The name's Bond. James Bond. 007, licence to kill. And boy doe she make the most of that licence. Even before the gritty Daniel Craig reboot of the character, which aimed to bring things back to the more brutal films and original Ian Fleming novels which were heavy on murder, light on gadgets, the greatest living spy on her majesty's secret service had racked up quite the body count. In fact around 1,300 people have died in the official movies alone - and most of those were at the hands of a Walther PPK. Or else a toaster chucked in a bath, followed by a bad joke. The Guardian crunched the numbers a few years ago, discovering that Bond himself kills an average of sixteen people per movie. Which is pretty impressive, considering during each of these ninety minute adventures he's supposed to be keeping a low profile and not drawing attention to himself. Like he's been taking pointers from Lieutenant Schaffer or something. Still, for the most part the amount of people knocked off by 007 paled in comparison to that of the bad guys...at least, until Pierce Brosnan turned up. The data doesn't lie: in Goldeneye he murdered 47 people to the enemy's 25, Tomorrow Never Dies closed the gap slightly with 30 to 24, and he signed out with Die Another Day where he found time between surfing on CGI waves using an invisible car door to take the lives of 31 men to the villain's 20. So overall Brosnan's Bond killed 135 people, which is 33.8 deaths on average per film. What a hero! We'll never make jokes about the invisible car again. He scares us a bit.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
