Was Dr. No the best choice for the first Bond film?

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This is something that I’ve often wondered. Was Dr. No really the best novel to adapt first from all the Fleming novels available in 1962? Obviously the answer is yes, as the film turned out to be a huge sucess and the rest is history. But looking back on it now more closely, was this really the best creative choice for the franchise in hindsight? I mean for one a lot of the interesting elements from Dr. No the novel were omitted. Some examples:

-The novel of DN is an interesting character driven story, coming after Bond’s ‘‘death’’ in FRWL which had some significant impact on the character. Reading DN very much feels like Bond’s journey to find himself again, kind of similiar to Skyfall. The character of Dr. No testing Bond’s endurance towards the end of the novel serves as the perfect finale to this story. None of these elements are of course present in the movie version, apart from the mention of Bond spending some time in hospital before the events of the film.

-It brings back characters previously introduced in LALD with Strangways and Quarrel, which makes their fate in the story all the more impactful.

-The novel is one of the more outlandish, if not the most outlandish Bond novel Fleming wrote. However a lot of these elements, especially towards the finale, are not present in the film mostly due to budget limitations

So that makes me thinking, did we miss out on an ever greater film here? I think it is one of the few examples where I actually think the book version is better than the film. But if not DN, which novel should they have adapted instead? CR would’ve been the perfect start of the series in my opinion, as it wouldn’t have required a big budget if it followed the novel closely. TB was actually the first choice of the producers, but that didn’t happen for the reasons I suppose we’re all familiar with. And maybe for the better, because I think TB benefited a lot from being made later down the line with a higher budget.

So what about the other novels? LALD? Probably too risky to start the series with I guess. MR? Maybe a better choice, but it would’ve lacked excotism that the first film really needed I think, although they could of course have included some more locations other than Britain. DAF? Maybe too American, which might have sent the wrong message about what the franchise wants to be. FRWL? Wouldn’t have worked because it is essentially a revenge story from the villain’s perspective. GF? Quite possible, but I’d say this film, like TB, defenitely benefited from being made later down the line with a higher budget. FYEO? I guess it wouldn’t have been a good idea to start of with a short story collection.

So yes I guess DN made the most sense if you look at it closly. But what do you people think? Did we miss out on a much more interesting film? Should they have chosen another novel? Would you maybe have preferred if they went with the order of the books? And what if EON actually had the rights to CR at the time?

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Not sure Casino Royale would have really been a good start. If we look at it closely Bond actually does very little (and what he does is either compromised from the start or frightfully ineffective for a senior counterintelligence operative). The first adaptation was a tv drama that apparently had little impact with the audience. Eon might well have given it a treatment to show more of Bond’s later adventures (a 00 mission uncovering Le Chiffre’s plans possibly), but it’s still not a given this would have connected with the audience.

Moonraker actually started out as a screenplay - though Fleming probably was the better novelist - and I think this would perhaps have been a much more bizarre and terrifying start. Arguably, it would have shifted Bond’s screen persona towards a more sf/horror role. But as the Quartermass films showed, there was already a demand for that. And the rocket shaft would have made a fantastic Ken Adam set.

The obvious alternative though would have been From Russia, with Love, possibly without the helicopter/boat chase to meet a smaller budget.

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Hindsight always is a beauty, but I think DR. NO was the best possible choice, establishing a template, and its outlandish ideas were essential to tell the marketplace: we are different and fun.

Starting with a more down to earth, gritty spy story would not have had the needed effect.

EON really knew what they were doing.

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I have a vague memory of someone saying that Thunderball was going to be the first choice if not for…well, you know…then Dr No seemed the next best choice because they wanted something big but starts small to start the series. I think it was Terence Young who said it in an interview.

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They could have started with DAF, Golden Gun, MR… more like the stories from the books ofcourse.
Think about Jack Palance as Scaramanga with the final in the swamp.
That would have worked too.

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It was fresh as a novel, fit the excitement brief, and was the best choice available to start the series with. I think that the first five movies were all chosen brilliantly.

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EON couldn’t have started with The Man With The Golden Gun because that wasn’t released until 1965.

But if they couldn’t start with Casino Royale, Dr. No was easily the best choice they could have made.

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Dr No has everything the series aimed for with Bond: exotic locale, intrigue, action and sex in a modern-day Tarzan package with dastardly villains and measured violence. Plus, it was comparatively easy to film with just a select few locations and necessary sound stage work. It looks like a significantly bigger budget while it also hints an entire Bond world people wanted to see more of.

Can’t do much better than this.

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When I was 7-years old, my Dad took me on a weekday afternoon to the cinema to see a double feature of DN and FRWL, presented in that order. He tells me I was taken to see YOLT when I was 4, but I have no memory of that. I was so hooked after DN that I couldn’t wait for later that year when he took me opening night to see OHMSS. I was a bona fide 007 freak by then. So, DN did its job perfectly.

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This,

DN “feels” a lot, without actually “being” a lot, and once you remove the giant squid you’ve pared the technical challenges of your script down to a minimum. You’re setbound, with little need for an extended stay for the whole production on-location, you’re going with back projection for the car chase, in honesty it’s as “B-picture” as it comes; if the published numbers are correct, you’re doing everything possible to ensure that the picture is a financial success.

I’ve read too the talk that TB was mooted as the start, but I think the extended underwater sequences would have been a stretch, a potential pitfall for a series’ success and longevity. With hindsight it’s clearly the right choice to have gone with DN over TB - as a technical challenge alone, it’s never truly solved in ‘65 eve with a bigger budget, and 4 more years of technology and know-how (McClory’s much discussed love of diving didn’t seem to equal any real expertise on how to make it look exciting on-screen).

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At that time I believe this was state of the art, and nobody did/could do it differently.

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You’re right. That was the standard and I did imply that it was a conscious decision. But I meant it to imply that once you’ve dumped the squid, everything left was as cost effective as it could/had/needed to be.

What hasn’t changed over the years is how effective an outstanding production designer can be. Adam’s sets screamed “expense” and “opulence” yet were no doubt the usual mixture of plasterboard and spray paint!

And while it doesn’t have to do much (in comarison to the moving parts of YOLT and beyond) other than stage the action, the reactor room conveys a style and a sense of grandeur beyond what the budget was in reality.

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I like FRWL styled adventures as much as anyone, but I think the series loses something when it moves away from volcano bases and space stations. Dr. No’s brand of comic strip entertainment came into the Fleming universe six books in, and I think that’s where the series really began to distinguish itself. It was the perfect film to begin with for that reason. It wasn’t just cloak and dagger, it was Bond.

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I see pretty much everyone agrees that DN was the perfect start for the series. And I agree as well. I think if they went with something like MR (I think the second best option at the time) it wouldn’'t have distinguished itself as something totally unique like DN was. A start with CR would’ve been interesting, but it would’ve clearly lacked the fantasy and colourful elements DN brought to establish the character and the world, and I think it defenitely wouldn’t have been as succesful. Still, maybe having CR and then following it up with DN would have been a great start from a movie critical perspective.

In many ways, Fleming’'s first five novels have quite a different tone than DN. I think the character as he was in DN and onwards, with more humour and the story itself having more outlandish elements, was the foundation for what the series overall would become. And it was where the novel series was at the time, so it made sense that that was translated to the screen. I always think of the Fleming novels in three different ‘‘arcs’’ if you will:

-The first 5 novels (CR to FRWL) have Bond as more of a dark and serious blunt instrument, the tone is more serious. This is where the Dalton and early Craig era clearly draw the most from.

-From DN to OHMSS the character becomes somewhat lighter, there’s more fun, more humour and his world becomes more outlandish. This is the tone that is present in most of the film series.

-Then we have the later novels YOLT and onwards where we have Bond as a broken more emotional character, and this is where the later Craig era draws the most from. As has often been discussed the Craig essentially goes from this early dark blunt instrument version of Bond to the later broken version of the character, without doing the ‘‘middle’’ version of the character that is essentially what made the character famous on the big screen.

I think EON made the right call to use the tone of that second category with DN and have it as the template for the series overall. With all that being said, I do think it’s an interesting what if however if they made DN later down the line and incorporated some elements from the novel that were omitted.

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