At any time when an motion film becomes a giant hit there may be all the time a rush to emulate the heroes of the film. Whether it’s buying film merchandise or real life items like cars, firearms, and garments people get right into a film whole heartedly. Martial arts movies aren’t any different as people run out to the local dojo to coach within the art that helped the hero save the day. Most honest martial arts instructors will explain that it takes years to learn a martial art, and that those movies are seldom example of how any martial art really works. Film makers are seldom satisfied with reality and feel a necessity to enhance upon even essentially the most impressive real life situations. The exception though is when knowledgeable persons are involved with a project and its creation and reality develop into a part of the fantasy.
The James Bond series is example of a mix of fantasy and reality. The fantasy side of James Bond is he’s capable of accomplish what normally takes an entire team of operatives to do in real life espionage assignments. He doesn’t need to cope with any of the dirty or boring parts of intelligence gathering (read sitting in an uncomfortable place, drinking coffee and waiting for terribly long periods of time). Many agents of the CIA and British MI6 will inform you that loads of what they do is boring, but can still develop into extremely dangerous in a blink of an eye fixed. For a lot of agents an project involves slogging through the mud of some third world hellhole not dinning at the best restaurants in a number of the world’s most beautiful cities.
What the fictional 007 does draw from reality is his martial arts forms. Excluding one film, You Only Live Twice where 007 learned Ninjitsu (taught to Sean Connery by real life martial arts expert Donn Draeger) the martial art of alternative for the British spy in over 20 movies is combat Judo. The martial arts form allows Bond to tackle much larger opponents, and use their weight against them in personal combat. In From Russia with Love Bond was capable of tackle a well armed assassin, and switch the tables because of his Judo training. For a spy coping with an ever changing battlefield, pre-world war II Judo is the right alternative, since it allowed him to be flexible, and different techniques could be seen scattered throughout the movies. This type of Judo is nothing if not practical and for a spy operating alone in the sector there aren’t any second possibilities. Bond was capable of quickly defeat enemies and move on with the mission.
The fact of James Bond’s world comes from his creator Ian Fleming who drew from his many adventures and experiences on the earth of espionage. Before Fleming wrote twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, undercover agent 007 he would have many adventurers of his own. Educated at each Eton College and Sandhurst military academy Fleming would also go on to learn languages and work as each a stockbroker and journalist. Like Bond he enjoyed, many activities like scuba diving, mountaineering, auto racing in addition to smoking and drinking. When World War II began Fleming was a military reservist a part of the famous Black Watch regiment, but transferred to the intelligence branch of the Royal Navy by its director Rear Admiral John Godfrey. Like his favorite character he would achieve the rank of Commander and participate within the planning of many operations within the European theater of the war.
Lots of the code names for these operations would later develop into names of Bond novels, and several other of the characters of his books are said to be based of real people Fleming met while working within the British intelligence community. No one is precisely sure who Bond was based off of, however it is believed he was a mix of several colourful characters Fleming knew. He also helped setup the structure for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which might later develop into the CIA. During this time he was exposed to the numerous commando units who were using Judo as a part of their unarmed combat training. Fleming would command his own unit of raiders and made sure to incorporate Judo as apart of their training.
Though it is just rumored that Fleming trained a secret Camp X in Canada which trained spies and commandos in close combat, assassination techniques, and sabotage a recent book says it more likely he just visited. What is obvious though is Fleming learned well from what he saw, and he brought that to his writing. Fleming who helped to create the trendy intelligence agency would spend the post war years making a fictional world of spies and terrorists.
Though fictional Bond’s martial art of alternative remains to be taught to intelligence operatives and stays the perfect alternative some 50 years later. Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) the UK’s Special Forces branch still use most of the commando tactics learned in WWII today. WWII combatives which include Judo have stood the test of time on screen, and on the battlefields of the world. Fleming and his peers did not have the posh of looking good on a mission. They needed what worked against the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, and Judo was the alternative of the founders of recent espionage.
