10 Times James Bond Should Have Been Killed

Has there been a lucky character in history than James Bond? His ability to consistently avoid death is remarkable, and that's not taking into account how he seemingly never ages and is the fittest looking 90 year old the world has ever seen.

This list instead looks at those times where Agent 007 just should have died and only survived for the most ridiculous of reasons. While the use of gadgets and his own ingenuity are valid ways of staying alive, there are more than a few occasions when the suspension of disbelief just gets pushed a little too far.

For the purposes of this list we are happy to overlook those occasions where his body was remarkably resilient, such as surviving falls into a waterfall or off a hot air balloon. Instead we are concentrating on those times where the achievement of the villain's goals are all but achieved with the elimination of their adversary, only for them to unnecessarily delay his execution. On most occasions a ludicrously convoluted execution method is also concocted that is all but guaranteed to backfire.

So park your Aston Martins and shake but don't stir those martinis, as we examine those times Bond's number clearly should have been up.

As far as the most recent Bond adventure would like us to believe, the latest incarnation of Ernst Stavro Blofeld has been waiting a long time to kill his nemesis. He has apparently been plotting and scheming for Bond to suffer and die at the hands of the three villains preceeding him in the Bond franchise, and finally he has him in his possession. Despite surviving the assassin that was sent to kill him, Bond has now all but surrendered himself to him. Game over.

Well, that's Game over after Blofeld gives his step brother a tour of the facility he has built, including a detailed lecture on a meteorite he has collected. And then of course its time to slowly poke him with needles rather than just, I don't know, kill him!

Spectre wasn't the success that Skyfall was and the padded out torture that Blofeld delivers to Bond is a big part of the problem. Even in the film's final scene, Blofeld unnecessarily gets Bond to play a game in the ruins of MI6 rather than just blowing him and his lady friend up.

One could potentially buy into the idea that Blofeld is simply toying with his prey for a bit of sport. But this concept is much harder to digest when scenes throughout the film show his henchmen consistently trying to take Bond out of the picture.