One of the most persistent fan theories is the idea that Michael Bay’s 1996 action classic
‘The Rock’ is in fact the last chapter of Sean Connery’s run as James Bond.
It’s a fun idea, but does the evidence support this theory? Is it just some happy coincidences,
or is Sean Connery’s John Mason actually the same James Bond who defeated Blofeld and Goldfinger?
Well in honour of The Rock’s 25th anniversary, I’ve looked at the evidence in way too much
detail and I’ve concluded that not only does the evidence support the fan theory,
it lines up so well that there is no doubt in my mind that this man, is the same character as this
one. By the end of this video – I guarantee that you’ll either agree with me, or you’ll
wonder why you spent twenty minutes of your life watching a cartoon penguin talking about movies.
So let’s begin!
The Rock is the second feature film directed by Michael Bay.
Its about decorated US war veteran Francis Hummel stealing a bunch of chemical weapons,
taking hostages on Alcatraz, and holding the US Government to ransom
until reparations are paid to the families of the soldiers who died under his command.
West Wing Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, sorry – FBI Director Jim Womack and the Department of Defence
enlist the services of convict and former British special forces operative John Mason
to help the Navy Seals break into Alcatraz,
using his knowledge of the prison from when he broke out of it in 1963.
Mason teams up with chemical weapons expert Nicholas Cage – no really, we’re meant to
believe that – to break into Alcatraz and disarm the missiles before Hummel’s deadline.
Now, almost since this movie came out, there has been speculation that Sean Connery’s John Mason
is in fact James Bond, and you can see why:
Thirty years ago he was a highly trained SAS operative.
Mason was the British operative who stole the files.
Oh I was trained by the best. British Intelligence.
But is this just a coincidence, or is John Mason actually James Bond? Well,
I’m here to tell you that he definitely is.
But before we start, the obvious disclaimer for some fellow Bond geeks. Although Never Say Never
Again stars Connery as James Bond, it is not part of the Eon Productions film canon or continuity.
My argument is that the Bond depicted in the six Eon films starring Sean Connery is the same
person who appears in The Rock, so I won’t be looking at Never Say Never Again in this video.
So let’s start with the most obvious hiccup in the fan theory – the name. See, if you pay attention,
you’ll spot that Sean Connery’s character in the Rock is called John Mason, not James
Bond. So how can they be the same person? Well, the most popular explanation is based
on another fan theory that James Bond is in fact a code name for whoever takes on the role of 007,
and that John Mason is in fact the real name of Connery’s James Bond.
Now, I strongly disagree with this argument. The Eon films have consistently established that these
are different actors playing the same character, and that character’s real name is James Bond.
Moore, Dalton, and Brosnan all refer to the death of his wife as depicted in George
Lazenby’s OHMSS. Her name was Tracy Bond – she wouldn’t marry a codename. In the Daniel Craig
films his parents’ surname is Bond, and he is called Bond before he becomes 007.
Putting this theory to bed once and for all, in No Time To Die, Lashana Lynch will play Agent
007 after James Bond’s retirement. The codename is 007. The person’s real name is James Bond.
So why is Connery called John Mason in The Rock? Well, it’s simple. John Mason is the code name.
James Bond frequently uses fake names, and usually has fake documents to support his cover identity.
If we assume Bond was captured, then it makes sense that he was processed
under the name listed in his fake passport – in this case, John Mason.
What supports this idea even more is the fact that in The Rock, Womack says this:
“This man has no identity, not in the United States or
Great Britain. He does not exist.” So after capturing Bond, they clearly ran
the John Mason name through the system and got nothing – because it’s not a real name.
But if Bond was captured by the Americans, wouldn’t the CIA or MI6 see to it that he
got released? Well, not necessarily. It’s a common trope of spy movies that if an undercover
agent is captured, their government will deny any involvement, and we can assume this was the case:
Of course the British claimed they’d never heard of him.
We consistently see in the Bond films how M puts Queen and country above the life of its
agents – including Bond. If M thought that it was in MI6’s best interests for Bond to stay captured,
then I have no doubt that M would leave him to rot.
Ah, you might say, but what about the prisoner exchange in Die Another Day? Well that just
supports this argument. In that film Bond was in jail for 14 months until MI6 released him,
and they only did that because they suspected he was revealing British secrets.
It wasn’t about rescuing Bond, it was about protecting Britain.
So to me, it’s entirely plausible that Bond was captured by the US while using the fake
name of John Mason, put in Alcatraz, and MI6 decided to leave him there.
Right, that’s the name sorted. Let’s look at the timelines.
In The Rock, we learn that Mason was
“incarcerated on Alcatraz in 1962… escaped in ’63.”
So 1962 is our first data point – the same year Dr. No came out. Now,
the fan theory usually goes that Bond was first captured before the events of Dr. No,
and assume that Dr. No is set in 1963 after he escaped.
But that doesn’t work.
Dr. No is definitely set in 1962 or earlier,
because in Jamaica he visits Government House – the seat of the British governor.
Jamaica became independent on 6 August 1962. So there is no way Dr. No can take place in 1963,
because at that point in time the British no longer had control of the country.
So, in my narrative, Bond is captured after the events of Dr. No,
and escapes Alcatraz before the events of the next film, From Russia With Love.
If you haven’t seen it, Dr. No ends with Bond destroying Dr. No’s evil lair,
after the villain tried to disrupt a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral.
He is rescued by CIA agent Felix Leiter, but, because Bond is Bond,
he would rather get it on with Honey Rider than be rescued, so he disconnects the tow rope.
It’s a typical Bond ending, but let’s be real about this. Leiter rocks up with a boat full
of heavily armed Marines. They’re not all there to rescue Bond – they’re rounding up the henchmen who
escaped from Dr. No’s evil lair and are throwing them in the 1960s equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.
Now, Leiter knows Bond is a spy, so made sure to rescue him. But after Bond gives him the slip,
he must have been picked up by some random Navy patrol and got lumped
in with all the other prisoners. Without the CIA to vouch for him,
Bond got locked up with the rest of the henchmen in Alcatraz under the fake name of John Mason.
But, Bond being Bond, he escaped. In Dr. No itself we see Bond escaping from
a prison – proving he was more than capable of busting out of Alcatraz.
Now, we’ve established that Dr. No can’t take place after August 1962.
In the next Bond movie, Silvia Trench complains that Bond disappeared for six
months after going to Jamaica. So he must have escaped in January 1963 – meaning
Dr. No and Bond’s imprisonment in Alcatraz happened around July 1962.
Oh, not that anyone cares, but I checked and there was a rocket launch from Cape
Canaveral on 25 July 1962, and it was even a Titan rocket like the kind shown in Dr. No.
I told you I was going to look at this in way too much detail.
So this timeline perfectly matches – to the exact
day – the first two Bond films, The Rock, and actual world history.
Before we look at the next data point, let’s look at what The Rock has to say about
why Mason was captured. Well, Womack says in the film:
1962 J Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI, some say the country. It’s no secret he kept microfilm
files on prominent Americans, British Members of Parliament, even the Prime Minister […] Mason
was the operative who stole the file but our bureau agents caught him at the Canadian border.
Now, this is where The Rock’s own continuity gets a bit confused.
Womack’s comment implies Mason stole the microfilm in 1962.
But the movie mentions twice that it contains the truth about the JFK assassination.
Want to know who killed JFK?
So this microfilm can’t possibly have existed before November 1963, so we know for a fact
that Bond’s first imprisonment in Alcatraz in 1962 was unrelated to the microfilm.
Moving on. The Rock establishes that Mason was recaptured sometime after he escaped in 1963,
but it never makes it clear when this happened. The closest thing we have to a data point on that,
is Mason’s daughter Jade, who is the result of a one night stand:
Met in a bar after a Led Zepplin concert, hit out, and I was the result.
When Womack is asked why the notorious FBI founder J Edgar Hoover didn’t use Jade as
leverage over Mason to reveal the location of the stolen microfilm, Womack says this:
Hoover died in ‘72, she hadn’t been born yet.
This tells us two things. One, that the daughter was born
sometime after Hoover died in May 1972. The second thing it tells us is that Mason
didn’t steal the microfilm in 1962 - he stole it after Hoover’s death.
Think about it – we are meant to believe that Mason stole a top secret government microfilm,
escaped Alcatraz and, instead of returning to the safety of Britain, just lived undercover in the US
for ten years or so, fathering illegitimate children, until he was recaptured again?
No, we’re not expected to believe that, because we
know what John Mason was doing between 1963 and 1972. He was being James Bond.
So let’s return to the earlier narrative that Bond was first captured in 1962 by
mistake after Dr. No. He escaped, returned to MI6 and carried on being Bond until his last
on-screen adventure: Diamond Are Forever, which was released in 1971.
This movie ends with Bond in America. Not just anywhere in America – he’s on
a cruise ship leaving a city on the west coast. Now, the ship he is on is the SS.
Canberra. Where did the Canberra dock in 1971? That’s right – San Francisco.
So we can place Bond in San Francisco in 1971 – not long before John Mason was recaptured in 1972.
Now, I’m not going to get too deep into the history here – there’s sources in the
description – but suffice to say that in the early 1970s, there were some several fairly
big foreign policy disagreements between the British government and the Nixon Administration.
So, with relations frosty and their best field agent already on American soil,
its not totally unrealistic for MI6 to send him in undercover to try and
find the secret microfilm that has all of the dirt on the British government.
So after his cruise, Bond goes undercover in the FBI. In this time, he befriends Womack.
The Rock makes it abundantly clear these two men have a personal animosity,
but never makes it clear why. Well, this is why – Womack was the person Bond used to
get access to the FBI in the first place, only to betray him by stealing the microfilm. This
is why Womack doesn’t trust Mason in The Rock – he’s already been betrayed by him.
Now, back to the daughter. While undercover in the FBI, Bond knocks up Jade’s mother after a
one-night stand – which is a very James Bond thing to do, by the way – after a Led Zepplin concert.
Led Zepplin toured North America in June 1972 – so again, the real world history checks out.
After learning that Jade’s mother is pregnant,
Connery’s Bond began to reflect on his life and career – like we have seen subsequent Bonds do.
He decides to hang up the pistol and retire once and for all. But a few weeks earlier,
something else happened. J Edgar Hoover died on 2nd May 1972, leaving a leadership vacuum
in the FBI. MI6 saw the opportunity for Bond to exploit the vacuum and steal the microfilm.
M agrees to Bond retiring if he can pull of this one,
final mission. Bond steals the file, stashes it in the church in Kansas.
Why Kansas, you ask? Well, maybe it’s because in 1971, Bond heard Blofeld say this:
Well if we destroyed Kansas nobody would hear about it for years.
Seems like a good place to hide something for a few decades, wouldn’t you say?
So Bond stashes the microfilm in Kansas and flees to the border,
only to be captured and locked up – this time, for good.
When he is captured and the FBI realise he was an undercover agent, Bond tells them his real name
is John Mason to protect MI6. The FBI realise he is the same person who escaped Alcatraz in
1963. They lock him up, MI6 deny all knowledge of him, and Bond stays in prison until 1995.
OK, so let’s put it all together.
In July 1962, James Bond defeats Dr No, but is mistakenly captured by the
US Navy and locked in Alcatraz under the fake name John Mason.
Six months later he escapes, and returns to work for MI6.
He carries on as Agent 007 until his final
on-screen mission finishes with him in San Francisco in 1971.
Bond is sent undercover in the FBI to try and locate J Edgar Hoover’s top-secret microfilm.
In 1972, he gets Jade’s mother pregnant after a one-night stand in a bar, and decides to
retire. M agrees, but only after he steals the microfilm. Bond steals it, but is captured and
locked up under the name John Mason – which the US believe to be his real identity.
In 1995 the events of The Rock take place.
The timelines of the Sean Connery Bond films and The Rock match
perfectly with both each other and real world history.
More than that, there are multiple times where the
Mason/Bond similarity is made clear – not just in their backstory –
Thirty years ago he was highly trained SAS operative.
Former SAS types with easy smiles
I decided I didn’t want your child growing up without a father.
And since your first thought about me ran to orphan, that’s what I’d say you are.
Oh I was trained by the best. British intelligence.
But in their characterisation as well. John Mason shares Bond’s love of luxury brands
I want a suite at the Fairmont hotel.
He makes Bond-like quips
I hope you’re insured Hi I’m Plenty
Well I’m Stanley Goodspeed But of course you are.
and also says this, which I think is the most succinct summary of Sean Connery’s Bond out there.
Your best? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.
All of the dialogue in The Rock supports the theory that John Mason is James Bond.
There’s just one gap. The only evidence that they might be different people is when Mason
talks to Hummel, and says he was an Army Captain, when we all know that James Bond is a Commander in
the British Navy. Well, you could just say its Bond staying in character and leave it at that.
But that’s not good enough for me, and we’ve come this far, so get ready for the
final deep dive everybody, because this one will blow your freaking socks off.
Francis Hummel, the villain in the Rock, is well-established as a decorated war veteran:
Major Hummel in Vietnam, I think he was a Major at the time.
Three tours in Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Desert Storm.
To be a major in the US Army, you need to have ten years of service.
Hummel did three tours in Vietnam, so we can assume he was fighting
there from fairly early on in the US deployment. We also learn this about him:
For Major Baxter and I this is the last campaign in a career dating back to Tet ’68.
The Tet Offensive happened in January 1968,
so Hummel was already fighting in Vietnam at that time. Now, during the Vietnam war,
US soldiers had respite leave in Hong Kong. So let’s say Hummel was there
in 1967, shortly before retuning to the war in time to be there for the Tet Offensive in 1968.
Now, who was in Hong Kong in 1967? That’s right, James Bond, as we saw in You Only Live Twice.
Now, its not plausible that Hummel and Bond encountered each other in Hong Kong.
But what is plausible is that Hummel picked up the newspaper one day and saw a front
page story about British Naval Commander James Bond being murdered – complete with photograph.
It’s a sad story for any soldier to read, particularly one who was shown to have
a huge amount of respect for the fallen. Maybe this story struck a chord with him,
especially after he saw his men dying during some of the fiercest fighting in the Vietnam War.
Maybe he saw the full honours bestowed to Bond by the Navy and wondered why it wasn’t given to all
fallen soldiers? Perhaps he went to pay respects to Bond’s next-of-kin, only to find out that
Bond’s death was faked – the first time he learns that perhaps governments can’t always be trusted.
Maybe Hummel reading about Bond’s death planted the seed in Hummel’s mind that
his government couldn’t be trusted, and that the US didn’t care for the
lives of its soldiers – a seed that would go on to grow over the next three decades.
Maybe the newspaper article Hummel read in Hong Kong explains why Hummel greets Bond like this:
Name and rank sailor. It’s Army actually.
Hummel is testing Bond, to see if this is the same naval officer he read about all those years ago.
And look how Mason reacts to the question – Bond knows that somehow Hummel suspects his
true identity, but he doesn’t buy it. He sticks to his cover story, and the film continues.
Now, I admit this last bit is a bit of a stretch. But its not a stretch by the standards of James
Bond movies, or Michael Bay movies for that matter. Remember, Connery’s run alone gave us
things like face transplants, space lasers, and a not at all problematic Japanese James Bond.
By these standards, I’d actually say the Hummel story is pretty tame.
Anyway, it’s definitely less ridiculous than the retconning they did in Spectre:
It was all me James. It’s always been me. The author of all your pain.
So there you have solid gold proof that John Mason in The Rock is the same character as
Sean Connery’s James Bond 007. The continuity of The Rock and the Bond films perfectly overlap
with each other, and more than that they align perfectly with the real-world events
happening at those times. Every single line of dialogue in The Rock about John
Mason’s backstory supports this theory, as does Connery’s portrayal of the character.
So, if you’ve watched this far, I hope you didn’t regret watching a cartoon penguin
talk about movies for twenty minutes. If you enjoyed it, then please let me and the algorithm
know by subscribing, and spread the word that The Rock is definitely, a James Bond movie.