I grew up on the Roger Moore Bond. I liked the campy coolness of those movies. Craig Daniels is also a good, but a more dour, serious Bond. A future Bond could also favor Millennial Enlightenment. Each decade, and each actor created a different Bond.
Maybe one day I'll read some Ian Fleming to see what the original Bond was all about.
The books were written in another time and age. To say they are sexist and racist and homophobic - that's underplaying it...
I had to look up "millennial enlightenment" - some sites made good points about the Millennial generation and, certainly, the "entitlement" claim is often wrongly used... But I wouldn't equate them with the
Silent Generation, since
Gen X gets overlooked from as much as
Silent had.
Having said that, they're still worth a read for other than historical reasons of the sort of entertainment people liked. Which isn't to say they all liked all the _isms and _phobias, but enjoyed the bigger picture of espionage, exotic locales, antagonists, and so on. If the _isms don't appall you, that is.
Moore was great - he still had the Bond motif, but added to it with a sense of humor, though that didn't always hold up there's a lot that works and feels
right. Even as an adult. I still feel The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only are his best works, as is most of Live and Let Die, and that his stuff from the 80s is
generally stronger than most of his 70s films. John Glen was amazing as a director, too...
Dalton was, at the time, closest in having the films feel like the novels - right down to some politically incorrect sexist scenes. Being true to the feel of the novels can be done without the racism, but sexism is unavoidable. Enemy organizations do train and use women as objects to lure men, and on the flip side Dalton did the same thing against Kara in "The Living Daylights", in ripping off her clothes, to distract. Compared to decades of Bond getting yet another STD from yet another girl, we finally have Bond using his wits instead of his smaller head. Shame Dalton didn't get a third outing but that was due to the lawsuit.
Brosnan - his is the only era I just can't care about. His era is too silly, too pastiche, too hollow, too 4th wall self-lampooning, all almost as bad as "Diamonds are Forever" and "You Only Live Twice" were. Brosnan deserved better, especially as "Die Another Day" started out with something that felt like Brosnan would finally get a strong, robust script that would even make amends for "Goldeneye"'s flop - and keep in mind "Goldeneye" was riding off the end of the lawsuit and people wanting new Bond... Anyway, DAD started out with a TON of potential, but then they throw it all away to make a movie that ends up being even more laughable than "Moonraker". At least "Moonraker" knew they had to be better than the book since the book involved one tiny rocket but "Moonraker"doesn't go over the top until the end. DAD goes off the wall and only gets worse. Now Craig's era could take what DAD threw away and remake it into something worthwhile... But Brosnan, who - when given good material - really sells Bond (e.g. "Tomorrow Never Dies", in one of the few scenes that's even remotely good, when coldly killing the would-be assassin (Vincent Schiavelli). That scene is a standout and is very Bondian. Pity the rest of the movie was little more than just a mindless romp with pastiche, populist Bill Gates jokes and stunts even TV shows like
Knight Rider did 15 years earlier (and more effectively)... Brosnan did get a raw deal
, though they needed to do a retake of his gunbarrel sequence since he doesn't duck or even make a stance... (that DutchBondFan guy on youtube starts his clips with all the actors walking across the screen, you'll see what I'm referring to very quickly like
this one.)
