Thursday, March 22, 2012

LXB | March Madness: Jame Bond vs Jack Bauer



For the first three weeks of March, we're going to answer the question, one match at a time, of who would win if 12 movie tough guys were airdropped into an abandoned city and only one could escape.

Kelly from Byzantium's Shores made an interesting and valid comment on the Riggs vs Bauer fight and I haven't had a chance to string thoughts together about it until now. So instead of replying in the comments thread, I'll address it here. Kelly's point is that I may have let Jack Bauer have that fight too easily.
Bauer is pretty unstoppable, but in this abandoned city, I don't think he'd have all of the resources he's used to working with (he can't have Chloe hack into the security cameras and tell him where Riggs is, for instance). Plus, Riggs is more than a physical match for Bauer, he's got some martial arts skills of his own, he's probably orders of magnitude better than Bauer with a gun (Riggs is a crack marksman), and Riggs is very good at making creative use of the things around him. Plus, there's that whole dislocating-his-shoulder-at-will thing. Maybe Bauer wins, but it ain't easy for him.
Those are excellent points; especially about Jack's not having the resources he's used to. It's been a while since I've seen any of the Lethal Weapon movies or 24 (or really any of these movies), so my calls are based on whatever the strongest, overall impression is that I have of the characters. For Riggs, it's that he's crazy. For Jack, it's that he's tenacious and more or less amoral. But Kelly reminds me of some of the details that I was glossing over and sure enough, that would affect the outcome. For the sake of the scenario we're building, I'll stick with my original call, but let's certainly acknowledge that it's a much tougher fight for Jack than I suggested.

The question now is: how to apply Jack's weaknesses to a match against James Bond? Depending on the Bond we use, he can be as reliant on his organization's resources as Jack is, but since we've settled on Daniel Craig, that's not an issue. The Bond of Casino Royale and especially Quantum of Solace is very comfortable going off the grid and getting things done on his own. He's also as persistent and ruthless as Jack and I'll argue that he's more experienced too. Even if you don't count his previous incarnations - which I'm not - the mere fact that he's a Double-O counts for a lot more than the domestic terrorists Jack's spent his career fighting.

1 comment:

Brian (Cool & Collected) said...

I really like how this bracket has shaped up. Can't wait to see the finale!

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