Yep. The Craig Bond bio also lists the service that earned him the rank of Commander.
The Bio that was up on 007.com was a really great contemporized read prior to CRās release. Somebodyās got to have a copy of that somewhere.
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Aha, missed that bit in SF. On the other hand, that film also spotlights the Goldfinger DB5 even though itās impossible to reconcile with Craig-era continuity, so who knows.
Maybe Iām off base here, but in general I would think anyone who rises as high in rank as Commander would be more disciplined and less rash and reckless than the ādiamond in the roughā Bond of CR. Thatās the problem with presenting a young and still-learning version of the character: his life doesnāt begin with the MI-6 gig, so he canāt be all that unpolished.
Frankly, the commander bit is really an anachronism they honour for old-timesā and Flemingās sake. Today, a commander/colonel in any given branch of military is a senior-grade administrative post and/or a highly specialised weapons systems officer like a fighter pilot or submarine captain.
The kind of work Bond is supposed to have done - during whatever military service he arguably saw or not - today is done by NCOs, at the most lieutenants. A commander in a modern defence body is a character usually between 45 and 55 and chances are he spent on average already five to ten years behind a desk.
In Flemingās day and age things were somewhat different - but then again not that different. Fleming gave Bond that rank because he had been given it himself. But Fleming was personal assistant to Admiral Godfrey and as such far higher in Admiralty nomenclature than any ordinary commando type in the field. And if Bond had been given the rank because of the nature of his business in his wartime service, as Fleming alluded in YOLT, it begs the question over whom to command with this nifty rank. When all we are given by Fleming are quick glimpses of fairly ordinary and highly dangerous assassination missions which no doubt Bond could and would have accomplished even with the rank of ādogsbody, junior gradeā.
But really, who cares? Flemingās main reason to make Bond a Commander Bond was that he liked to imagine things not as they had been but as they ought to have been. Bond is Commander Bond and relaxes not in front of the telly but at the casino. And when he bets on rouge the ivory ball ends up on red.
Bond has always gone in cycles from the serious to the light hearted - i suspect we are due for another trip down the light hearted road until we get to the next Die Another Day and things turn around yet again.
Thing to keep in mind is Bond has out survived Bourne and now his big competition is comic books - Marvel & Kingsman soā¦ bearing out that Bond has always reacted to popular culture rather than the other way around (at least since Moore started), the writing is on the wall for another Brosnan/Moore esque take
I believe I have a copy on my home computer somewhere. Iāll post a link to it if I can find it.
Perhaps DCās Bond lost the Commander title with the switch of MI6 Headquarters.
I mean, we all lost our ranks when we switched forumsā¦ 
(said with the bitterness of a man who was proud of attaining his rankā¦)
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Not to worry Plank, once we get the boards and the main page all running at full steam, the other details will be hammered out.
And D-O sleven, indeed, if you should find that dossier, Iād appreciate a copy. Cheers!
Thank you good Sir! Much appreciated.
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I donāt think Iāve read through the dossiers in about 10 years now, but I have to give credit to whoever wrote these for the Casino Royale website. I really appreciated how they wove in characters from the novels, like Charles DaSilva, Ronny Valence, and Sir James Molony into Bondās backstory, whilst making it a modernized version. Hans Oberhausser is also mentioned, though his death is set later in the timeline than I believe Spectre has it (though I really donāt expect them to keep to this backstory from a promotional website). Interesting also is that aunt Charmian is listed as deceased already. I donāt recall if she was dead already by the time of the original novels.
Does SPECTRE ever give a timeframe for Oberhauserās death?
If I recall, it was when Franz was 17, and I believe heās older than Bond. In the dossiers it says that Bond maintained contact with Hans until his early 20ās, when Hans died mysteriously. So if Franz is older than Bond, then Bond would have been younger than 17 when Hans died.
Oh waitā¦ was it that Franz died 17 years before Spectre took place, and not when he was 17?
Woild be kind of cool if it synced up, obviously the Blofeld bit wouldnāt because they couldnāt have predicted getting those rights back, but oberhauser still fitting would be a nice touch
So upon revisiting the movie, itās mentioned twice that Hans died 20 years before Spectre, so in 1995. (Iām not sure where I got 17 from). Given the birth date of April 13, 1968 in the dossiers, Bond would have been 27. So it kind of fits. Perhaps they lost touch while Bond joined the Royal Navy so their last contact was when Bond was in his early twenties.
The commander rank already made it to the Craig era; having him in uniform wouldnāt do any more damage, or cause the average audience member to probe what a naval commander does. I also would like to see it.
What marred SPECTRE for me, chiefly, was the retcon overreach. Trying to tie the previous three films together in ways that werenāt entirely successful. Didnāt Silva himself exclaim that he āchooses his own secret missionsā? Doesnāt sound like a loyal, true blue agent of SPECTRE ā an independent contractor whose interests aligned with theirs, thereby securing funds, weapons, and manpower from them for the project to assassinate M? Sure. Likewise, Blofeld being a meaningless alias tied only to his āmotherās bloodlineā, as opposed to, say, his being the bastard child of young Miss Blofeld and her Greek lover Stavro, who was deemed unsuitable by the family, who quickly & discreetly married her off to Mr. Oberhauser, who changed the boyās name. Iām just saying itās not too late.
More importantly, make him a real threat, someone the audience will love to hate.
Musical flavour prediction: given EONās recent trend of hiring the most commercially and critically successful new British recording artist (Adele, Sam Smith), count on Ed Sheeran for the next one. If āThe Shape of Youā wins the Grammy for Record of the Year, consider it a done deal.
A Sheeran Bond theme would probably sound something like āI See Fireā from āThe Hobbit: Desolation of Smaugā but with more bombastic orchestrations:
Please, no!
For those with fanciful scenarios to share in more detail, thereās the āBond 25 Scenariosā thread just started upā¦