gallandro said:
Completely irrelevant whether Bond was a literary character first as the vast majority of people's first exposure to Bond was via the films. The Bond novels had a loyal, if somewhat small, following until JFK revealed in 1961 that "From Russia With Love" was one of his top 10 favorite books. Sales of the Bond novels soared in the U.S.
Additionally, during the entire run of the Sean Connery Bond films every advertisement on the planet said "Sean Connery IS Jame Bond"... not "as" James Bond. In the public's mind back then 007=Sean Connery. Hell, Fleming even fudged Bond's background a bit and acknowledged Connery's contribution to the series by informing readers, in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," that Bond's father, Andrew Bond, was Scottish.
Yancy
Well, it is not irrelevant at all. Without the books, there is no series. After Connery's departure you had On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which was an attempt to get Bond back to
his literary roots. If there was no novel, then there is no basis for that specific movie. You also had the next 8 movies that were inspired by Fleming novel/short story titles (granted they weren't close to the corresponding novels). You then had the whole Dalton and now the Craig era, whose sole inspiration and purpose is to bring Bond back to Fleming. Those era's don't exist without the novels. You cannot say that they are irrevlant at all.
Let's make Indiana Jones more like Bond for a second. Let's assume that there were 10 Indiana Jones novels BEFORE Raiders of the Lost Ark hit theaters. It doesn't matter how popular they might have been. That would mean that Lucasfilm owns the rights to make at least 10 movies. That sure becomes an incentive for them to keep going until at least those novels have all been filmed. For the fans, it would be a huge incentive as well. We would all be spending countless hours on sites like this hungry for this book to be adapted, or to be excited about this specifc action scene to finally make the jump from print to screen. With this desire, we could forgive Harrison Ford's replacement to make way for another actor so we can keep this series going- because then that makes Indiana Jones bigger than Harrison Ford. If we were to even add that the actor following Ford played the character drastically different than the original novels, we would spend time wanting the next movie to "get back to the spirit of the novels."
As we have it now, we have no other Indiana Jones adventures and no other basis for the character other than Harrison Ford. So that is why there is a big distinction between the two series.
I hope that clarifies the issue a bit better.