To me Craig is one of the best. I would put him second to Connery who will always be difficult to dislodge from the top spot given his defining stamp on the role. I think my favourite is still Dalton but that two film run makes it hard for me to say he was “better” than Craig.
Is it about forgetting the achievements of others or is it personal taste? I think the arguments over who is the best Bond will almost certainly come down to personal taste. Some people, including me, will have Moore further down their list because he admittedly was winking at the camera far too much IMHO. But some people like that vs. a more serious Bond. Some people found Craig to be too glum and Dalton to lack humour. To each his own. I am glad that we have this ongoing series (thank God for the value of that IP!) and that we have different versions of Bond to choose from.
I think Connery was the most charismatic Bond, Roger Moore was the most entertaining one and Dalton was the Bond who came closest to Fleming‘s idea of Bond.
Craig was the most physical and emotionally rageing Bond, much more ACTORly than the stage trained Dalton who was accused of being too ACTORly when he really inhabited the role much more willing to engage with it without feeling it were beneath him.
Connery and Moore played themselves and Bond at the same time.
Craig played James Bond as a role across a series of films, wherein a character had been developed for an actor to play. Hence, @secretagentfan’s sense of actorlyness.
Also, Connery and Moore were stars who acted. Craig is a character actor who became a star (think Dustin Hoffman).
I think the beauty of Craig’s Bond is that he gradually began to play himself and Bond as Connery and Moore did. Crucially, for me he is as comfortable in his own skin as both of those. For whatever reason Brosnan didn’t have that inert confidence to just be and I would argue his performance is the most ACTORy because you can see the performance. Dalton’s performance is very real and yet unreal because he wants comfortable with humour, he’s not in on the joke as such. Beosnans films disappointed me on initial viewing and continue to do so because they feel so generic but I have that issue with a lot of 90s cinema.
Could anyone else have done better?. Doubtfull. He was the best choice for that time just as Craig was the best choice for his.
We are in agreement. I was ready for a change after Brosnan and we got that. I’m again ready for a change after Craig but that doesn’t mean I reject all the choices from his era. What worked for him likely wouldn’t work for another, which has been the case for other Bond incarnations as well.
I agree on the genericness of 90‘s action films influencing the Brosnan era - but I disagree (Jim will love this) about Brosnan being uncomfortable in the role and having to visibly act. I think Brosnan was already very comfortable with the role from his second film onwards. He‘s the kind of actor Moore was: just be the image of you, no intellectualising a part and no „building“ a set of traits and quirks (and muscles). That‘s what I mean with ACTORly. With Craig I see the performance, and while it works, I rather have a Bond actor just be interesting without the visible effort. Connery was a master at this, Moore had already perfected that before Bond, and Dalton somehow managed to combine his stage training with the detached Fleming Bond he embodied without puffing himself up. And Brosnan was Brosnan before Bond, and for my taste he gave his most relaxed performance in DAD.
Perception and subjectivity, I see him impersonating Moore in moments, Connery in others and nothing of himself, I think his best Bond work has been in recent years in the action movies he’s made into his 60s.
The shower scene in CR was the first time I found myself emotionally engaged in a Bond film
I remember when the “conventional wisdom” was that Brosnan was the “best since Connery.” Then Craig showed up and HE became “the best since Connery” (or even ever) and no one could see Brosnan for dirt.
I think there’s a tendency to get caught up in the hype and PR of whatever’s new and current, and the general viewing public is easily led. It may well be that when the next guy comes along, he too will be proclaimed the “best ever” and people will take a more critical view of Craig. I often see commenters wondering aloud why it is that “the last guy” is always turned on when the next guy arrives, but I wonder if it’s not so much a case of betrayal on the part of fans as it is just a relaxation of the need to cheer on whatever Bond is at the moment. No one wants to be the only guy in the bleachers criticizing the team when everyone else is so excited, especially if the team is after all winning the game. But once we’re on to a new game with newer, younger, more “of the moment” players on the team, it’s safer to look back and offer objective criticism of the last crew.
Okay, so I’m not a sports guy and maybe that’s not a great metaphor. My point is that only time will tell how well-regarded Craig ends up being in the history of the franchise. Right now he’s riding high and for as long as this hiatus extends, he can enjoy a prolonged period as the favorite, but after we have a couple successors to compare him to, we’ll know better how he stacks up.
I haven’t watched all the Bronson movies in a while (need to do that soon). But when he was Bond, I felt he got better as Bond with each film, while the films got progressively worse IMHO.
If IFP wants to make a collection of Bond short stories, then previous ones should be included. Fleming, Benson and Weinburg for sure, as well as the other unofficial short stories.
Some new ones would definitely be appreciated though. By both Bond writing alumni and new authors. From all time periods, and different characters.
I have TND as Brosnan’s best film and DAD as his best performance. The younger version of me would’ve welcomed a fifth film with open arms. Four films is a good number but especially at the time it felt like it was cut short from what it could’ve or should’ve been. But alas, that’s history.
We did kind of get a fifth movie with PB: Everything or Nothing. I wish we would have gotten a novelization of it. It was a good wrap up for PB over DAD.
As I said above, it is one of the few Bond movies/games that truly deserved a novelization. There was a lot of material that could have worked in a literary setting. There are a lot of great characters that could have had interesting backstories. A scene of Max Zorin would have been some great character development for Nikolai Diavolo. For me, I’d like to have Bruce Feirstein adapt his video game screenplay for the novelization. He could have done the same for Bloodstone honestly. Maybe even Skyfall or the Jinx screenplay. So, I feel those are truly some missed opportunities for Bond, in more ways than one.
Even if Project 007 is better, EON will always be my favourite Bond game not just because of nostalgia but for the significance of the talent involved. I do consider it canon and playing it again recently I can say the experience stands the test of time.
Less shocking but frustrating, and explaining a lot about the last two decades of Bond and other blockbuster productions:
„ All the research we did — and we did tons, we spoke to so many people — the actual chaos [on superhero films] was really surprising,” says The Franchise creator Jon Brown (Succession), who made the series along with Armando Iannucci (Veep) and Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (1917). “People think these movies are laid out in neat phases for the next 10 years. Then you hear about a set where, in the morning, a limo literally pulls up, the window comes down, and they hand out new script pages. Or producers on set have eight versions of the same script open, and they go through each script, cherry picking lines, and then they Frankenstein a scene out of nothing. Or the studio sends an actor to the set in the morning and they basically rewrite the day’s entire scene [to accommodate the last-minute cast addition]. You would assume all this was decided two years ago, but it’s happened a lot across Marvel and DC movies.”
As a result, the writers of The Franchise found themselves in the rather odd position of sometimes making story choices for their show that were less wild than the real-life anecdotes they were hearing from industry insiders. “You think, ‘I know this is real, but it just seems too silly,’” Brown said. “So we sometimes have to take it back a step, because you don’t think people will believe it unless they know it’s true.”
The Franchise began (its origin story, if you will) when Mendes and Iannucci were having a lunch meeting in London. They swapped ideas for collaboration and none of them fit. Then Mendes — who had recently wrapped filming 2015’s James Bond hit Spectre — shared some of the “magnificent chaos” he endured directing two Bond films. “The reality of making [franchise] films is often absurd, chaotic, and decisions are made for the most random of reasons — you are balanced on a knife edge the whole time,” Mendes says. “There’s this sense of a massive engine moving forward relentlessly, and sometimes you feel like you are driving the train and sometimes you’re just a passenger as a director.”
Just been watching NSNA on TV here in the UK, maybe it’s nostalgia of when I first watched it on VHS from a video rental store at the age of 7 or 8, but oh boy it really does have some proper Bond moments in it, despite the cheesiness I now admire the cinematography, I pointed out to my wife the movie is older than her and she said it looked more like a early 90’s movie. And who doesn’t love a bit of soft focus on the leading ladies like they did during the Hollywood years! Sean is more action heavy than Roger at the time! Bond rides a motorbike for the first time on big screen like he did in the books! Yes granted the dungarees were a bit too far and various other parts of the film are a bit two fair, but I challenge you tell, me this isn’t a good movie!!
Yes, wearing a huge bucket of a helmet all the time so you never see if it’s really him - except for some close-ups.
I really, really wanted to give it a chance the last time I caught it on TV. Impossible, couldn’t watch it. Not more than 20 minutes. My deep dislike for Brandauer (as a person and as an actor) certainly doesn’t help (ironically, him being in the movie is the main reason that it was rather successful and is still better respected in Germany than in the rest of the world – heck some German editions of the book were named “Never Say Never Again”, even years later ).
Sorry, but I have to say it: to me, this isn’t a good movie.
But t’s good for something: makes some interesting collectibles.
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