explosions and car chases, safe in the knowledge that he will always come out OK.”

Well, wasn’t I surprised when not five minutes into the film, Bond got shot, tumbled off the top of a train, plunged into a rushing river, and disappeared down a waterfall and into the unfathomable depths at its base? The man was dead – if the shot hadn’t killed him, and he hadn’t splatted on the surface of the river or been crushed by the weight of the waterfall, he would certainly have drowned at the bottom. And the title credits hadn’t even been shown yet.

“How are they ever going to dig their way out of this one?” I wondered in bemusement. “This film is killed stone dead before it’s even started.”

So the fact that moments later Bond is relaxing with a beer, entangled in the arms of a tropical island beauty, is ever so slightly jarring, but we don’t dwell on it because we’re too distracted by the fact that next thing he’s in a bar trying to drink a glass of whiskey while a scorpion is sitting on his hand.

And the film is full of these leaps of logic, these inexplicable non-sequiturs, these demonstrations of characters’ ability to teleport, communicate telepathically, and survive any disaster.

Consider Mr Silva, played by Javier Bardem, who is such a stupendously entertaining and charismatic villain that you frequently find yourself rooting for him and have to remind yourself that you’re actually supposed to be on Bond’s side. He is imprisoned in a glass column, his insides eroded away by hydrogen cyanide, with nothing in his possession but the clothes he is wearing, having been extracted abruptly from his hideaway halfway across the world without having a chance to make appropriate plans for the event. So how on earth is it that next thing you know he is in a London Underground station, with two passing police officers slipping him a police uniform to disguise himself in? Who cares? He needs to escape, so someone helps him! Just like when Shoddy and Filis were in danger so Noddy rescued them! Do you see the potential of the three Sloths?



Consider also how the resident technical genius lays an “electronic breadcrumb trail” to lure the bad guy to where Bond is lying in wait for him. What precisely is the electronic breadcrumb trail? Where is it laid? How does the bad guy access it? How does he interpret it? Who cares? All you need to know is that Bond told the techie to lay a breadcrumb trail that only the bad guy could follow, so the techie laid a suitable breadcrumb trail and the bad guy followed it. That’s all we need. Elucidations just complicate matters unnecessarily.

Consider also the scene where Bond tracks the bad guy down in a subterranean tunnel. After a brief but uplifting exchange of opinions, the bad guy demonstrates his marvellous gift for prescience  by having previously laid some dynamite right near where Bond is now standing. Boom! His placement is a metre or two off but impressive nonetheless. This is certainly not an individual you want on the other side – you want him right there fighting with you, surreal hairstyle notwithstanding.

It is a marvellous film and I certainly recommend a trip to see it, as long as you’re not particularly sensitive to scenes of passing violence and unspeakable untidiness and money-wasting. (I am. I find it horrifically warped that directors can allow incidental characters to be shot down just because they are in the way, with no acknowledgement of the fact that they are human beings with lives and that a person doesn’t just disappear when they are shot – someone has to call the police, an investigation has to be carried out, the body has to be identified, a funeral has to be organised, and so much else. I find the approach disrespectful.  I have always appreciated the scene in Austin Powers that rams the issue down our throats:

And as for the untidiness, I always cringe as I ask myself, “But who is going to clean up the market stalls that a car has just driven through (not between, you understand, but through)?  And how can anyone bring themselves to stage a twelve-car pileup in the name of entertainment? Do they know how much cars cost?”) But if you can harden your heart to these issues, it is two and a half hours of superb entertainment. And some future James Bond film may well be even more so: keep an eye out for the sloths.