Intriguing thought this….
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To be clear, I’m not so much disagreeing with you as doing a point/counterpoint. Your points are very valid, and probably have better odds of being more correct than mine.
I agree Pierce Brosnan was better off getting the James Bond gig the second time around. In 1986/87, he was my pick and I was disappointed he wound up not getting it. But in comparing his physical appearance to when he got it eight years later, he looked more “weathered” and experienced. He’d seen and suffered a lot in those eight years most notably with his wife Cassandra Harris dying from ovarian cancer. He was better suited for the role and, perhaps more importantly, the stars were more aligned for greater success in 1995.
As much as I hate to say it, the way things happened with the six-year gap was probably for the best for the series’ future. It allowed everyone to rest up, re-group, and re-think how to proceed from then on.
I just don’t think the Bond series was “guaranteed to stall” in 1989 had Brosnan been the Bond of record at that time.
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Definitely. And I think this is an interesting thought for Amazon as they move forward. Brozza is a prime example of how the “age” or appearance of “age” should be a big consideration of how the part is cast. And yes, I know SC and Laz were just past 30, but the entire package, while young, was also (in a 1960s way with how people dressed and styled themselves) “grown up.”
They are only rumours, but I’ve heard some of the rumblings about a young Bond at the start of his career and then some of the names that corners of the internet are throwing into the ring as Amazon plot their path forward. But for me, Bond, should be of a certain level of maturity.
Using Brozza as an example - he may have been somewhat callow in '87, almost too boyish (trying too hard perhaps), but he definitely could have pulled it off. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the '95 Brozza, was far better suited for the role. I guess you could use “The Fourth Protocol” comparison to get a sense of how his '87 Bond might have been, but IMHO it wouldn’t have been better than the Brozza we got.
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To the extent GE was well-received (and the praise was far from universal) it was less as a “reinvention” than as a “return to form.” Some, maybe many critics and audiences weren’t quite ready for Dalton’s take and faulted him for not being up to the glamour and comedy “job requirements” they’d attached to Bond after so many years with Moore. Then they were very much disoriented by the decision to not even TRY those things in LTK, which took an abrupt left turn into darker territory. When GE finally showed up, it heralded “Bond is back” not only in the literal sense of being on the screen again, but also in the sense of swerving back to the tried-and-true. Even Brosnan’s hiring had less in common with a standard casting process than an audience phone-in vote: he was the “popular consensus” Bond; the majority’s view of how the character should look, talk and behave.
None of that could have been exploited in '95 if Brosnan had immediately followed Roger in '87. Much of what we see in TLD – and even more in what was ultimately cut – suggests it started as very much a “stay the course” entry, just as Brosnan, coming off of Remington Steele, was perceived as “Roger 2.0.” If we’d gotten another two “standard 80s Bonds” just with a younger face, they may or may not have made more money, but we’d still have ended up with the legal issues that threw the series into limbo for 6 years, and then after that…what? Would GE have seemed nearly as big a deal if it was merely “Brosnan Bond #3” instead of “a new beginning”? Doubtful. Would it have brought back audiences who may have been cold to the previous two entries? Not if it was just more of the same. If Brosnan had decided, like Dalton, that he’d waited long enough and wanted to move on, necessitating recasting, would Eon have stuck their necks out with a less conventional choice of lead actor or a more daring deviation from formula? Likely not, with so much at stake. But if they’d cast the net for a “Roger 3.0,” how watered-down would the whole enterprise have seemed by that point, and how long could it have endured?
Ultimately things worked out for the best for the series and for Brosnan. And mind you I say that as someone who largely lost interest in the series during his era. But in terms of raking in the bucks and Brosnan finding an appreciative audience for his particular take on Bond, it all turned out just fine.
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I agree.
I always thought that the public started to develop a bit of Bond-fatigue by the time we got to TLD. There had been 15 Bond movies (including NSNA) from 1962-1985. While some love TSWLM and MR, they were very 70s movies. Both of those things combined with Moore’s age and the repetition of the formula led a good chunk of the movie-going public to see the series as being dated in the lead up to TLD .
I think the best thing that happened for the longevity of the series was likely the 6 year break. That, combined with a very strong film in GE and IMHO the best Bond trailer of all time, led to a renewed interest in the series.
I love Timothy Dalton. He is probably my favourite Bond. But it is difficult to say what would have happened if Brosnan had gotten the part. I was 19 and here is my North American (Canadian) perception of how things were viewed at the time. In the lead up to the unveling of the new Bond for TLD, Brosnan was seen as being very suave and very cool. I think when Dalton was announced the movie-going audience (who either were to young or not around to remember Lazenby) wondered who is he?
It is impossible to say what would happened had Brosnan become Bond for TLD. I am not as big fan of LK as some but I do love Dalton in it. I also loved some of the scenes of the film (e.g., We’re not a country club 007).
Perhaps if Brosnan was the star of TLD it would have been a bigger sucess and the direction taken under LK would have been different and with a bigger budget. Maybe it would have been huge success. Maybe that success would resulted in the legal business getting resolved more quickly given all the money there was to make.
I am not sure how any Bond film would have faired against Batman, the Last Cursade, and Lethal Weapon 2. Even if BronasnLK had succeeded, and Brosnan went on to have a great 7 film run, we still might have Bond fatigue at the end of it.
p.s., They need to name the movie, or the next Bond so we can start debating that!
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Did the Bond fatigue maybe never actually go away after OHMSS/DAF? Were TSWLM and MR merely two consecutive outliers, turning into a faux plateau what actually was a gentle but mercilessly increasing downward slope? We mustn’t forget: many of the adult audiences in the 70s and 80s had already been around when the series started. They’ve seen it all before (and critics flailed TSWLM in particular for it).
Around the time of the MOONRAKER production Cubby famously said: “Bond is after Drax; Drax is after Bond. What more story do you need?” Many observers during the 80s wondered what more story there ever was?
For the kids who came on board around that time - us - this wasn’t a question; we soaked up the entire canon in one sitting. Like all fresh converts to the church - any church - we couldn’t get enough. We helped making TSWLM and MR blockbusters, and then we kept the series lurching onwards with a semblance of poise for another ten years. But today I wonder whether we’d have been so faithful to it had we already been on deck from the beginning.
If the hiatus proved anything at all it was that Bond really needed an extended vacation (on top of the hospital stay he usually required after a mission).
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I do think by the late 80s we were entering a “lull” in terms of audience interest. Just because seemingly everyone agreed “Pierce Brosnan should be the next Bond” doesn’t necessarily mean they’d end that sentence with “…and I’d pay to see it.” The public had an idea of how Bond should be cast, but that didn’t necessarily translate to a desire to watch a Bond movie. We see the same thing now when, say Snow White is cast with a non-white performer: plenty of people pipe up with strong opinions about it, but only a tiny fraction of them ever had any intention of watching a Snow White movie no matter who was cast.
I think Bond needed the hiatus pretty much exactly when he got it. In the same way a prolonged absence rekindled interest in Dr Who, Bond was MIA just long enough to be missed. It’s an old but true saying that you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone. If there had been no break, GE would have been greeted with, “Oh, another Bond movie? Has it been two years already”? but with the hiatus it became, “Yes! James Bond is back! I remember those films!”
Or for younger fans, “Cool, there’s a movie to go with this game!”
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September 20
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that one of these actor’s tenures as Bond could be excised as if it never occurred, without any discernible detrimental effect:
- George Lazenby
- Roger Moore
- Timothy Dalton
- Pierce Brosnan
- Daniel Craig
- Fiction - all of them provide something impactful to a greater or lesser extent
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voters
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Fiction. Even the case against Lazenby is a shaky one. It took the series until 1977, but suddenly OHMSS was acknowledged in dialogue, and four years after that by showing us Tracy’s grave and doing away with its version of Blofeld. OHMSS’ reverberations (and thus Lazenby’s Bond) became ever stronger the longer in the past it was. There may be a case for DAF going through a similar cycle with fans and creatives.
Dalton’s short run proved an important sounding board for a lot of Craig’s tenure; Brosnan’s four films likewise profited from generic approach paired with the first tentative steps towards aspirational filmmaking. It culminated in Craig’s ‘could Bond be a human being?’ experiment that unashamedly gave us a superhuman Bond in a super-consumerism environment and pretended it was still an ordinary human longing for love and peace. Cut out any of them and we’ll lose something we perhaps cannot even fathom yet how important it may become in the future.
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I wholeheartedly voted fiction.
George Lazenby not only was in a highly consequential film–the most referred back to film of the series–he also proved that someone other than Sean Connery could play James Bond 007. He also brought a little vulnerability to the role.
Roger Moore not only gave the series renewed life, he showed that one didn’t have to copy Connery to be a good Bond–and his success as a more humorous 007 ensured that the series would continue for many, many years.
Timothy Dalton brought the seriousness and danger back to Bond while also being the closest version to Ian Fleming’s creation we’ve had on screen.
Pierce Brosnan brought the series out of a long hibernation and revived it for a new generation. His hybrid version of 007–taking the best elements of Connery and Moore (as well as a little of Dalton and, of course, his own style)–worked to make a highly successful Bond.
And Daniel Craig showed you don’t have to strictly follow the traditional Bond conventions–as his more emotional, melancholic, rebellious, brawler had a successful run.
So, ALL the 007 actors have been really good and successful with their tenures, and each of their contributions (and films) have provided something impactful to the series.
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I don’t want to be the contrarian here, and I love every Bond actor so far, for keeping the character interesting and bringing out different elements.
But if there had been a longer hiatus after AVTAK and then the restart with GE, I suspect audiences would not have missed anything.
Many people didn‘t watch the Daltons anyway, so that gap has happened for them.
Us connaisseurs (snooty remark to be inserted) know the roots for the Craig tenure planted in the Dalton era, but I believe audiences in the 21st century would have enjoyed and did enjoy the Craig portrayal regardless.
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I agree with all of this. All of the Bond actors brought something to the role and I’m glad they all exist. But if I was forced to choose it’d be Dalton for the reasons you outline here.
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Truth.
Purely because outside legal and finance problems is what caused the big gap as it did every two films after DAD…a detail people feel free to ignore…
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Is the question whether a tenure could vanish without disturbing the continued commercial success and cultural impact of the series? If so, then the answer’s no, as each actor and era brought in new fans (including Dalton’s, and yes I’ve known fans who started with OHMSS). If for example Roger’s run were excised from history, that would have been 12 years with no Bond, which would have left a mark you couldn’t just buff out.
If the question is whether there’s some “in universe” reason why each era is dependent on the others, then it’s another matter entirely. Dalton’s two films ended up being mostly remembered as a shift away from Moore-era excesses, but they didn’t need those films to work. You could just as easily – and perhaps more comfortably – assimilate TLD and LTK into a timeline that picked up where OHMSS (though less so DAF) left off. Roger’s films benefit from the foundation laid by Sean’s, but in terms of plot and tone, they don’t need them. Craig’s era would be the easiest to toss since nothing’s followed them yet, so they take more than they give. Brosnan’s job would have been harder without the ability to cherry-pick aspects of his predecessors in crafting his portrayal, but he could’ve managed (of course we’d have to give up that trip to the Easter egg basket…er, Q’s lab…in DAD). Even Lazenby’s film could go as it only left us references to Tracy’s death, which merely amounted to two lines of dialog and a trip to the cemetery in later films, and was retconned from history entirely for the Craig run.
Or we could look at it from the POV of presenting Bond to a newbie. Depending on what I know about the person, I could assemble a customized watch list that left out one or more eras while still getting the point across. They wouldn’t need to see Roger’s films to enjoy Craig’s, and if I started with Roger’s and they loved them, I’d hesitate to show them Craig’s. But either era gives an idea of what “Bond” is. And so on. Depending on the person’s age, I might hold off on the early Connerys until I knew I had them hooked, because they’re “old” and “slow” (or so my kids tell me).
So in the real world: all are important. “In universe,” every era works better independently. Even Craig’s despite its needy death grip on the Goldfinger car.
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Fiction - I don’t think you could excise any tenure.
That said, for the sake of a debate, I might make a case for getting rid of an actor. Poor old Laz very much did an SC-thing, though it is far too small of a sample to definitely say that perhaps he didn’t add anything of his own. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much in the “OHMSS is great because it’s Laz” camp (however big that camp may be…).
Tenure? No - OHMSS, in the history that we got, is absolutely vital (the alternative history is that gets it filmed earlier as EON had wanted but with SC in there and you could have fair old thread offering how everything that comes after is different), but in terms of Bond the character, you could say every other actor brought something uniquely theirs except Laz.
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September 21
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the description of Bond in GoldenEye as a sexist, misogynist dinosaur and a relic of the Cold War was actually a description of the film series, and one GoldenEye didn’t then exert itself to disprove.
- Truth
- Fiction
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voters
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It’s the line a new Bond movie had to trot out in order to appease critics and to show the new era was aware of the criticism. But it always stuck out to me like a sore… let’s call it thumb. I mean, c‘mon, that characterization is what we like about him.
It’s like a Jack Nicholson character: I would not want to know or even meet one in real life. But I enjoy his shameless provocation in the movies as a surrogate for what I would not have the courage to be like. Also, a world full of Jacks or Bonds would be terrible. But in a movie once in a while… lovely.
GE and the following did tone down Bond‘s sexism and Cold War views. But only because times had changed. If the Iron Curtain had not come down it would have felt quite awkward to see Bond mellow on Russia. So EON actually did with what they had started doing in the 70‘s: follow a proven trend.
All of this makes the current reboot more difficult. I certainly hope that Bond will not fight against democratic „lunatics“, have a new Felix working for Russia and accept wars to break out in order to secure ratings for Carver‘s dumb sons. I also don’t want to see an Indiana Jones reboot fighting for Germany.
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It was simply GOLDENEYE’s slightly meta way of addressing everything that’s been written about the series since the watershed moment of 1989: this was supposedly the ‘end of history’ moment that relieved us of the necessity to spy on each other and all the further burdens of the Cold War. Bond as that period’s biggest and most propagandist entertainment had to be as dead as the politburo. Comments in the foreign affairs sections of the bigger outlets all seemed to agree the crumbling of the Iron Curtain meant ‘For you the Cold War is overrr, Mr Bond’.
It was just fitting that the series was tied up in legal calamities - but all that aside there had been elements which never sat really well with the 20th century and the dismissive patting of Dink was by far not the worst of it.
In all fairness, they had tried to gradually inch out of smutty train station cinema territory; Dalton wasn’t paired any longer with female subagents 20 years younger whose only apparent function was to keep the 00 happy during the sub’s five days to Alaska. But the smug way his Bond enjoyed being south of the border (where things were still going the ‘right’ way as far as gender and emancipation was concerned) still spoke of a mindset that conveniently ignored how women kept their countries afloat during both world wars - and were instrumental in no small way in winning them.
That stuff had been bizarrely antiquated even in 1989. GOLDENEYE’s mission was not to disprove but to reconcile audiences with the fact. Yes, this is a smelly old relic with mould in its cracks - but isn’t it fun watching it? Insofar mission accomplished; the series would go on for another few films, though never really stooping to previous lows of sexism. One might say the films after made good on a lot GOLDENEYE only paid lip service to.
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GoldenEye’s such a nervous, hesitant film. If they had just restarted with Tomorrow Never Dies, which breezes through unencumbered by such piffle and doesn’t announce itself so crassly, that would have been a much more confident statement about Bond’s relevance.
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Totally. One wouldn’t even have needed the whole evaluation/response to female authority stuff. Bond just being there, running into suspicious characters and being set by M on the Janus trail without any comment on relevance would have settled the case just fine. The audience never much cared whether it was Cold War, détente or world domination the films were about. By acknowledging the headline sentiment Eon put themselves needlessly into a tight spot. Cut that stuff from GOLDENEYE and you don’t lose a minute of the actual tale.
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