Text by Hadi Azmi
Every man with a Patek Philippe is keeping it safe for the next generation, and every man with a Rolex secretly dreams of being stranded in a strange land and unclasping his Submariner to purchase a safe getaway.
Guys with an Omega, meanwhile, believe they can fight their way out and save themselves.
Timekeepers aren’t just status symbols; they’re invitations to adventure, icons of character, and in the world of cinema, portals into new realms.
There are many ways for people to get sucked into the watch world. For some lucky souls, it is the aforementioned Patek Philippe their father handed down to them on their 18th birthday, with all the history that comes with it.
For the rest of us, it’s the movies. If cinema is a gateway drug into the watch world, then the James Bond films are its most potent strain.
Many watches have graced the 25 James Bond movies released to date, including the Rolex Submariner worn by the first—and some argue best—Bond ever, Sean Connery.
For a modern audience, however, a Bond watch is an Omega, particularly the Seamaster 300 series, which has been associated with the flamboyant international playboy spy since Pierce Brosnan played the role.
The Omega Seamaster 300M from Goldeneye (1995).
The association transcended branding deals and product placement when Daniel Craig, the current 007, collaborated with the watch brand to produce what is arguably the Bond-est Bond watch, the No Time To Die Seamaster Diver 300M, named after his final chapter playing the role.
The 42mm titanium-on-titanium watch sports a dark—almost black–brown dial laid with vintage-hued lume and a British armed forces-inspired “broad arrow” marking above 6 o’clock, giving a perfect image of a battle-hardened soldier at the sunset of his career.
While his darker portrayal of Bond has come to an end, Craig continues to embody the allure of the British spy off-screen with the watch world press’ camera ever tightly zoomed in on his wrists as Hollywood is still waiting for the next gentleman to take up the 007 designation.
In just the last few years, the seventh Bond has been seen test-driving two pre-release watches, first in New York in 2023 and later at the Paris Olympics, wearing a lanyard that designated him as a senior Omega executive.
The first, a white dial Speedmaster Moonwatch, would take the watch world by storm when it launched in March, giving a fresh, light, and crisp look to what is probably one of the most well-known watches in the world.
Buzz Aldrin. Image courtesy of NASA.
The other, which appears to be a black, no-date Seamaster 300M, is still under wraps for a 2025 release.
In a way, it is rather funny how the world’s most famous spy and his secret gadgets are out there in the real world being spied upon by watch sleuths eager to get a peek at what’s new from the Biel/Bienne horlogerie.
But it’s not just the debonair spy genre that captures watch fans’ imagination. As cool as it is to be James Bond, it is arguably cooler to be the astronauts who actually walked the surface of the Moon, like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
The Omega Moonwatch’s mythical status as the first watch on the Moon pretty much cemented its fate to star – pardon the pun – in many of Hollywood’s movies set in the dark abyss above our heads.
From movies depicting actual events like 1995’s Apollo 13 and 2018’s First Man, which depicted Neil Armstrong, the Speedmaster has been seen on the silver screen floating around in zero gravity in the cult favourite space horror Event Horizon (1997) and later Moonfall, the 2022 action movie that unfortunately came crashing down at the box office like its plot.
With countless iterations of the Moonwatch available to choose from and even the divisive MoonSwatch (gasp!), there is bound to be something for everyone.
Just to complicate matters, Omega recently announced the 39.7mm ‘First Omega in Space’ Speedmaster watch, named after the watch Astronaut Walter Schirra – the fifth American in space and third to orbit the Earth – wore in his 1962 mission.
Fortunately for us, Omega does not have a monopoly on space. For those whose aspirations transcend Moonraker and the vast, frightening void beyond our solar system, there is the Hamilton Murph, the watch that was so pivotal to the plot of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar that it literally saved mankind from extinction.
To those who fell in love with it, the Murph represents a calling—something to hold onto when reaching for the impossible.
The Hamilton Khaki Field Murph in 38mm.
A variant of the popular Khaki Field collection, it was launched in 2019 at a prop-exact 42mm size, which disappointed many fans who found the watch too big, particularly its fang-like lugs. But while no one can hear you scream in space, Hamilton did hear our collective moans and groans and released the 38mm Murph in 2022 to widespread success.
Now, 10 years after the movie came out and the Murph having a life transcending the silver screen, Hamilton took a page from Omega and launched a white dial Murph into the world in September, alongside a steel bracelet version of the original 38mm watch (If only they would listen to our demand for the ‘eureka’ second hand on the smaller Murphs…).
While not as popular as the watch that graced Jessica Chastain’s wrists, the 42mm Hamilton Khaki Aviation Pilot Day Date Auto – or simply ‘Cooper – worn by the eponymous Matthew McConaughey is also in Hamilton’s catalogue if a field watch does not fit your swag.
While Hamilton is not quite the brand people think of as heirloom watches, you could still get the pair and make it a father-daughter watch tradition. Just promise us that you won’t leave her hanging for decades waiting for you to come back as you go chasing wormholes in outer space.
Outside of the silver screen, televisions have also given us some iconic watches, such as Don Draper’s Jaeger Le-Coultre Reverso in Mad Men, Walter White’s TAG Heuer Monaco in Breaking Bad, and all the luxury horological specimens gracing the Roy family in Succession.
Aside from famous and familiar names, microbrand Momentum Watches had made a splash with its Sea Quartz 30, a modern revival of the watch that adorned Tom Selleck’s wrist in the first three seasons of the hit show Magnum PI.
Hamilton Cushion B
Made by the same Canadian family that made the watch under the previous Chronosport brand, the Sea Quartz looks like a mix of Doxa’s daring visual cues, softened by Seiko’s exquisite curves, resulting in something vintage and rugged at the same time.
Set on a five-link steel bracelet, the three-hander with day and date is the perfect daily watch if you like the thrill but can’t stand Bond and everything the British Empire stood for. And all for under US$300. Who said watch collecting is for rich snobs?
The beautiful thing about movie watches is how we impart intangible emotions from the movies we see with our eyes and hear with our ears into a tangible object of steel that is otherwise solid, rigid, and cold.
We hold on to that timepiece as jealously as we hold on to that memory and the feeling it gives. It goes beyond being a collectible of objects but also a symbol of resilience, achievement, and perhaps, even a protest against today’s throwaway culture and short attention span.
People might not wear watches as much anymore, with smartwatches eating more and more into the market. But while we still have it, these movie watches provide us with tiny portals on our wrists that transport us ever so briefly away from our daily routine into a cinematic universe of our own.
In a world where time rushes on, these watches give us permission to pause, to savour, and to step momentarily into the roles that inspire us.
