I thought Your Eyes Only was the nearest Roger came to a film approximating the literary (or proper, in my opinion) Bond.
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Moore was a good Bond; suave, urbane, cool, likable, and very English. His best Bonds were when he showed a harder edge, his weakest were the derivative ones which were played purely for laughs. I really wish he called it quits after Octopussy instead ending his tenure with A View To A Kill, arguably his weakest film.
I never liked Brosnan as Bond, partly because his films were so boring and forgettable. His Bond felt forced at times, especially the womanizing and one liners.
Daniel Craig's Bond has been a mixed bag IMO; I agree that he seems to monosyllabic and thuglike at times, but he has a great physical presence and he was three dimensional in Skyfall, which had the best 007 script in decades, and it had Javier Bardem, one of the best Bond villains ever.
Daniel Craig's Bond has been a mixed bag IMO; I agree that he seems to monosyllabic and thuglike at times, but he has a great physical presence and he was three dimensional in Skyfall, which had the best 007 script in decades, and it had Javier Bardem, one of the best Bond villains ever.
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It's funny, I was going to defend Brosnan as Bond, and then, I realized, I couldn't rapidly name more than Goldeneye... I remembered Tomorrow Never Dies (Meh, except for Michelle Yeah), Die Another Day (which... if it had been made in the 80s, yeah, it woulda been fine) and then, I had to look up The World Is Not Enough... which was... not very good.
So, in the end, Brosnan is a lot like Craig in the number of what I feel are good Bond movies (one each), but, pretty good Bonds.
In the end, though, I'm always going to be a Connery guy.
So, in the end, Brosnan is a lot like Craig in the number of what I feel are good Bond movies (one each), but, pretty good Bonds.
In the end, though, I'm always going to be a Connery guy.
I felt Moore's weakest OO7 film was the uninspiring Blaxploitation piece called Live and Let Die. It's a Brosnan kind of Bond movie where everyone is stealing the show. Bond is more than a Brit who wears a suit, the charm is not a personality trait - it's a weapon for a larger goal of the mission. Bond is a bastard, suave gets used too loosely for this compelling secret agent. Moore should've left after "For Your Eyes Only".
They've all been good Bonds or better, but some Bonds really haven't had great material to work with. Brosnan was a great Bond, but the only one of his films worth a damn was GoldenEye, which was a pretty great film. Craig's best outing was his first, also, which I really enjoyed.
Brosnan looked the part, but I've strongly felt --based on the material given-- the producers didn't buy him as OO7 even with an enormous amount of fan approval and anticipation. In Goldeneye, he's matched with Sean Bean, a better actor and I felt was more in line of being OO7, and Famke Jansson was a scene stealing machine, then there's this large PC vibe all over the movie which stunts Brosnan's growth as the character. The script was originally penned for Dalton I believe and then when Brosnan was cast, I see where the changes happened: The leaping off the mountain to catch the plane, Moneypenny acting out of character, M calling him a dinosaur, bending over backwards to the Russian Mary Sue - computer lady, dealing with that Russian Buffoon Mobster... elements in the movie where Dalton would had never accepted IMO because he had too much investment in changing the landscape for "The realistic BOND", escaping the lampoonish method of the Roger Moore era.
For Brosnan it fit like a glove, but watching his films he was more like a castrated Bond to me.
I don't have that same sentiments for SkyFall because all of the heroes were doing a lot of stupid things to make Javier Bardem look better. Moneypenny shoots OO7 in the opening where she could've shot the villain and got the same results* but kept their reputations as professional agents in tact. M watches in horror as her office was blown to bits but makes a stupid decision to go home-- which would be the last place to go when its clear someone wants to kill you. OO7 arresting Bardem instead of killing him on that island, that blunder cost a lot of lives back in London and later the death of M. Q deciding to install the villains harddrive into the MI6 main board is by far the dumbest thing a professional agent would do. I hate that film.
*The Noc-list would not have been retrieved and the henchman would give it to Javier Bardem, and OO7 would still meet that fool's fate in Shanghai. Instead we get OO7 harboring an injury only when the writing suits it; the injury comes and goes but when the gun fire action happened there's no mention of the injury anymore.
Yeah, I don't think there have been any miscasting per se, although Lazenby was perhaps the weakest, he was lucky in that he had really good material to work with. The others have been let down from not great material.
I just had a thought, has this franchise been coasting on Connery for that long? Have there been more not great movies than great? I don't know. I'll see the next one because I'm loyal to the franchise... but, I haven't liked them since Casino Royale.
Skyfall makes Bond to be a TERRIBLE agent... and yet, he's allowed to continue after ALL of the mistakes he has made over the course of the movie? What victory did he really score that he should be allowed to keep his job?
So, far, Skyfall is the worst of the Craig movies...
^ Agreed!
As I've been saying for years now: Bond should reboot to his WW2 commando days wot inspired the novels/character in the first place.
By that logic, the WB shouldn't have allowed a Wonder Woman movie to be made at all, let alone a period one, and yet (though I personally don't much care for the flick) it made tons of dough. I agree the safest route is to milk the present-day setting for as long as possible, but that doesn't make it the only route.
^ Agreed!
As I've been saying for years now: Bond should reboot to his WW2 commando days wot inspired the novels/character in the first place.
By that logic, the WB shouldn't have allowed a Wonder Woman movie to be made at all, let alone a period one, and yet (though I personally don't much care for the flick) it made tons of dough. I agree the safest route is to milk the present-day setting for as long as possible, but that doesn't make it the only route.
I also think they took a chance, relying on Wonder Woman being a known quantity—and having been introduced in the present—to mitigate the risk of the period setting. And, they aren’t sticking with the same period... just as the X-men movies shifted.
I would also argue, it’s a superhero franchise...it was successful despite its period rather than because of it.
I had mentioned the Man From UNCLE, but I forgot about the far superior Atomic Blonde, also a period spy thriller—better, sexier than the last 3 Craig Bonds. It didn’t set the domestic box office ablaze.
As we get farther and farther away from the Cold War, it becomes less relavant and less interesting to a mass audience.
But we still live in the real world, and a stiff guy running around acting like someone from a bygone era--particularly when he's supposed to be dealing with semi-realistic threats--does not work. Even in Moore's era, the only film that felt like a true Bond story was For Your Eyes Only, because the tired tropes of the films before and after it (which brought out the worst of Moore's tendencies) were more kiddie fantasy than espionage/adventure/drama. FYEO had Bond deal with a threat/problem that was more relatable in 1981, and his reactions (aside from the required bed-downs) were mature, and in a couple of cases, brutal. If Moore's films all took that tone, they would be hailed as classics to this day, instead of most being regarded as cartoony. Brosnan was just another flavor from the Moore ice cream counter, while Dalton and Craig felt like they were characters who were ruthless, but carried a certain amount of weight on their shoulders. There was no ironic smile, or letting out a library's worth of cheeky one-liners that took the viewer out of the plot. They meant business in a grim world--which is what Bond should mean.
I would like Craig to make another film like Casino Royale, and I wish Broccoli would ditch those dead weight writers Purvis and Wade. When Danny Boyle came to the fray, I was elated bc his trusty writer would type a compelling script... as I've mentioned before Paul Haggis came in to fix the Casino Royale script and literally rewrote the entire thing and we got a great OO7 film. Boyle leaving Bond took the air right out of me because I knew John Hodge would be gone too. But the news is still fresh and inconclusive; I would like to know more of what differences Broccoli had?
Just the waving a torch around whilst escaping across a darkened moor was enough to convince me the film was bad.
What was the thought process to write that rather than have the villain use night vision glasses ?
And, as I said, let's (re-)start with his WW2 commando days. Bond vs. Nazis!!
The Purvis and Wade script goes into wrap it up mode, and like the hacks they are ripping off the best moments from Home Alone, Mission: Impossible, and The Dark Knight. They established these villains are smart throughout the movie, but then all of sudden by the climax they're doing as many stupid things like the heroes are doing. What is OO7 thinking camping M inside of an old house??? And WTF is going on with the villains where all of sudden they can't figure out all they needed to do was burn the house down, and wait for Bond, M, and his butler to run out. Jesus, the super helicopter was enough to slaughter Bond and the gang. I can't believe there are fans who like this sh*tfest of a movie.
The British Government would take the assassination of a Government official very seriously and would have OO7 and an army to protect M... I suspect Purvis and Wade didn't know that.
Lol. How about Zombie Nazis. That would get the kids into the seats.
How? They're out of source material. Everything good about that film was taken straight out of the book. And even that they managed to muck up pretty badly.
There the short stories by Ian Flemming: Risico, The Property of a Lady, The Hildebrand Rarity, which I'm guessing Eon would save each for future Bond actors. There's also the Flemming material which were never used but instead just honored the title... like Moonraker, a great book and is nothing like the silly movie, and The Spy Who Loved Me which would be a hard story to adapt because of the sensitive and graphic nature of it.
As for the non Flemming books I would like SOLO to be adapted; it is a period piece and set in Africa but it is an intense, thrilling read which I pictured Craig in it all the way.
What I meant about CR was I want another edge of my seat OO7 movie, which is sexy with males (Craig showing his physique) and the ladies in bikinis, working within the formula other than regurgitating material from Goldfinger which Purvis and Wade tirelessly does in their hack work.
The plots of all those have either already been used or are too terrible to bother.