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The last truly good thing that happened while Cubby was still around was the casting of Brosnan as Bond.
Since then a lot went wrong, very wrong.
Keeping Brosnan for as long as they did, was probably due to that. Replacing him would be like throwing a really ugly and ill-fitting sweater your Grandma knitted for you before she died.
As for SF being a remake of TWINE I can see where this might be the case but that film was such an uneven mess with over top action sequences and some of Brozzer's most embarrassing acting of his tenure, all that Elektra pain face stuff was atrocious.
Craig's performance in SF is my favourite of his and his acting leaves his predecessor looking like a greatest hits karaoke act,
TWINE is the 2nd worst Brosnan entry, I don't like TND much more but at least it has no illusions of what it's trying to be, TWINE was an attempt to give Brosnan is very own OHMSS but failed dismally.
Oh the rose tinted specs of nostalgia.
Brosnan on the other hand showed in TWINE that he is believable as a agent with a licence to kill when he confronted Renard for the first time and when he shot Elektra and the goodbye kiss scene when she's lying on the bed is brilliantly played by Brosnan.
On the other hand, Craig looked like someone from Grey's Anatomy when he shed a tear for his mother....M.
Go and watch The November Man and you see what Brosnan could have been capable of in doing in a Bond movie had the producer's and writer's given him stuff like CR to do.
Brosnan can't be blamed. If anything the writer's failed in that era. GE was the last truly great written Bond movie, closely followed by CR, the rest is so-so.
You are serious aren't you?
Those moments are laughable, Craig's moments in the chapel with M are genuine and you believe them, Brosnan plays Bond like he's standing in front of a mirror with a hair dryer pretending it's a gun.
It always amuses me how deluded PB fans are, not denying is popularity and the fact he bought the series back to a success but a great actor he wasn't. He's certainly improved since leaving the role but Craig has given performances in his career that Pierce could only dream of doing.
That's called sarcasm, maybe I should have labelled it as such.
I have a hard time when people saying Brosnan was a bad actor and at the same time claim what a great actor Craig is.
Why always this bashing of Brosnan in direct context to Craig??
I find Craig nothing more special than Dalton, Connery, Lazenby, Moore or Brosnan. They all are different kind of actors. If at all I would say Dalton and Connery were the real good ones acting wise and the others were absolutely sufficient for playing Bond as well.
It escapes me totally why Craig should be any better than Brosnan, what movies has he done that are acted better than Brosnan?? Craig acts always the same, in every movie, he could be Bond in Tomb Raider, Layer Cake, Munich or TGWTDT.
Brosnan on the other hand is perfect for comedies, lighthearted action, gritty action, he even can play the baddie and drama.
Me too, but they're tears of joy ;)
Interesting point. I have made similar observations about CrAig myself. I.e the fact that outside of Bond his career is not really going very well. By contrast, Brosnan very cannily used Bond to launch himself as a proper movie star, and with significant success. I have to say that outside of Bond I would probably prefer to watch a Brozza movie rather than a Craig one. Brosnan has a gift for light comedy and also for playing sleazes/morally ambiguous characters - those are his real strengths.
However, when it comes to Bond I think Brosnan was just, for whatever reason, not very good, and Craig is a much better Bond. Craig is far from my favourite but he gives a convincing And consistent take that Brosnan never seemed to manage.
It's frustrating because I was so looking forward to him getting the role. I somehow feel he was in over his head from the beginning (there was a tension in his delivery/acting....a sort of affectation that I couldn't put my finger on, but felt deeply.....the hairdryer analogy mentioned above is quite apropos imho). I now believe that he was just not suited for Bond and that he has done much better work outside of the franchise since.
With Craig I feel quite the opposite. Outside of Bond, he has been very ineffective (TGWTDT notwithstanding), rather surprisingly. I don't personally think that he is a brilliant actor, but he is a very good Bond imho. Extremely credible in the role.....from the very first scene in Dryden's office in CR.
His role in the tailor of Panama was great.
Yes exactly. He's actually really rather brilliant in it.
It will always remain an enigma to me why Brosnan was quite so uncomfortable in the role. I do think he found the direction of the series not to his suiting. I also personally feel that he was rather dismissive of what Dalton had done. I think perhaps understandably there was a certain antipathy towards Dalton, as he'd got the role in 87 when it should have gone to Pierce. Any way, I think Pierce through the baby out with the bath water and ended up trying to ape Connery and Moore instead of realising that the character has to be imagined afresh with each new Bond. He says he wanted more opportunity for fleshed out character acting, but his own performance made this actually rather difficult as he insisted on overacting everything and pain-facing and grunting all the time.
This article from a couple of years back is quite interesting and I think highlights how Brosnan struggled to find his own take on Bond.
It seems obvious in light of the Craig era that Dalton was at least attempting to take Bond in the right direction. Brosnan's approach now looks like a dead end.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10755167/Pierce-Brosnan-I-was-never-good-enough-as-Bond.html
-Connery was loved and missed even though Moore stepped in and was accepted.
-Lazenby was not missed when Connery came back but has found new fans among the hardcore (if not the general public) over time for his one performance
-Moore was loved and missed when Dalton took over and continues to be remembered fondly by the public and many of the hardcore fans.
-Dalton was not missed when Brosnan took over but was increasingly missed as Brosnan settled into the role by the faithful, if not the general public
-Brosnan was not missed (danielcraigisnotbond.com notwithstanding) when Craig took over, nor was his approach, except by some die-hard fans of his
-it remains to be seen how Craig will be remembered. I think his era will be looked upon in the same vein as Connery and Moore (probably between the two).
Of course there are exceptions, many of who are members of this forum. In general though, the above holds imho.
Craig has a hard core following, probably more than any other Bond actor before, which might be part because Craig was so hated from the get-go by quite a lot of people and always gets criticised to this day, something that never happened to his predecessors.
So his hard core fans are very visibly defending and praising him whenever they can, they are on the defensive always.
How Craig will be looked upon in 10 years depends highly on his last two films Spectre and Bond 25. If both are on the level of Casino Royale, he indeed will be remembered very fondly, but if his last two movies are more on the level of QOS or Skyfall, he will never be on the same level as Connery or have the same broad following that Moore has.
Bosnan's run will be looked upon very differently and much more positively once he is no longer the predecessor of the current Bond.
Craig will be the one that always gets compared to the next Bond and Craig will be there where Brosnan is now. That's an almost natural thing to happen.
I remember when Dalton took over how suddenly Moore was criticised for being the "ridiculous over the top Bond", after Dalton's short run and the long gap to Brosnan, Dalton was forgotten quickly and even viewed in general as a failure. And look how fond most people think nowadays of Dalton. Many even see him as their favourite (me too!) something that was unthinkable 10 years ago!
Because he plaid the anti-Bond in it.
Maybe he didn't want to be too predictable ? When he was cast, back in the days, it seems everyone expected a kind of Moore Jr. Then he played it far more seriously than expected. I'm not sure people wanted "real action" from him...
Yes the general consensus by critics and fans alike is that Craig's performance in SF was an atrocity .. fans stayed away in droves and we all longed for the days of blockbusters like LTK.
Dalton was so stiff and forced in his performance.
That's how I feel towards Craig. That and many other things that make him the worst Bond (some things are out of it control, but that doesn't excuse them), imo. On the upside, he has made me re-evaluate the way I look at the Brosnan era as a whole.
Ever heard about something called sarcasm? Probably not.
Not the first bizarre comment he's made and I presume, not the last.
That was sarcasm: quoting myself
That's funny....I find Craig's performance in SF most embarrassing and his pain was atrocious.
On the other hand, Craig looked like someone from Grey's Anatomy when he shed a tear for his mother....M.
End sarcasm.
If you can't take sarcasm or think my comments are bizarre, it's your problem and not mine.