Licence to Bill: James Bond movies rated by damage he wrought

Insurers More Th>n painstakingly documented every piece of damage caused in all 24 official Bond films, including Spectre, to assess the true cost of damage Bond and his villains have caused.

Daniel Craig stacked up almost £449 million worth of damages as Bond in the latest instalment, Spectre, which came out in cinemas on Monday.

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But that was nothing in comparison to 1979’s Moonraker - where a whopping £4.3bn of damage was caused.

The least destruction was in Thunderball in 1964, when insurers estimated the damage bill to be a much more modest £419,280.

It was Moore who was judged to be the most destructive over his 12-year stint as 007, causing £4.6 billion worth of damage to vehicles, buildings, artifacts, possessions and the environment.

Nowhere is Moore’s mayhem more evident than in Moonraker, in which his Bond plays a part in the obliteration of five space shuttles and an entire space station: an estimated £4.1 billion cost that’s more wince-inducing than all of Roger Moore’s one-liners put together.

Everything from £3 smashed ashtrays and £25 stolen shirts to £300 million super villain lairs and £1 billion submarines was documented and costed by the insureres, to reveal in excess of £8 billion of destruction spanning 50 years – almost as much as the entire GDP of Jamaica, where Ian Fleming famously lived and wrote the Bond books.

Accounting for inflation and values in today’s money, the most destructive Bonds are:

Roger Moore - £4,630,196,134 (£661,456,590 average per film)

Pierce Brosnan - £1,905,765,384 (£476,441,346 average per film)

Sean Connery - £1,297,087,560 (£216,181,260 average per film)

Daniel Craig - £449,183,670 (£132,582,275 average per film)

Timothy Dalton - £80,058,778 (£70,082,275 average per film)

George Lazenby - £36,417,110 (£36,417,110 average per film)

After Moonraker, Pierce Brosnan’s 1999 turn The World Is Not Enough had the next highest damages bill of £1.1 billion thanks to the underwater destruction of a Russian nuclear submarine. And despite being the least destructive overall the one-time Bond George Lazenby still managed to rack up £36 million of destruction On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969.

Spectre sent Daniel Craig’s total spiralling, where he managed to amass damages of approximately £449 million. In the Spectre trailer alone over £7.5m destruction is witnessed - which is more than the total damages incurred in Thunderball, Octopussy and For Your Eyes Only combined.

Across the 24 Bond films, 210 vehicles have been damaged or destroyed, causing costs in the region of £33.9 million.

However, it’s not just cars that have been damaged at the hands of MI6’s most prolific agent, with £1.1 billion worth of damage also inflicted on homes, landmarks and buildings by Bond.

This includes the complete destruction of a £3m Scottish mansion in Skyfall, £8 million of havoc on the streets of St. Petersburg in Goldeneye (1995), not to mention Blofeld’s £300m volcano lair in You Only Live Twice (1967). Taking everything into account, the average cost of destruction per James Bond film currently stands at a staggering £349,165,782.

Director of Home Claims at MORE TH>N, Tovah Grosscurth said: “We are shaken, but not stirred, to discover Roger has done more damage than Daniel as Bond. Nevertheless, whoever goes by the name Bond, James Bond, might want to consider taking out a very specialist insurance policy.”