Seen In: The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Spectre, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Spy, Bridge Of Spies James Bond, Mission: Impossible, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the 1960s was something of a golden age for spies on screen. So, it's no surprise that movie spies have tended to oscillate between hearkening back to that time and dealing with the most topical real world threats. 2015 saw the most extreme example of the espionage nostalgia of the former. While the Mission: Impossible series has always done a pretty good job of balancing a handful of popular elements from the original 1960s TV series with many more aspects of a 21st century blockbuster, Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. went for a full on period pastiche. Ritchie's former collaborator Matthew Vaughn is the step-son of original Man From U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn and made his own tribute to the age of implausible pop art styled spy capers with comic book adaptation Kingsman. Vaughn's film even had his megalomaniac villain, Samuel L. Jackson (complete with grand lair and blade-legged henchwoman) give a big speech about his preference for the outlandish plots of the classic Bond films. With Melissa McCarthy comedy Spy also hearkening back to classic Bond in providing a source for its parody, only with the Mrs Moneypenny character taking centre stage over Jude Law's Bond-lite, it probably wasn't a surprise to see the real thing looking backwards too. It wasn't just in the return of secret evildoers Spectre and boss Blofeld that the latest Bond sought to evoke to the Sean Connery era. From the ejector seat Aston Martin, to the decor in new M Ralph Fiennes' office, to the more derivative tone and humour, Spectre was a sixties Bond flick in a 21st century tuxedo. Most of these films adopted the sixties aesthetic to produce something light and fun, but even at the serious, dramatic end of the spy movie spectrum there was a nostalgia for fifty years ago as Steven Spielberg returned to a real-life spy exchange of the early sixties for Bridge Of Spies.
