Goldfinger (film) - Impact and Legacy

Impact and Legacy

Goldfinger had a large impact on the rest of the Bond series as its script came to be seen as a template for all other Bond films to follow. It was the first of the series showing Bond relying heavily on technology, as well as the first to show a pre-credits sequence with only a tangential link to the main story—in this case allowing Bond to get to Miami after a mission. Also introduced for the first of many appearances is the briefing in Q-branch, allowing the viewer to see the gadgets in development. The subsequent films in the Bond series follow most of Goldfinger's basic structure, featuring a henchman with a particular characteristic, a Bond girl that gets killed by the villain, big emphasis on the gadgets and a more tongue-in-cheek approach, though trying to balance action and comedy.

Goldfinger has been described as perhaps "the most highly and consistently praised Bond picture of them all" and after Goldfinger, Bond "became a true phenomenon." The success of the film led to the emergence of many other works in the espionage genre and parodies of James Bond, such as The Beatles film Help! in 1965 and a spoof of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1967. Indeed it has been said that Goldfinger was the cause of the boom in espionage films in the 1960s, so much so that in "1966, moviegoers were offered no less than 22 examples of secret agent entertainment, including several blatant attempts to begin competing series, with James Coburn starring as Derek Flint in the film Our Man Flint and Dean Martin miscast as Matt Helm".

Even within the Bond canon, Goldfinger is acknowledged; the 22nd Bond film, Quantum of Solace, includes an homage to the gold body paint death scene by having a female character dead on a bed nude, covered in crude oil. Outside the Bond films, elements of Goldfinger, such as Oddjob and his use of his hat as a weapon, Bond removing his drysuit to reveal a tuxedo underneath and the laser scene have been homaged or spoofed in works such as True Lies, The Simpsons, and the Austin Powers series. The US television programme MythBusters explored many scenarios seen in the film, such as the explosive depressurisation in a plane at high altitudes, the death by full body painting, an ejector seat in a car and using a tuxedo under a drysuit.

The success of the film led to Ian Fleming's Bond novels receiving an increase of popularity and nearly 6 million books were sold in the United Kingdom in 1964, with 964,000 copies for Goldfinger alone. Between the years 1962 to 1967 a total of 22,792,000 Bond novels were sold.