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I think this is a fair assessment.
Also I'd argue he doesn't merit being compared to those three either. He's not as good as them.
Agree with @BAIN123 . I don't think that even after GE anyone paid much attention to Remmington Steele in the UK. To this day I've never seen an episode and have never once come across it while channel hopping - that includes when I've been in the US. Hardly a sign of a much loved series. Even the bad ones tend to get repeated to death on cable and satellite channels but RS seems to have sunk without trace.
I've got the RS box set funnily enough. You're not really missing much but the box set does have the tag line "before he was Bond". Can't really see them doing that with Roger Moore and The Saint.
They're repeated quite a lot on the itv channels. I've seen a few of them every now and then. They seem a bit naff now to be honest and Roger's constant smarminess is a bit irritating.
Agreed! Brosnan IS Bond to me and I feel, at times, he even rivals Connery. He is the dramatic one of the bunch but to me that's okay.
I remember Die Another Day having a bunch of good reviews when it first came out. Although I've never seen Roger Ebert's review of it or The World Is Not Enough. He was quite often too harsh, even on good films, so it's actually surprising that he gave any praise to DAD.
I would argue that the success of GE had more to do with the six-year hiatus than it did Brosnan. People were hungry to see a Bond movie, period.
If he'd been shit it wouldn't have worked. It did work. I fully respect people think he was shit, but it's pointless trying to revise history.
I remember that many of the good reviews (and there was hardly an avalanche of them) accurately pointed out that after a good first half the movie went to pieces in the second. Brosnan's best-reviewed Bond film is almost certainly GoldenEye. I think a trawl of vintage reviews in the "external reviews" section of IMDB will back this up.
Ebert gave TLD only two stars, which puts his love for the late Brosnans in a rather questionable light. A solid writer, but with occasionally bizarre taste. The first line of his TLD pan is "The raw materials of the James Bond films are so familiar by now that the series can be revived only through an injection of humor." Gee Roger, were you alive during the Moore years?
Perhaps he enjoyed the humor injection in AVTAK more! In any case, Ebert contradicted himself by giving LTK three and a half stars, so go figure.
Did I write that his performance was "shit"? No. I argued that people really wanted to see a new Bond film, with or without Brosnan.
And there was no revisionism in my post -- the guy's career was going nowhere when he got the Bond gig. Even Brosnan would agree with that.
I was referring to detractors on the whole. The revisionism is suggesting the film's success was more down to timing than Brosnan. That's impossible to gauge, what is possible to gauge is that it was tremendously successful 'with' Brosnan, so it's fruitless trying to disregard his impact.
That's really interesting to hear. I am constantly told on here that Brosnan was this huge big deal in the US but what you're saying totally chimes with my memory from how he was perceived in the UK.
In 95 people were desperate for Bond. I'm not sure the fact that it was Brosnan in the lead role had anything to do with the excitment. I was excited but I didn't have a clue who he was. I went into to see GE totally pumped up but hated the film from the PTS onwards
He definitely wouldn't deny that. In fact one of the reasons I love the bloke so much is how incredibly grateful he is about Bond. He often talks in interviews about how it basically made his career, got him a nice house, put his kids through school, etc. This is my favourite interview of his, just found it from an old post of mine. He's incredibly grateful and seemed to love playing the role.
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/pierce-brosnan-2005-james-bond-interview
Makes a nice change from the actors who bitch about what a "tough shoot" this or that film was (I'm sure it is knackering but so is what nurses, firefighters and more do and they're not made millions of pounds and afforded the luxury of sitting on their arse in Hollywood afterwards either).
Having said that I think while Bond did basically make his career, it isn't very fair to make out that he didn't play a part in GE's success. He was very popular in the role, and if they had another actor who didn't win the public over like he did then I'm sure it (at the very least) wouldn't have been as successful.
Strangely, I think we're in need of that again now.
Oh, I know. I've seen people on these forums go on and on about how GE was a success because the general public had been desperate to see Brosnan in the role since '87. I find that hard to believe. It seemed to me that by 1995 nobody cared about Remington Steele and the Dalton/Brosnan casting situation had faded from memory, at least in the U.S.
I also highly doubt that Brosnan was MGM's first (or even second or third) choice, considering the actor's lackluster performance at the box office. My impression is that the MGM crew wanted to attract an A-list star like Mel Gibson, Liam Neeson or Ralph Fiennes, but those actors were commanding very high salaries and none of them would commit to a multi-film contract. Hiring Brosnan was a way to get an actor on the cheap and for a longer commitment.
That's not my memory of how it went down, but OK. We can agree to disagree.
Perhaps it depends on where you were at the time. In the U.K. there was a definite buzz.
That being said, I think Dalton was right to step away from the role - it would have been a challenge to reinvent Bond for the 90s with an actor who played him in the 80s. It would be hard to fault Dalton for moving on with his career after 6 years. For all their many faults, Brosnan's films were a big hit with the public and perhaps necessary for the survival of the series and the dawn of what I consider to be a new Golden Age of Bond with the Daniel Craig era.
I disagree in terms of Brosnan. He was unknown in the UK in 95. He was given the benefit of the doubt I would say and there was definitely interest. But Remington Steele had never even registered in the UK. He was a totally unknown quantity in the UK.
In mantly respects that probably worked in his favour. No baggage and a clean slate.
Again, I remember excitement that a Bond movie was finally going into production. The feeling I got about Brosnan was that people thought "Well, they couldn't get Mel Gibson, so they settled for the dude from MRS. DOUBTFIRE. No matter, it's still Bond."
And do you remember when EON did their formal announcement to the press, and Brosnan showed up looking like he had been dragged from a three-day bender at the local pub? Hardly impressive.
That was exactly my reaction. Who is this bearded hippy dude? 95 was well before hipster beards became fashionable. He looked distinctly un-Bondian
Surely Lawnmower Man was a success, regardless of its quality. It's also where Brosnan perfected his pain face. But I think his career was going nowhere insofar as he was not playing Bond. People wanted him as Bond even though there was lots of projection in this wish. I wanted him to be Bond since 1989 and I had seen barely anything of Brosnan and not many Bond movies!
However I don't mistake liking the man with liking his Bond.
Of all of them Pierce actually seems like the most decent and likeable of the lot.
On the contrary. I was thrilled about Craig getting the role. Not only did he show up to the press conference looking presentable, his casting told me that EON was serious about getting back to a more human Bond, and I wouldn't be suffering through another soulless era of the franchise. Plus I had already seen LAYER CAKE and knew Craig was awesome.
Brosnan's casting annoyed me partly because it was clear that EON was turning its back on everything that made the Dalton era so good. When I finally saw GE in the cinemas I was not surprised that the movie felt so boringly focus tested and approved.
You did not! But it was.