10 Secret Worst Movie Heroes

4. The Inspector Gadget Hypothesis

Commander James Bond, 007 is the ultimate superspy: tough, strong and thoroughly absorbent when it comes to vodka. Right? Of course not. Famously derided by his own creator as a €œblunt instrument€, a description so fitting that it even passed into the films, Bond is an unreliable loose cannon and a lone wolf in a business predicated on relationships, the chain of command and following orders to the letter, not the spirit. Now granted, the James Bond franchise isn€™t exactly John Le Carré when it comes to authenticity of tradecraft, but even within the context of the movies themselves, 007 is considered to be a wild card €“ a thug in a tux. He repeatedly goes AWOL, has ballsed up more than a few delicate missions by deciding to punch someone in the neck or shoot some other person in the face, and regularly causes more than a few raised eyebrows in public places by engaging in car, bike, speedboat, helicopter, ski and skydiving chases in broad daylight. He€™s a heavy drinker who€™s notoriously indiscriminate about who he sleeps with €“ the man puts the €˜peen€™ into €˜espionage€™. If all that wasn€™t enough, this is a professional spy whose idea of a covert op is to dress up to the nines, drive up to the front of the poshest casino in town, sit down opposite the terrorist/war criminal/gangster/fellow spy he€™s there to take down and introduce himself by his given name. €œThe name€™s Bond. James Bond.€ Yes, we know. Everyone knows who you are. You keep telling people your name and then shooting them. At least Denny Crane had Alzheimer€™s as an excuse. There€™s a popular theory, nicknamed The Inspector Gadget Hypothesis, that speculates that Bond is only sent in to be the clumsy, crude distraction: that his bull-in-a-china-shop clowning about grabs all the attention while the actual spies, working as part of a highly organised and stealthy team, do the real work sub rosa. How we wish that was true.