A brief his­to­ry of James Bond title sequences

Few cin­e­mat­ic insti­tu­tions are as resilient as the Bond fran­chise. Ini­tial­ly emblem­at­ic of the styles and trends of the 1960s, the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of excess and cool, it declined in the ​’70s, bare­ly sur­vived the ​’80s, and then rein­vent­ed itself twice, first in the ​’90s and then the mid ​’00s.

When it all began, Bond was a fun-filled caper, front­ed by a charis­mat­ic super spy who shoots peo­ple and sleeps around. Now it’s a seri­ous, grit­ty dra­ma with a more mus­cu­lar ver­sion the same Secret Ser­vice agent. One of the defin­ing and most endur­ing fea­tures of the fran­chise – evad­ing the dips of qual­i­ty the films them­selves – is the open­ing cred­its sequence. More than that, they have so far accu­rate­ly reflect­ed each era’s dis­tinc­tive feel, cap­tur­ing the essence of the kind of Bond movie we were about to watch. Here are 10 of our favourites from the estimable Bond back catalogue.

Behold the orig­i­nal Bond title sequence, which is some­times ref­er­enced in lat­er Bond sequences. The bul­let hole that swerves around was a gen­uine inno­va­tion of its the time, as it cre­at­ed a kinet­ic ener­gy that held the audience’s atten­tion. Cre­at­ed by career title design­er Mau­rice Binder, who made the major­i­ty of the ear­ly title sequences, it’s fun, colour­ful and pre­dates the mobile phone video game Snake by some 30 years. It also descends into a dance where every­one holds their hands up. Remem­ber those hands, because they are a key con­stituent of the Bond title sequence.

The cred­it sequences for the next two films, From Rus­sia with Love and Goldfin­ger, were designed by Robert Brown­john, who as as Art of the Title point out, loved typog­ra­phy. More than that, his style was to over­lay the cred­its onto human fig­ures – in the case of both films, scant­i­ly clad women. Goldfin­ger was the first Bond title sequence to fea­ture char­ac­ters from the movie, super­im­posed onto a gold-paint­ed mod­el. If Bond was an art instal­la­tion, this is basi­cal­ly what it would look like. It’s a sim­ple, sen­su­al open­ing sequence. The next instal­ment, From Rus­sia with Love, estab­lished anoth­er ear­ly Bond motif: women wear­ing very little.

Binder returned to make the title sequence for Thun­der­ball in 1965, which would be the first that used the ​‘dark sil­hou­ettes on a coloured back­drop’ theme. Binder struck gold with the idea, and one of the best open­ing sequences from the ​’60s and ​’70s is On Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice, which opens with the line, ​‘This nev­er hap­pened to the oth­er fel­la,’ uttered by the Com­mon­wealth Bond, George Lazen­by. The film was made in 1969, and is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Bond as many still see him: Mar­ti­nis and the British Empire. By this point the women are no longer wear­ing clothes. The new dom­i­nant theme of Bond title sequences is nipples.

A peak into Bond’s sub­con­scious now: the title sequence for Dia­monds Are For­ev­er sees Bond about to shoot a vagi­na just before it turns into a diamond.

Hands were also impor­tant in this peri­od. The nour­ish­ing hands of a woman catch Roger Moore as he descends on a para­chute in the 1974’s The Man With the Gold­en Gun, and the sequences of the 1970s are fair­ly sil­ly, fea­tur­ing naked women jump­ing in the air in 1979’s Moon­rak­er (a naked Super­woman even makes an appear­ance). For Your Eyes Only again fea­tures hands, this time as a woman des­per­ate­ly tries to crawl out of Roger Moore. It also fea­tures Sheena Eas­t­on, the only time the per­former of the Bond song was fea­tured in the title sequence. Thank­ful­ly, this was a one-off.

The 1980s were all about lasers. And good Bond songs. The Dal­ton years saw some of Binder’s best work, as old motifs like naked women were fused with lasers, and a gen­er­al­ly dark­er, neon feel. Accord­ing to Art of the Title, lasers first became a thing in Bond title sequences in Octo­pussy, which used them with plen­ty of smoke to sug­gest an air of mys­tery. This sequence also mem­o­rably sees Bond throw a woman across the cred­its before pro­ceed­ing to have tantric sex with her. A View To Kill opens with a woman reveal­ing her cleav­age, only to have a lasered 007 on her chest, which even for Bond is pret­ty unsub­tle. For our mon­ey, the best Bond title sequence of the 1980s is The Liv­ing Day­lights, which fea­tures a song by A‑ha. In it, Bond impreg­nates a woman by shoot­ing 007 inside of her with a laser gun. When Bond does LSD…

Binder’s last sequence was License to Kill in 1989, arriv­ing before Bond took a hia­tus, return­ing in the form of dash­ing Irish­man Pierce Bros­nan in 1995. Designed by Daniel Klein­man, it’s a much more colour­ful sequence than Binder’s usu­al stuff, and is lit­er­al­ly crawl­ing with naked women, who are destroy­ing phal­lic sym­bols of com­mu­nism. This sequence is what Bond sees when his ther­a­pist makes him take a Rorschach test. Klein­man cut his teeth in music videos, and direct­ed one of the best music videos of the 1980s, Big Love by Fleet­wood Mac.

The music video is an ear­ly indi­ca­tor of where Klein­man would take the Bond title sequences (the colour palette is very sim­i­lar), but it also shows the same imag­i­na­tive streak when it came to struc­ture. Gold­en­Eye was a tran­si­tion sequence though, as Klein­man would unleash his cre­ative vision with Tomor­row Nev­er Dies, his best sequence. Sim­i­lar to Binder, it updates the for­mu­la with CG women made of cir­cuit­ry, which is as creepy as it sounds. Fig­ures are locked in bul­lets. We see guns through an X‑ray. It’s all rather stun­ning. Inter­est­ing­ly, this was the first Bond title sequence not fea­ture 007 since Dr No. It’s Bond’s night­mare, in which the tech­no­log­i­cal future assumes the form of his mor­tal ene­my: women.

Through­out the 1990s, Bond title sequences dis­played a curi­ous fas­ci­na­tion with cov­er­ing women in some­thing dan­ger­ous, be it cir­cuit­ry, oil (1999’s The World Is Not Enough) or fire and ice. The last one is the theme of Die Anoth­er Day, where Bond is sur­round­ed by women who are made out of fire and ice, and who both dance on the fire that is used to tor­ture him and pro­vide con­so­la­tion. The naked sil­hou­ettes, a sta­ple theme since the 1960s, is now more allur­ing and much more dan­ger­ous. This is reflect­ed in each of Brosnan’s Bond films, as the stakes and dan­ger to the world are con­sid­er­ably high­er. Also, at one point, Madon­na sings, ​‘Sig­mund Freud/​Analyse this’. Indeed.

Instead of women we get cards, which makes sense in that Casi­no Royale was sup­posed to reboot the fran­chise and bring it more in line with the pop­u­lar Bourne series, which ditched the romance for set pieces. Klein­man explained the absence of women by say­ing that Casi­no Royale takes place before Bond has his heart bro­ken, which is a weird thing to say, but sug­gests that the sequence was moti­vat­ed by Bond’s fears and vices.

It’s a neat title sequence, apart from the fights that Bond is hav­ing with the men in red, which feels like overkill. As Art of the Title points out, how­ev­er, it is much more in line with the more mod­ern, vio­lent Daniel Craig-era Bond. The amount of colour is refresh­ing, as is the visu­al sym­me­try. The bit where Bond is sit­ting and screw­ing the silencer on to his gun is a cool visu­al. The only woman is when Bond’s sight comes across Eva Green. But he doesn’t shoot. He’s not a mon­ster. Yet.

Quan­tum of Solace was the first Bond title sequence to be exe­cut­ed by the stu­dio MK12 and the film’s direc­tor, Marc Forster. It’s a fair­ly aver­age sequence, with Bond in the desert. At one point he awak­ens gigan­tic slum­ber­ing women made out of sand, and falls down, Mad Men-style. Scratch that, this is def­i­nite­ly the fever dream Bond has before he wakes up in cold sweat.

Sky­fall, on the oth­er hand, is one of the most ref­er­en­tial Bond sequences, reflect­ing the sense of final­i­ty present through­out the film. Adele opens the sequence by war­bling, ​“This is the end.” The hand, which caught Robert Moore’s para­chutist in The Man with The Gold­en Gun, is back, this time to drag 007 under­wa­ter. At one point, Bond shoots his own shad­ow, and inside him is a blood skull, nei­ther of which is par­tic­u­lar­ly sub­tle, but well com­posed nonetheless.

It’s an impres­sive sequence, shot by the return­ing Klein­man, until the weird drag­ons and the point at which it all starts resem­bling Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy video. The sequence is a far cry away from the ​’60s or ​’70s Bond open­ings, and reflects the change in tone that the fran­chise has under­gone as social mores have changed. Even though Bond remains one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive fran­chis­es in exis­tence, we now live in the age of the grit­ty anti-hero and eas­i­ly acces­si­ble pornog­ra­phy, which has made sequences like On Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice feel out-dat­ed and tame. As the Bond fran­chise has pro­gressed, meta com­men­tary with­in the sequences has also become a theme that is increas­ing­ly obvi­ous: Sky­fall, after all, leaves us clos­ing in on Bond’s eye, which as we all know, is the mir­ror to the soul.

The title sequence of the new Bond film, Spec­tre, will once again be designed by Klein­man, his sev­enth one. Hope­ful­ly, the fran­chise will return to the inno­v­a­tive spir­it of the Bros­nan Bonds, rather con­tin­ue with the slick but ulti­mate­ly dull fare of the Craig years. If the rumours are true, and Radio­head real­ly is record­ing the theme song, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are endless.