It's something that the most ardent James Bond fans may not have noticed in their enthusiasm to watch 007 outdo all those bad guys over the past 60 years.

But those villains have gone from being at least a decade older than Bond to being a generation younger.

The first film in the franchise, released in 1962, saw the lothario spy take on Dr No, played by Joseph Wiseman who was 12 years older than Sean Connery.

Other enemies during the 1960s included Auric Goldfinger and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, both of whom had at least a decade on Bond.

Now, a German academic points out that the pattern began to change in the 1980s when Bond found himself pitted against 'treacherous brother figures' of a similar age.

In the 1987 movie The Living Daylights, for instance, the double-crossing KGB officer Georgi Koskov was just two years older than the British spy.

While, more recently, 007 has tackled younger villains who play 'disobedient sons' or 'spoiled brats', with Bond being transformed from a 'fresh young man' to 'a stern father figure'.

Dr Wieland Schwanebeck of Dresden University said: 'The first Bond films cast villains as bad father figures and impotent patriarchs, establishing the series within the 1960s clash of generations.

'But this pattern couldn't continue as the actors aged. You can't have Bond battling an 80-year-old guy.'

Dr Schwanebeck said the shift towards younger villains is also due to older actors playing 007.

While Connery made his debut at 32, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan were all over 40 when they took the role.

Daniel Craig was 53 at the time of the release of his final film, No Time To Die – in which he comes out of retirement to take on Lyutsifer Safin, played Rami Malek, an actor 12 years younger than him.

Dr Schwanebeck told The Mail on Sunday: 'The last Moore film [A View To A Kill in 1985] is quite striking because he is surrounded by really old guys at retirement age, like an old boys' club. 

'But in the most recent three films, the villains are relatively young. Fresh blood counterbalances the impression Bond is an older man's game.'