Some classic James Bond helicopter scenes in Lego

There were some very thoughtful and exciting gifts waiting for me under the tree this Christmas, including Lego figures of James Bond and Skyfall's Raoul Silva, and a Lego helicopter to go with them. The presents got me thinking about some of the many scenes in the Bond films that featured helicopters, and, following my earlier attempts to build Bond vehicles, how I could recreate them in Lego.
 

James Bond and Raoul Silva as Lego figures

The helicopter set that I had been given was a gunship from the Ultra Agents range. It wasn't too dissimilar from the Tiger helicopter from GoldenEye, so I turned to that film first. The helicopter is a two-seater, so I simply put Bond in the front seat of the cockpit and a female figure in the back seat to represent Natalya Simonova and recreate the scene where both have been captured and bound to the cockpit seats. Here Natalya has just woken Bond up.
 

Inside the Tiger helicopter in GoldenEye

The pre-titles sequence of For Your Eyes Only is up there with the best of the opening sequences. Bond is picked up in a Universal Exports helicopter, which is then remotely hijacked by a Blofeld-like figure (now officially acknowledged to be Blofeld). With the pilot out of action, Bond clambers outside the aircraft, opens the pilot's door, climbs back inside, takes control and deals with Blofeld (declining the offer of a delicatessen in stainless steel). My Lego collection isn't that extensive, but I managed to find enough pieces to build something that resembled the helicopter. I had Bond dangle outside and used an image of Beckton Gas Works, where the scene was filmed, as background.
 

Spot the difference. The opening sequence of For Your Eyes Only

I was keen to recreate the scene in From Russia With Love where Bond is being pursued by a helicopter in the Scottish highlands standing in for Turkey, but the design of the helicopter was too much of a challenge for my limited resources. Instead, I looked to On Her Majesty's Secret Service (appropriately enough, being a Christmas film) and the helicopter attack on Piz Gloria.

As I was watching the sequence again, looking for a good action moment involving Bond and a helicopter, I realised that Bond isn't particularly visible during the arrival of the helicopters at Piz Gloria. The sequence focuses on the approach of the helicopters, long-distance shots of Draco's men jumping out, and Tracy's fight with Blofeld's goons, but Bond isn't seen in close-up until he's out of the helicopter and sliding towards the main building. That hasn't stopped me, however, from showing Bond more clearly jumping out of the helicopter – in Lego, at least.
 

The helicopter assault on Piz Gloria

The helicopter itself was fairly easily rendered in Lego, and I was especially lucky to have a brick with a Red Cross sticker. I found an image of Piz Gloria to use as the background. Bond is wearing Silva's white jacket, which I thought it went better with the snow-covered slopes.

I don't pretend that my models are particularly accurate, but I've certainly had fun making them. There are plenty more helicopter moments in the Bond films, so watch this space for more of them recreated in Lego!

Some Lego models of James Bond vehicles

In lieu of a post of more academic value, I thought I'd publish pictures of the models of James Bond vehicles I've built out of Lego over the past few weeks. I started one evening with Little Nellie, the autogyro from You Only Live Twice. My daughter's small collection of Lego bricks and pieces was still out after she had been playing with it, and, after catching sight of my framed – and autographed – postcard showing the inventor of Little Nellie, Ken Wallis, flying his creation, I wondered whether I could reconstruct the vehicle using the Lego. The result was not hugely accurate, but it was recognisably Little Nellie.

Pleased with my effort, I thought of other Bond vehicles that could be recreated in Lego using the limited resources I had available. The following week, I settled on 'Wet Nellie', the submersible Lotus Esprit that appears in The Spy Who Loved Me. This model was, I felt, more successful than Little Nellie, probably because the Lego shapes leant themselves to the sleek form of the car.

For my next model, I turned to the Q-Boat from The World Is Not Enough. I just about had enough suitable pieces to produce a reasonable representation, although the curved form of the canopy covering the driver's seat and the structure of the rear of the vehicle were challenging.

Encouraged by feedback from Twitter, I collected all the yellow pieces I could find in order to build a model of the Citroën 2CV from For Your Eyes Only. I discovered that the curves of the vehicle were very difficult to recreate, and the result, though just about recognisable as a 2CV, was not  particularly convincing.

Indeed, before I admitted via Twitter that the model was purporting to be the 2CV, some of my followers suggested that it was the tuk tuk from Octopussy. The tuk tuk, however, is more accurately recreated in Lego, as my model demonstrates.

  
I've had fun building these models. I don't pretend that they're very good, but I was pleased with what I had achieved. If there's a general lesson to learn from my model-building, apart from the fact that vehicles with curves cannot be recreated very well in Lego, it's that recognisable models of distinctive vehicles can be made using even a fairly basic set of pieces by focusing on key elements of the design, such as the rotor blades and yellow front end of Little Nellie, and the angles and fins of the Lotus Esprit.