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Comments
It is obviously my opinion and as such it is debatable, however I do think it is backed up by facts, among them Brosnan's age at the time. In DAD, he was a middle aged man pushing buttons of his fancy car.
He already looked his age in DAD. Yes, he looked good for a man his age, but that's the point: a man of his age. Maybe, maybe, maybe and that is a big maybe he could have played a FYEO type Bond right after DAD, say in 2004. But not CR in 2006, not only because of the stunts but because of the whole approach of the movie.
In MY reading & film watching, Bond never struck me as a potential Olympic athlete. If they want to reboot him as such for CR, fine, but don't dis previous actors that were cast as merely athletically inclined as being feeble when compared to the new version. Okay? Maybe? :))
We got him for four and the films have their moments. I enjoy them for what they were but I don't look forward to watching much when I do my Bond-a-thon.
Curious, are you pretty young? Or possibly English is not your first language- in that case I understand completely.
All of them were great in their own ways- to sell any one of them off as a qualified loss is nonsense IMO. Brosnan was awesome; even Lazenby was great. Please reconsider...
May I add the fight atop the shipyard building in YOLT? Cool long panning shot, but horribly angled because you can see that Connery (or a double of his) isn't making any contact with the stunt men. It really ruins the moment for me.
I can understand where you're coming from because that's they exact same way that I feel about Moonraker.
However, I think it's just as easy to view TWINE in the same light. I understand your misgivings about the whole pseudo-intellectual aspect of the film but it's possible to enjoy it for what it is.
No one was more disappointed by TWINE than me back when it came out. Now that I no longer have such high expectations of it I have discovered a new found appreciation for it over the years. Conversely, I enjoyed TND back in 1997 but I find it to be quite underwhelming now. I'll take TWINE over TND any day of the week.
I guess it's just a matter of perspective eh?
Idiotic? Skyfall has gone stratospheric. The first billion dollar Bond. I'd say the best decision Babs ever made was ditching Remington Bond.
Even his most fervent love boys must admit he was too old for rookie Bond in CR. He didn't even have that louche quality that Connery/Moore had at the end. Craig was inspired casting and paid off handsomely.
Is that discounting the chocolate flavoured scorpions he had been eating for 8 months to give him that potbelly?
I think @thelivingroyale meant idiotic choices with the Brosnan films.
So... Brosnan was not as good in the stunt department because he's taller? I think he wouldn't have got CE because of his age. Yes, he would not have been able to do convincing stunts, but the plot of CR obviously would not have fit Brosnan, unless you ditch completely the origin story and the point of the movie
I was wondering the same thing. Brosnan indeed looked very healthy, after more than a year of torture. The hotel scene was embarassing for many reasons, this was one of them.
I did, yes. Thought I'd made that fairly clear.
To this day, I'm still impressed with the amount of effort that went into that. They even managed to get Willam Dafoe!
It wasn't just his age. The only way CR could really be adapted was as a reboot. The whole point of the story is that Bond is a man who has never experienced loss or pain or heartache or betrayal.
The whole of Brosnan's tenure, in a way, was about pain, loss, heartache and betrayal. He was betrayed by Alec in GE, lost a woman he had loved in TND, was betrayed by a woman he had loved in TWINE and DAD was built around the fact that he's betrayed, tortured, disavowed, suspected of treason and thrown on the scrapheap. Impossible for CR to follow all of that and retain its impact. A reboot was the only way of doing it justice.
Incidentally, and apropos of this, I disagree with those who say that Brosnan didn't add anything new to the character. He's the only Bond who brought a sense of vulnerability to the role and the only actor to play Bond as a veteran - a man who had been damaged by the things he had seen and done. It wasn't perfectly realised, in my opinion, but it was definitely there. A portrayal which, again, made a Brosnan-starring CR impossible.
He did have a bit of a belly but I don't think he looked as bad as Connery or Moore did by their last film. Connery looked like he should have been drinking with his golf buddies and Moore looked like he'd had a facelift (which he had).
Connery even had his shirt off in one scene in DAF and looked worse than Broz did (in my view anyway).
I will admit he looked very healthy for someone who had just spent 14 months being tortured though
And that is the problem. Moore and Connery, for all the flaws of their respective last movie, did not play a Bond that had been tortured for 14 months. As I said, Brosnan looked like a man of his age, i.e. a middle aged man who was taking life easy. He certainly did not have what it took to be a rookie Bond in CR.
Agreed. However on the flip-side of the argument Connery/Moore were still technically playing Commander James Bond, a man who was meant to be "an all round athlete" and in reasonably good physical shape despite his vices. Broz was over-the-hill in DAD but he did at least still have that Bond look to him. Connery and Moore just looked like old geezers - Moore particularly with that black leather jacket.
I suppose the mindset of the filmakers of DAD was "we can't have Bond looking terrible and beaten throughout the whole film - so we'll just have him looking like that for a little while". Fairly half-assed to be honest but at least they did the "trodden down Bond" a lot more convincingly in SF however.
:))
Except neither actonsteve, nor anyone who has been noticing it, actually played Bond, or Bond after being 14 months in a North Korean jail. The more Brosnan was enjoying life, the least he was physically believable to be Bond. In the end, in DAD he was a middle aged man pushing buttons. When it happens, it is time to think about casting a new actor.
I thought from GE to DAD he looked fine physically, better than most in fact. But then, I don't hate him as Bond.
:-?
He looked about right in TWINE IMO.
He looked pretty slick in TWINE. Every inch the experienced operative.
I think you hit the nail on the head. You don't see many people whinging about Roger's physique. Don't get me wrong I love the bloke, but he wasn't exactly the most athletic. As for Brozzer, for me he's the closest physically to what I see as Bond, apart from Connery. But then again, I'm not one of those that fawns over the 'fitness first' Craig version. Brosnan is a great looking bloke. Still is.
I think the problem with Moore was that, while he was quite commanding, he never seemed all that nimble or quick on his feet - particularly from TSWLM onwards when he often looked embarrassing in the action/fight scenes.
For all of Brosnan's faults I do think he was more nimble than Rog.
;)
Ok Connery fine from DN up until TB. Laz fine. Moore fine up until TSWLM but then started to age. Got away with it until AVTAK when he looked pretty terrible. Dalton fine. Craig fine. Thats how I see it anyway :)