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It'd be worse than mediocre because you'd essentially be losing the theme of the film. It's heart and soul. With what you're suggesting CR would've become just another Bond film instead of standing out as a new beginning.
And there's no way in hell Brosnan would be doing anything that resembled that parkour chase. Instead of chasing after the bomber I could see Brosnan quickly using some gadget to dispense of him. Not to mention an experienced agent such as him falling in love with Vesper and being played just wouldn't be as believable. The film requires a young James Bond. Plain and simple.
He didn't always use gadgets. There are plenty of examples in the Brosnan films where he got out of tough situations without any gadgets.
So the book isn't believable??? I think CR with an older Bond would make perfect sense. Instead of having a rookie Bond that's not used to killing, you'd have an older Bond tired of killing that wants to pack it in. In fact I think it might make even more sense because Bond wouldn't be retiring as soon as he was made a 00, he'd be retiring after years in the field.
He's been a spy for longer so therefore he wouldn't have fallen in love with Vesper? What sense does that make?
I agree, I wouldn't want him to do CR, I'm very happy with the CR we got. I would have liked a better send off for him and I do think he deserved one more before they rebooted it but I wouldn't want him in CR.
I was just saying that with a few changes, I think he could have done CR. Not that I'd want him to.
He might not have fought SMERSH but there's still no indication that he was new irrc. There was a flashback bit where he remembered his two kills but for all we know that could've been years ago, he could've been on a few missions since then.
He was still not a man in his 50s, not even 40s. In MR I think it is said he is 35. The more experience he is, the longer he has been in the game, the less likely it would be that he falls for a mole.
He'd get out of some tough situations but never with the brute physicality of Craig, Connery, or Lazenby. Brosnan was a notch above Moore in that regard.
I haven't read Casino Royale in years but I'm pretty sure Fleming describes Bond as being in his mid-thirties. So no he's defiantly not a veteran agent. He's alot closer to the beginning of his career than the end. Hence it being the first novel. Craig being 37/38 at the time of filming was pretty close to the mark.
Exactly. Having seen everything Brosnan's Bond had been through I'd find it very difficult to believe that a senior agent like him would be so easily tricked. It works with a young Bond. Not an older one. It would've made Bond look stupid and naive.
+1.
You bumped a three year old thread just to say that? What's the point? You're not starting a discussion. You just dragged up something from ages ago to shit on Brosnan a bit more. Did the positive comments in the production timeline thread really rub you that much the wrong way?
Anyway I don't think Brosnan was right for CR. Craig owns it. But I stand by my old comments about the origin story element. It's pointless and goes out the window after Miami anyway (once they actually get to the plot of the novel), where he really doesn't make any mistakes except trusting Vesper. The GF esque stuff with him reflecting on killing Obanno for example, him "going soft" as I think he said in the novels, would have been a lot more impactful if this was a jaded seasoned 007 instead of one on his first mission imo, because we've seen him do that so many times before, and for the first time ever he's stopped and let the reality of it set in.
I think one of the strengths of Bond is how he emerged fully formed. We didn't need to see him become Bond and his first meetings with Q, MP, etc. There was no need for the reboot. Give Moneypenny Villier's role. Maybe have Q appear during the defib scene or just give him a film off ala LALD. Stick a gunbarrel at the start, make the parkour the PTS and remove any mention of Bond being a rookie and the film would have been much better off imo. The origin story stuff felt tacked on and just like they were following trends after Batman did it. Think that's why I enjoyed SP so much, we were finally past all that.
I’m not sure I entirely agree….
I think Bond’s character arc is central to the concept of the “reboot”. Bond is immature and idealistic – however, he’s also questioning his decisions and emotionally struggling with the choices he’s made. By the end of the film, his resolve is solidified and he basically becomes the Bond we know (essentially, the character Brosnan had played for 4 films).
If Pierce as still there – you could easily rework the script to make way for an older Bond who is emotionally jaded and morose. But the love story angle may not work so well – surely, if you go down this route with an older actor, the denoucement isn’t that they get their heart broken and learn not to trust anyone – they surely know this lesson already?! If you wanted to do a story about an older Bond, we would be looking more towards something akin to what we saw in “Skyfall” or even “Spectre”.
Personally, Craig makes CR really sing. Brosnan wasn’t the right choice for the script. Beyond the character stuff – the script demands an actor with a certain physicality. There’s no way I can imagine Pierce in the opening Madagascar chase. His whole “unflappable” and “suave” shtick would never have worked with the more grounded, gritty and rugged approach. This is representative of the whole film which was something of a tonal shift that Pierce was out of step for.
https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/cr_quentin_tarantino_timeline.php3
It's not mentioned in that timeline, but before Brosnan's CR pitch to EON Tarantino had tried to get a job on the Bond series through Tony Scott. EON offered Scott the director's chair for DAD, and Scott said he would only do it if Tarantino were hired as the screenwriter. EON, of course, got "cold feet."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001716/news?year=2002
Can't say I blame Babs and MGW, though. Tarantino, as evidenced in interviews, is incredibly arrogant and obnoxious, and I can't imagine him clicking with EON creatively.
Not only that, he seemed to lack a basic understanding of the novels. I recall an interview he did on Charlie Rose in which he claimed that CR ends with Bond shooting Vesper!
And Uma Thurman opposite Brosnan? Oh God, no. Dodged a bullet there.
And the award for unnecessary thread bumping just to bash Pierce and fuel their hatred of him goes to you. :)
At the time it was glorious (think of the shift from DAD to CR), and it still is in a certain right, but a decade on it's easier to see CR as symptomatic of BATMAN BEGINS than of Bourne. Beyond financial appeal, I find it a little curious that Bond should have been approached from an 'origin story' point-of-view, considering that sort of tale inherently belongs to the superhero genre (explaining how such and such human being came to possess extraordinary powers/"become themselves"), yet the 'superhero' Bond is expressly what EON was at the time trying to move away from and at odds with the way Craig wanted to portray him.
It doesn't help to look at the 'arc' as presented CR in the context of three Craig films that followed, which played merry hell with it (i.e. he became Bond at the end of CR, until he became Bond at the end of QOS, then was 'too old' by the start of SF, and by SP we're ignoring his relative experience/inexperience completely).
In several of your posts you mention Batman Begins as the catalyst for CR, but in doing so you discount that Eon wanted to do a Bond begins origin story as far back as 1985/86 after Moore left the role. It was Cubby's insistence that audiences didn't want to see Bond as an amateur that scrapped it. There was no real film superhero genre then to speak of, aside from Superman.
Having the rights to CR finally come available after years made it too attractive to pass up. For years I recall fans saying they had wanted a proper CR and that's what we got and glad to say they did it right, not a veteran Bond story. The combination of a classic story with fresh actor and approach proved the right decision.
I didn't know the bit about the Dalton changeover and the options considered. That's interesting, and your point about no superhero film genre is well taken, though I would argue superheroes having been around since the 30s in comics was enough to cement the 'origin story' as very much a superhero—or at least comic book—idea. I think even if Cubby had elected to go through with it back then, comic comparisons of some sort would have been drawn.
I agree. And as with many things it seems, the CR we were given really was a coming together of perfect coming together of circumstances.
To be honest, when CR was announced I had fears critics would all use Bond Begins as their headlines in reviews and we didn't get that too much due to the quality. I was also worried about Texas hold-em being worked into the story as I thought it would be a passing fad as internet poker was huge at the time and it would date the story.
I just have a hard time imagining this story done any other way.
I remember having the same reservations at the time, as it pertained to the switch to Texas hold-em. That it would date the story didn't occur to me, though I think it is an interesting concern. Ten years on, do you think it has? I think it stands out slightly in the film—as being...less elegant?—but I think so far it's managed at least to avoid what I might call being 'dated.'
1) Brosnan was a fantastic James Bond.
2) Craig is a great James Bond, despite never really being allowed to fully be one until SPECTRE.
3) Casino Royale is great as it already is.
4) Casino Royale would've been great if Brosnan was in it, too.
5) Ian Fleming's Casino Royale did not feature a rookie James Bond at all.
6) Cubby and Harry did not want to start CR with a rookie Bond. They simply wanted to started their franchise with CR. I doubt they'd change their approach if they did CR instead of Dr. No.
7) "Poor man's Cubby Broccoli Bond"? That is hilarious, if not vindictivaly savage towards those of us who like Brosnan.
8) While the Craig era undoubtably has far more of Barbara's vision in it, nevertheless she was the driving force for the Brosnan era. DAD was her idea, mostly.
9) Cubby wanted to go back to the original approach? While it may have truth as a statement, it hardly absolves him from dilluting the Fleming books with his "lovely" ideas about space satellites, solar satellites, and space stations in stories about diamond smuggling, a smug assassin and a rocket sceheme respectively. Not to mention his decision to basically rotate OHMSS and YOLT with one another, thus taking away YOLT's drive-for-vengeance arc. Not to mention his hiring Roger Moore for AVTAK, which in my mind hurt the franchise immensly and Dalton, despite his best efforts, didn't help to recover it. Cubby was not a saint, and none of you should view him as such.
10) Several of the Brosnan films are better than a lot of the others. In my mind, GE and TWINE as better than Skyfall, even - despite the latter having the superior exploration of Bond's psyche. But, the other two have better plots that are intrisically tied to the character's arc for each given film.
11) I cannot stress enough how good Brosnan would've been in CR. And the slight remark that he was less of a Bond than Craig? Nonsense! Brosnan's the truest representation of Fleming's Bond. Just try and read TMWTGG without Brosnan in mind.
I undoubtably have more to say, but these I just wanted to get off my chest.
Craig at the age of 37 playing a "rookie agent" was never convincing for me. They could have easily dropped that angle altogether. Craig however was still at the appropriate age to play the Bond featured in Fleming's novel, a man who's well experienced on the field but never had his heart broken on it. That's the heart of the story.
The "rookie agent" angle was just a pet project of Wilson, who had been wanting to do that idea as far back as 1986.