James Bond’s legendary Aston Martin and other high-tech gadgets have arrived at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry for the first-ever exhibit on the science behind the film series.
For Chris Corbould, a veteran special effects supervisor who has worked on 15 James Bond films, navigating the new exhibit is like a full-throttle trip down memory lane.
But the Hollywood version of Q hopes that people who see the props for the first time will walk away with a yearning and excitement to build something new.
A gun that appears in the Bond movie “The Man with the Golden Gun.”
“I think it would be great if they had the passion to want to do something like this,” Corbould told the Sun-Times during a preview event Wednesday.
“There have been many James Bond exhibitions in the past, but this is the first to explore the science of James Bond and how it influenced future inventions and discoveries. They came out of someone’s head, and today they are everyday items for us.”
“Science: Inventing the World of James Bond” opens to the public on Thursday and will run until late October. This exhibit features 13 of his vehicles that appeared in Bond films and over 90 of his additional artifacts.
Kathleen McCarthy, the museum’s chief curator, said there was always a scientific basis to the creation of the Bond films. Movies also often featured technology that was later realized in reality, such as underwater cameras and clocks with television screens.
The iconic Aston Martin DB5 was first driven by Sean Connery’s James Bond in Goldfinger.
Dozens of authentic vehicles used in stunts are on display, including the Aston Martin from Casino Royale (2006), which set the Guinness World Record for most barrel rolls in a car. Also includes DBS.
Crews first tried using a ramp to flip the vehicle, but the Aston Martin proved too sturdy, so Corbould and his team used pressurized nitrogen to flip the vehicle. He said a cannon was attached to the vehicle.
Interactive features throughout the exhibit also allow visitors to step into Bond tech master Q’s lab space and try his hand at designing his own stunts and gadgets.
“It’s all about not just telling how it happened; [in the film] But it’s about motivating them to be creative,” McCarthy said.
To highlight Bond’s influence on real-world innovation, a collection of Bond props and their modern-day counterparts are displayed at the end of the exhibit. The jet pack used in “Thunderball” (1965) and the modern Gravity his Industries next to his suit, the sucker climber and real-life gecko gloves from “You Only Live Twice” (1967).
Similarly, stunts in Bond films were intended to follow the laws of real-world physics and mathematics.
“James Bond has always been grounded in reality,” Corbould told the Sun-Times.
For more information on exhibition times and prices, please visit the Museum of Science and Industry website.