The Butterfly Effect: Robert McGinnis's Poster Metamorphoses of Bond Women

In franchises as successful as the James Bond oeuvre, the films take on a peculiar life of their own, in which the films themselves ironically seem to fade into the background in favor of ideas and associations. Between marketing and merchandising, including product placement, the idea of “James Bond” transcends film narrative. A singular element of this process is the Bond film poster, whose aesthetic has changed through time, but in its formative stage, as Sean Connery transitioned to Roger Moore, artist Robert McGinnis’s designs enabled the image of Bond to take hold in the popular imagination and became identifiable in ways that only marginally reflected the realities of the film, instead creating a singular mythology that has endured for decades. This article argues that the Bond film posters are more than mere decoration: they are an integral part of the mythology of Bond.