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James is not even my top choice at the moment but I could not agree more with this evaluation
TL;DR
You don’t think anyone suggested on these pages is suitable to take on the role?
Not Nicholas Hoult, Theo James or Aidan Turner to name a few?
I've mentioned a few guys that could be suitable, but then I realize I'm the best. You can disregard my opinions tho, you know I'm on a specific mission.
Apologies if I'm messing with the status quo here. Never thought I'd care this much.
I think with Theo James there's going to be an implicit bias because his role in The Gentleman is actually relatively Bondian. So it's easier for most people to imagine him in the role. The way I would put it is he's qualified to play the role in that way, but so was someone like Clive Owen technically in 2005, and we know he wouldn't necessarily have made the best choice. But again, it's tricky to tell at this point.
I'd argue that Roger was not so safe, more like the safest gamble at the time, given the circumstances. Same with Brosnan, who might actually have been a safer choice in 1994 than in 1986.
I remember reading in Some Kind of Hero that UA wasn’t exactly behind the casting of Moore due to the failure of “Crossplot” back in 1969. Needless to say that didn’t really matter in the long run.
I mean, George was "another Connery" in their minds.
Moore was a british TV star.
Dalton and Brosnan looked like brothers and Cubby treated them as if they were interchangeable.
But yeah, to some extent every actor is a risk I’d argue.
@4EverBonded
My feelings are not dissimilar from yours. So far, not that many suggestions I can side with.
And he wasn't really exactly the Bond type, if you look at the book. Someone like Niven probably was closer as he's not dissimilar to Fleming, and Bond basically was a slightly better looking Fleming after all. Connery's much burlier and rougher. And when they were casting Bond to start with they were considering at all sorts: MacGoohan, Niven, Grant, Michael Craig etc. - they didn't have such a fixed idea of how Bond looked.
But Bond kind became fixed as that type thereafter, so we get Lazenby, Dalton and Brosnan, who are all kind of the same guy looks-wise in slightly different shapes. Or even more variations of that particular look if you look at all the Italian spy ripoff films, Milk Tray Man etc. But do those all stem from Fleming's Bond or were they sort of created by Connery's casting in the first place?
Fleming thought Bond looked like golfer Henry Cotton:
And had Edward Underdown in mind to play him:
So I think when we criticise any potential choices for not looking like 'Fleming's Bond' etc. maybe consider what Fleming's Bond was supposed to look like, because it wasn't really Connery to my eye.
Handsome and untalented > Fugly and untalented
But I don't think it will be either. Eon will go younger because they want a minimum of four films.
Unless of course they want to bring back Dalton and d'Abo for a one-film mashup of Quantum of Solace the short story and The Authorised Biography of 007.
To be fair to Fleming he also said at one point he didn’t have much idea of what Bond looked like specifically. But I agree with you - for many readers pre ‘62 the image of James Bond may well have been that much more hawkish, English gentleman type rather than the more rugged Connery. Something we’d see more akin to an old style Sherlock Holmes than a cinematic Bond. Obviously this shift was happening prior with the more rugged John McLusky illustrations too.
Well, Conney was stronger but he wasn't too different from Richard Burton. And Burton was on the table at the time.
I think it was more of a social class issue.
Bond was closer to Philip Marlowe than to Holmes, IMO. They even share a certain sentimentality.
Not to mention thar Fleming wasn't happy with his casting initially.
Yes, I agree. I meant more in terms of the image that people might have had when they thought of Bond.
As for Connery, I think at the time the producers were split on which route they wanted to take with Bond. You have the likes of Trevor Howard being considered (more quintessentially English/gentlemanly, and dare I say more old fashioned) alongside actors like Stanley Baker (who were more rugged). I'm sure there's even a third category for more Trans-Atlantic types (ie. Cary Grant). Eventually the second type won out with Connery. It's a class thing to a point, but I wouldn't say wholly so either.
To be fair from what I've read on these forums it seems Fleming was more sold on Connery than some stories suggest. I think there's a letter floating about where Fleming writes to someone that Connery was athletic and a good actor, but acknowledged that he had a thick Scottish accent. It's also worth noting that Fleming suggested James Stewart for the role at one point, so was seemingly fine with unusual casting choices if it was beneficial.
I think it shows just how malleable Bond can actually be in terms of casting. Even just in the 'tall with black hair' category alone there are dozens of different routes they could go.
Anyway, didn't Fleming want David Niven as Bond? That would have been another seemingly "safe" choice: established actor, a star even, a typical English gentleman, etc. But I think it would have been catastrophic to the franchise, that may not have gone beyond DN.
Who looks a bit different to the David Niven mold Fleming seemingly preferred.
Yeah and that's the thing: we see many potential choices decried as not being like Fleming's Bond enough, but from the wide variety of actors they looked at right at the start it seems pretty clear that there was no set idea of what Fleming's Bond looked like back then before the books- they defined it with Connery, and more often than not looked for actors in his mould to succeed him.
I feel like it's a little disingenuous to say this or that actor isn't close enough to the 007 his creator envisaged: it's often more about whether he looks like the kind of general Bond ideal the films have established. And there's nothing particularly wrong with that if that's how anyone feels: the films are probably more important to the image of Bond than the books ever were.
Oh yeah: I think I remember thinking that when I saw a picture of him too- great point. Yes, I agree: he is about right for book Bond I'd say.
He may not have been too keen initially, but I don’t know how true the ‘balding Scottish lorry driver’ quote is. Didn’t know that story about his wife either (I’ve heard a version where it’s Cubby’s wife who finds Connery good looking so they decide to meet with him. It still plays into what we’ve been talking about as you said). Publicly at least I think Fleming was relatively supportive of Connery.
From what I understand Fleming suggested a few names for Bond early on (I think it was the likes of Richard Burton, James Mason and James Stewart). One of them might have been Niven, although I don’t know if he was his first choice - Niven was, after all, more of a light drama/comedic actor so it would have been an odd choice. And he was in his 50s so was probably too old anyway. Definitely agree, he wouldn’t have been the right choice and without a lead like Connery Bond wouldn’t have taken off as it did.
But yes, many of them were already too old and too "old Hollywood".