In Service Of Nothing Offers A Dark Ending For Sean Connery’s Bond

In Service Of Nothing is a fan short film that offers a dark ending for the Sean Connery version of James Bond. While movie stars like Cary Grant and David Niven were approached – with the latter being author Ian Fleming’s personal choice – a relatively unknown Sean Connery was selected to play James Bond in Dr. No. While this first movie was a hit, by the time the third adventure Goldfinger came around the James Bond series was a full-blown cultural phenomenon.

Sean Connery himself would tire of the series after You Only Live Twice, but was later tempted back thanks to a very large cheque for 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, after his successor George Lazenby up and quit after only one movie. Roger Moore would then take the reins when Connery exited again, but he returned one last time for the unofficial Bond adventure Never Say Never Again in 1983. This installment was essentially a remake of Thunderball, though it made Bond’s advancing years and his relevance a part of the story.

Several entries in the series have questioned the need for James Bond at all in the modern era, with Daniel Craig’s Skyfall being the most recent example. Easily the darkest is 2015’s James Bond: In Service Of Nothing, which is part of producer Adi Shankar’s “Bootleg Universe.” This is a series of shorts that take famous franchises and filters them through a darker lens, such as the shorts Power/Rangers or The Punisher: Dirty Laundry.

Arguably the bleakest of the bunch is In Service Of Nothing, a Tyler Gibb-directed short that focuses on what could have become of the Sean Connery version of the superspy. The short opens with a flashback car chase as Bond races to catch a villain trying to escape with nuclear warheads, and all the classic tropes are present from the 1960s take on the character, from the quips to the gadgets and the bikini-clad Bond Girl, who isn’t even named here.

Cut to the present day and the In Service Of Nothing James Bond is a retired, bald and bored old man desperate to relive his glory days. He resorts to taking a sleazy hit job from the dark web just to feel something again, and while he tries to envision it as a glamourous assignment – complete with visions of supervillain lairs – he’s really just a killer. In Service Of Nothing is dark but fascinating alternate take on the character and provides a stark contrast between how the world used to see espionage and the modern-day reality. Of course, it’s not easy seeing the Sean Connery version take on James Bond reduced to a forgotten, lonely hitman either, and it’s supremely doubtful the franchise would ever take a swing at something this bleak. In fact, MGM briefly got the short taken down, but it was later reinstated.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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