How Many Times Is It You Only Live?

Bored yesterday, I decided to go back to the beginning
of the James Bond film franchise, to Sean Connery,
still my favorite, in Dr. No, 1962,
the first, as well, my parents took me to, a wee lad embarking
on a lifelong love of Bond, James Bond.
I’ve seen them all, some too many times to count,
but I went back and watched all of them again to tally
the number of bullets that not only have hit our hero and never killed him,
but the ones that have missed.
Quite the viewing marathon, it involved a great deal of fast-forwarding,
which was easy since I knew well where all the shooting scenes occurred.
My favorite near miss will always be the one in Thunderball
where Connery uses the woman as a human shield
turning her toward the shooter just in time to avoid catching the bullet himself.
“Do you mind if my friend sits this one out?” he says,
dropping the fresh corpse in a conveniently vacant seat.
“She’s just dead,” an all-time favorite line of mine.
Coming right down to the current offering, No Time To Die,
I added them up and came out with 1,234,567 bullets
either missing him, or hitting him but not killing him.
Stunned by my calculation to the point of near disbelief,
I quickly watched all of them again and, sure enough,
came up with the exact same total.
Imagine adding up the number of shots from the very beginning,
passing the sum total on to the people making the next in the franchise,
leaving it to (spoiler alert) the last one to tie up the bullet bow?
Mind blown.
Amazingly as well, 1,234 actually strike him.
Even if they were all merely flesh wounds,
we’re talking Super Man numbers here.
James Bond rarely wears a cape, mostly Roger Moore’s attire,
and he may never wear tights, that I can tell,
yet Shaken-Martini Man is indestructible.
To wit, with pre-seasonal glad tidings,
there appears life left in the franchise yet,
(spoiler alert) even beyond death, they say,
with more promised bullets flying on the way, for
James Bond will be back.