Washington's International Spy Museum has a new exhibit commemorating 50 years of James Bond films and their villains.
Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains opened Friday at the museum. The entire first floor was renovated to accommodate the 110 Bond artifacts.
The 5,000-square-foot exhibit includes more than 100 artifacts, including a green Jaguar XKR driven by the villain of the 2002 Bond film Die Another Day and metal teeth worn by the villain Jaws in the 1970s Bond films Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me.
The exhibit reveals that after seeing A View to a Kill, with its pioneering suggestion of facial recognition software, then CIA director William Casey wanted his agency to develop that capability.
There are sidebars on animal assassins, faceless minions and torture. Commentary demonstrating the intersection between Bond and life includes Dame Stella Rim-ington, former director of Britain's MI5 and a spy novelist, talking about Bond's relationship with M in Casino Royale, and former CIA operative Valerie Plame talking about maintaining your cover.
The first James Bond film, Dr. No, was released in 1962. In the film, Julius No of the diabolical criminal enterprise SPECTRE, plots nuclear mischief from his hidden, technology-filled Caribbean lair, with the fate of the U.S. space program hanging in the balance. The film premièred less than two weeks before the Cuban missile crisis triggered 13 days of brinksmanship involving a real-world nuclear threat.
The 23rd installment of the blockbuster franchise, Skyfall, is now playing in theatres. Bond's mission in the latest film is to keep a computer drive that has a list of British agents from being used against them.The exhibit will be on display at the museum for at least the next two years.
