Heart of Stone: Female Bond-Clone References Moonraker, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Other Bond Films

Heart of Stone is the latest spy film to jump on the James Bond bandwagon. For those wanting to see a female James Bond, then this is the closest you’ll likely get. The Netflix action film stars Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone, an elite secret agent working for The Charter.

Like 007, she has a number, Nine of Hearts. The Hearts are like Double-0s, each given a globetrotting mission to protect the world from international threats. She takes her orders from Nomad, who is similar to Bond’s boss M, and she is helped by computer expert and gadget master, Jack of Hearts, who has more in common with Ben Whishaw’s Q from Skyfall than the original Q played by Desmond Llewellyn.

Matthias Schweighöfer plays Jack of Hearts, the tech guy and gadget master who is very much like Ben Wishaw’s Q from Skyfall.

But if you think the similarities end there, then think again. The film’s cinematographer George Steel told IndieWire: “I love Octopussy, and I would joke with [director] Tom [Harper], ‘I want this film to look like Octopussy. He would always look at me slightly terrified, but when Roger Moore comes out of the jungle in that green jacket, I think it’s beautiful.”

Though Steel got the color of Moore’s safari jacket from Octopussy wrong, there are numerous Bond references to behold in Heart of Stone.

The film begins with an action-packed pre-title sequence followed by animated opening credits accompanied by a musical score that mirrors the setup of a standard Bond film. But it’s the contents of the opening sequence that nods back to one of the most copied Bond films in Hollywood, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). When a mission inside a mountain-top ski resort goes sideways, Stone is forced to paraglide down the slopes in the middle of the night, swerving trees and skiers before commandeering a motorbike so she can get to the bottom of the mountain and dispatch a kill squad before they dispatch her fellow agents. It’s reminiscent of Bond’s midnight escape from Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s mountaintop base Piz Gloria, a defunct ski resort turned into a research lab. There’s a definite allusion to the ski chase in which Bond plays slalom with pine trees in the middle of the night. 

Like many action sequences styled on Bond films, this opening sequence is layered with references from multiple Bond movies. There are two references to 007’s cable car fight with Jaws in Moonraker. Stone uses a cable that transports cars up and down the mountain as a flying fox just like Bond does in Moonraker, while her fellow agent Parker (Jamie Dornan) uses similar moves to 007 as he fights a killer inside a cable car. He even drops a ladder on the assailant’s head like Bond does to the grotesque henchman Jaws.

Jamie Dornan, who plays double agent Parker in Heart of Stone, is a frontrunner to be the next James Bond.

Parker turns out to be a double agent after a Bond-like car chase through the streets of Lisbon.

The references to Moonraker continue when Stone is forced to escape an exploding airship by skydiving without a parachute and grabbing one from someone else. Unlike Bond, who wrestles the chute off the back of his opponent, Stone hitches a ride with her adversary, and the two end up working together against Parker.

Heart of Stone is one of many films to copy the original no-parachute action sequence from Moonraker. It took 88 parachute jumps to realize the opening sequence from Moonraker. The parachute is concealed beneath a specially designed blue blazer worn by Bond’s stunt double Jake Lombard. CG drains all excitement from the similar sequence in Heart of Stone.

The film ends with Stone infiltrating a secret base in Iceland to defeat Parker before he uses the latest doomsday weapon: the world’s most powerful quantum computer capable of tracking and targeting any person on Earth. There’s shades of Die Another Day (though thankfully there’s no ice palace) and Goldeneye, with Stone, like Bond, fighting a double agent and former ally to the death.

The problem with Heart of Stone is its lack of originality and its reliance on CGI rather than the real stunt work that Bond films use to impress audiences to this day. Mission: Impossible learned that lesson with results that often rival and sometimes surpass the Bond films it copies.

Bond continues to be a touchstone for recent action films from Fast X to Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning and now Heart of Stone.

While Heart of Stone was met with mixed reviews–mainly negative–the film is a hit for Netflix with 33.1 million views in its first weekend. Heart of Stone 2 seems inevitable, and if there is a sequel, Heart of Stone will beat out Salt, Atomic Blonde, and The Rhythm Section as the first female-led spy film to start a franchise like James Bond.