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Cinematic Tag


"Say Bond, do you do any gardening?"
― Jack Wade to James Bond.[src]

Jack Wade is a CIA operative who helped James Bond investigate the Janus Syndicate in the 1995 film GoldenEye. He also makes a brief appearance in 1997 film Tomorrow Never Dies and is played by American actor Joe Don Baker. The character also appears in the 2000 video game 007 Racing, voiced by Bill Mondy.

Biography[]

Goldeneye[]

Jack Wade meets James Bond at an airport in St. Petersburg where he waits for him and when he arrives and sees Wade, Bond moves next to him and said "In London, April's a spring month." After talking, they walk over to Jack's car and as Wade places Bond's suitcase on the roof of his car, Bond manages to subdue Jack and points his gun at him and says "Show me the rose." Embarrassingly, Jack was forced to drop his pants and shows James a tattoo of a rose, a name "Muffy" on top of it. Jack says Muffy is his third wife. Soon after introducing each other, Jack asks James "Do you do any gardening?"

Later the car had broke down and while he fixed the engine, Jack and "Jimbo" talk about Janus and when Jack fixes the car, he tells James that an Ex-KGB is his biggest competition, Valentin Zukovsky. Bond recognised the name and told Jack that he gave Zukovsky the limp on his right leg. Later, Jack appears to Bond and Natalya Simonova with a plane which he trades for Bond's BMW Z3 and upon being given the keys, Jack was told not to play with any of the buttons. Wade later reappears in front of James and Natalya with the Marines and realize he was too late, but still gave the two a lift.

Tomorrow Never Dies[]

Jack appears again, coming up to James, welcoming him after James successfully retrieved a GPS encoder from Elliot Carver's office. The encoder sent HMS Devonshire off-course and everyone on it was killed. He is last seen looking at Bond leaving to look at the wreck not leaving "without saying goodbye."

Literary Biography[]

GoldenEye (novelisation)[]

After being sent to St. Petersburg, Wade met up with MI6 operative 007, who did not take kindly to Wade's carefree attitude, and forced him to show his tattoo of his Ex-wife's name to verify his legitimacy. After that, he took 007 on a tour of the city, and explained several of the decaying buildings as having been Soviet military buildings that the new government could not afford to keep. 007 asked Wade what he knew of Janus, and while he did not know much, was able to inform him that rumors said he lived on an armored train bought from a retired stock of missile transport trains that had belonged to the Soviet Union. On top of that he explained that the Russian government had little information on the man, as any Security operative that had information on him would have to admit that they knew him. They then drove in Wade's dilapidated car to a place called "The Statue Park", a place where cities and towns dumped their statues of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, or Sycle and Hammer emblems. On the drive back, Jack offered to take Bond to Janus' greatest competition, Valentin Zukovsky, and drove him to his nightclub.

Valentin's was located off of an alley which hosted a thriving twenty-four hour black market, which Wade referred to as "the shopping mall of death". He instructed Bond to enter the club through any door on his left and to follow the smell to Zukovsky.

Wade was later contacted by Bond, who was in need of help getting out of the country with Natalya Simonova. Wade got them fake passports and disguises before flying them to America, where they were taken to Puerto Rico, where Wade met them again to give them the maps of Havana, where they believed the crime boss Janus was based. He told them to call if they needed help, but the next time Wade saw them they were reuniting in a jungle clearing after having defeated Janus. Wade then discreetly called for the Marines in the jungle to leave them in peace.

Behind the Scenes[]

In 1987, actor Joe Don Baker portrayed villain Brad Whitaker in the Bond film The Living Daylights, opposite Timothy Dalton as James Bond. In 1995 and 1997 Baker returned to the film series, this time playing Wade, in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies with Pierce Brosnan as Bond. This makes Baker one of three actors to appear as both a Bond ally and a villain, the others being Charles Gray who appeared as Dikko Henderson in You Only Live Twice and as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever and Walter Gotell who appeared as Morzeny, the SPECTRE Island trainer in From Russia with Love and General Gogol, head of the KGB in six films between 1977 and 1987.

In the original GoldenEye script by Michael France, Bond's Russian contact was a heavyset Russian named Valentin Kosygin, known by the nickname "Romaly", before the character was rewritten into Jack Wade.

The character is named after writer Kevin Wade, who had been brought in to polish up Michael France's and Jeffrey Caine's GoldenEye screenplay, with Bruce Feirstein adding the finishing touches.[1] In the film, the writing credit was shared by Caine and Feirstein, while France was credited with only the story, an arrangement he felt was unfair, particularly as he believed the additions made were not an improvement on his original version.[2] Wade did not receive an official credit, but was acknowledged in the naming of Jack Wade, the CIA character he created.

Wade was initially included in the 1997 game GoldenEye but after Rare realised that they did not have the licensing to use the likeness of Baker, Wade was cut from physically appearing in the game.

Gallery[]

Quotes[]

"Who are you, the weather man? Well, look what we have here, another stiff-ass Brit: Your secret codes and your passwords. Soon, you people are gonna learn to drop it."
― Jack Wade to James Bond.[src]
"Alright, April's a Spring month, but here in St. Petersberg we're freezing our butts off. Isn't that enough for Government work?"
― Jack Wade to James Bond.[src]
"Say Bond, do you do any gardening?"
― Jack Wade to James Bond.[src]
"So you're probably looking for a dish the size of a Football field. Doesn't exist. You can't light a cigar in Cuba without us seeing it."
― Jack Wade to James Bond and Natalya Simonova.[src]

Trivia[]

  • Wade's obsession with gardening and plants might be a refrence to the 1985 British television drama serial Edge of Darkness, which was directed by Martin Campbell (who directed the 1995 GoldenEye movie) and starring Joe Don Baker as an American intelligence operative. The series, besides political and espionage aspects, also features lots of emphasis on enviromentalism and vegetation, which is maybe what Wade is referring to.

References[]

  1. Kerry Douglas Dye (15 November 1999). His Word is Bond: An Interview With 007 Screenwriter Bruce Feirstein. LeisureSuit.net. Archived from the original on 5 December 2006. Retrieved on 12 November 2006.
  2. Reg Seeton and Dayna Van Buskirk. "Screenwriting Punishment with Michael France", IGN. Retrieved on 12 November 2006. 
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