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For the past three weeks everyone at Following the Nerd has watched each Star Wars film in their own home (every Wednesday) while commenting on Facebook/Skype/Twitter at the same time. I plan to introduce James Bond into the mix in coming months but I'd much prefer a Roger Moore Bond marathon at the local cinema. From LALD to AVTAK...14 hours of Nerd heaven!
But the fan crossover with the geek universe and comic book crowd is appreciated. Bond does have a broad appeal.
The most brazen attempt to bring Bond into the geek domain I thought was by Joss Whedon ( the ultimate geek) when he wrote some really dorky Bond dialogue into one of the Buffy episodes. He had the three parent's-basement trekker dorks, arguing over who was the best Bond. Very out of place, I thought.
I still find Sean Connery as 007 the best, perhaps because his tales stay rather close to Flemings tales. WHich I find a big bonus. And yes I love the one off with Lazenby a lot too. And Roger Moore was simply brilliant.
Craig still has to convince me with only 3/4 of a decent 007 movie behind his name imho.
It is my opinion Had Brosnan taken over from Roger instead of making one more year of Remington Steele I doubt if Dalton had ever entered the scene as 007. As it is we got both which looking backward gave us different styles of 007.
My only regret is that Brosnan never played the Saint a part he would have been bloody brilliant at, imho.
I quite liked Return Of The Saint, though.
I also don't think Property of a Lady was ever in line to be a Dalton Bond film. Octopussy the film, already incorporated key elements from the story. If you trace the development of the Bond series from FYEO on, Eon has been very consistent about slowly but surely working in each of the Fleming short story titles without doubling up any of them, until they finally found a way to work in the last remaining unused title which was QoS. I think with QoS, they just thought, heck lets make a movie out of it. We can get away with the title by trumpeting its Fleming origins which was suddenly a great idea, following the long awaited release of Fleming's Casino Royale, not-conicidentally, the only other Fleming title that Eon hadn't managed to make use of in some way, but now with CR filmed and made, suddenly there was an opportunity to achieve closure with the Fleming titles and the bold move was made to name the new film QoS. They could have called B22 anything. It certainly wasn't screaming call me QoS. No, Eon thought, let's get this final title done, so they contrived to name the mysertious "Organization" Quantum.
For this reason I don't think we are going to ever see films called Risico or the Hildbrand Rarity or Property of a Lady, simply because I don't believe Eon considers these titles to have not been used. Eon took pains to work elements of these stories into other movies,namely FYEO (Risico) OP( POAL) and LTK (THR). The two titles they seemed to give up on were CR and AQoS. CR for legal reasons and AQoS because they hadn't found a way yet.
The Fleming stories that weren't actually used as movie titles could conceivably still be made as film titles. Anything is possible but the reason won't be because they are "unused." I believe Eon made a statement with QoS. i.e. We did it. We've finally got all the Fleming stories into the films.
They really should hold auditions and not sign on "look" as they did with the Saint and Remington Steele.
Now, Connery's greatness does not make other Bond actors necessarily bad Bonds. Often people misjudge George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton because they starred in so few Bond films without realising that they were actually giving excellent performances as well as staying close to Ian Fleming which is a great plus. They will always remain the unfairly underrated pair of the Bond series.
Roger Moore on the other hand gets a hard time by some people because he got a little too old near the time of OP and AVTAK. Still, when looking objectively at his performances he probably has the most "English" way of behaviour and his incredible charm is what keeps those films enjoyable (albeit on another level). Let's also not forget that Moore had a few moments in which he did prove that he could have been tougher.
Pierce Brosnan's films are often critisezed for being too generic. With the exception of GE that is partly true. However, for me his performances were one of the few better aspects in these movies. I believe that Brosnan would have been better if they had continued in the fashion of GE instead of giving him bad lines and too many machine guns. I would put his GE peformance in my top 5.
While Daniel Craig gives nice performances so far, people tend to forget this sort of Bond has been done before. Dalton introduced the purist sort of James Bond as he was created by Fleming (although Connery, Lazenby and Moore had also moments of sheer "Flemingness") but audiences weren't ready for it. Spectacular hand-to-hand combat was already present in Lazenby's one-time shot at the role. Nonetheless Craig is a very good actor and the right choice for Bond.
So in the end, there were never bad Bond actors so far. Some may appeal to certain people while others won't. But if you look at it, there has never been a Bond film with a bad lead or so-so performance by the main actor. They were all good in their own way.
(My personal top 5 peformances would be:
Connery in FRWL and TB, Lazenby in OHMSS, Dalton in TLD and Brosnan in GE.)
The fact remains, Brosnans Bond proved to be more popular, and ultimately, more successful. I am glad we got Dalton for two Bonds though!
As for Craig. I think it's closer. But he only has made 2 films as of yet.