An Incredible Fan Theory Connects James Bond To A Hit '90s Action Movie

As of this writing, there are 26 James Bond films, and now that Amazon fully controls the 007 franchise, we're probably going to get a heck of a lot more. In fact, the Amazon deal will likely result in a cavalcade of Bond spin-offs, which, depending on how you feel about the company's ability to do Bond justice, is either a good thing or the beginning of the end for the now 63-year-old franchise.

Still, there's no escaping the fact that if we do get an expanded Bond universe, fans likely won't be too pleased. Former Bond producers and longtime custodians of the IP, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, were famously protective of the 007 saga being a movie franchise. As such, fans will almost certainly be dismayed should Amazon start churning out Moneypenny origin stories and the solo adventures of Felix Leiter. But the truth is, those fans have already tried to expand the Bond universe beyond the 26 official EON features.

Specifically, there is an increasing tendency to try to expand upon the standard Bond canon by imagining former 007 actors as playing the super spy in other films that are not official entries in the franchise. Pierce Brosnan is the king of this quasi-genre, having starred in 007-adjacent movies such as "The Thomas Crown Affair" and "The November Man." But there's also a proud tradition of non-Bond Bond movies in general, such as "North by Northwest" or Michael Caine's Harry Palmer films.

The most notable of these non-Bond Bond films, however, happens to star the original (and in most fans' estimation, best) 007 actor: Sean Connery. One of the Scottish star's later films is not just Bond adjacent, but is the subject of a fan theory that claims it's actually a secret 007 movie.

Sean Connery left the official EON 007 movies behind following 1971's "Diamonds are Forever." In 1983, he starred in the unofficial Bond film "Never Say Never Again," but his final James Bond performance came in a 2005 video game entitled "From Russia with Love," in which he reprised the role that made him famous, albeit in a voice performance. But if you ask certain fans, there's one more Bond performance between "Never Say Never Again" and the "From Russia with Love" video game: "The Rock."

Michael Bay's 1996 film is exactly the kind of high-concept actioner that defined much of the '90s, and featured Connery, who intimidated a Disney executive while making "The Rock," as retired SAS Captain John Patrick Mason. Alongside Nicolas Cage's FBI chemical warfare expert character, Stanley Goodspeed, Mason is tasked with foiling the plot of some aggrieved Marines who have taken over Alcatraz Island and are threatening to launch chemical weapons at San Francisco. It's a plot that could conceivably work as a Bond movie — after all, Connery's spy did battle inside Fort Knox itself back in "Goldfinger." But there are actually more specific elements of "The Rock" that point to it being a surreptitious Bond sequel, even while the film doesn't confirm Mason as the iconic British sleuth.

As YouTuber Pentex Productions points out in his comprehensive breakdown of this theory, John Mason could very easily be a fake name used by Bond, considering throughout his initial six-film run, Connery's spy used multiple aliases in the field, including David Somerset, Mr. Jones, and Jim Fisher. What's more, John Spencer's FBI Director James Womack reveals during "The Rock" that their background searches have turned up no information on Mason and that the British "claimed they'd never heard of him" — which is exactly what M and MI6 would say if their former operative were captured.

When Captain Mason is introduced in "The Rock," he's been a captive of the U.S. authorities for some years, a result of him stealing microfilm created by former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Mason was initially imprisoned in Alcatraz, but escaped, before being recaptured some years later. As Pentex Productions points out, the timeline matches up with Bond's early films, wherein 007 could have been initially captured in 1963, after "Dr. No" (the film that kicked off cinema's most enduring franchise), before being recaptured after Hoover's death in 1972 ("Diamonds Are Forever" debuted the year prior).

There's also the fact that Connery is clearly playing up the Bond association. In the film, Mason is described as a highly-trained SAS operative, with the retired Captain describing his experience thusly: "I was trained by the best: British Intelligence." What's more, when he first meets Nicolas Cage's character, the chemical expert introduces himself as Stanley Goodspeed, to which Mason replies with. "But of course you are." It's the same reply Bond gives in "Diamonds Are Forever," when Lana Woods' Plenty O'Toole introduces herself to the spy.

Still, there are some inconsistencies that make it so that this particular fan theory isn't completely airtight. For one, Mason tells Ed Harris' General Hummel that he is "Captain John Patrick Mason" of "Her Majesty's SAS. Retired, of course." James Bond, however, is famously neither a captain nor an SAS soldier, but a former commander in the Royal Navy's Intelligence division, after which he transferred to MI6. Of course, Captain Mason could just be trying to pull the wool over Hummel's eyes.

While it doesn't necessarily back up the fan theory, it is interesting to note that Connery brought in British screenwriting duo Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais to work on the script for "The Rock" (Two other Hollywood heavyweights also went uncredited for their work on "The Rock"). Clement and La Frenais had previously provided significant uncredited writing to "Never Say Never Again," adding yet another clear Bond connection, even if it is to an unofficial, non-EON movie. While none of this confirms "The Rock" as a secret Bond movie, it is clearly one of the most notable non-Bond Bond films for fans.