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Then we come to Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore. They seem to get the most bashing but a lot of that, I'm sure, comes with the changing styles of the time. I also feel that when Rog gets criticised, it is usually done with a certain amount of affection, as if even the most rabidly anti-Moore poster cannot really be mad at Rog personally, and certainly not for long. He is the fluffy puppy with the big eyes of the Bond franchise. Poor Pierce though. Moore and Brosnan fans probably have more in common than most combinations on here. The lighter, escapist, touch is not in vogue at the moment.
But what a light touch Roger Moore had! I think I'll get snug in here, light up a rather large cigar (a la Live and Let Die), meditatively swirl a glass of bourbon, while contemplating the glories of a reversible safari suit. The Roger Moore Appreciation Thread should be, in my humble opinion, a tongue-in-cheek, utterly cultivated, celebration of the the most elegant Bond of them all. As one perceptive journalist pointed out: Moore was so smooth his eyebrows could have slipped off his face.
We've all heard the criticisms of the Moore era on numerous other threads, but there are certainly Moore fans out there. For some, Roger Moore as Bond is a secret pleasure. As Ian Fleming (and his most famous creation) recognised and practised, it is healthy to indulge in pleasure, every now and then.
So what is Sir Rog up to at the moment? He has just finished filming a cameo for the new version of The Saint (*halo appears above head to THAT tune*) which he is co-producing with his son Geoffrey. Let's hope it is a little glitzier, and has a bigger budget, than Rog's original version in the 1960s. Moore explained recently in an interview in the Daily Telegraph (Feb 2) that:
"“In the first series, I recall standing in freezing rain on the back lot at Elstree Studios. They set up a rubber palm tree that was bending in the rain and put a little sign up on the screen that said, 'Bahamas’. Another time it said, 'Paris’ – except we were filming in Borehamwood High Street and there were red buses trundling past!”
Long live Sir Rog!
He's not a secret pleasure to me at all, he's without question my favourite Bond. You sum up a lot of what is great about him above. For me, there are a couple of reasons he's not so highly regarded. Firstly, he's no 'Fleming' Bond, there are dashes here and there, but all in all, he's his own creation and he's certainly not a slave to the literature.
A lot of people find this hard to deal with. Personally, I'm happy to jettison Fleming and roll with Roger, because what he provides is pure, unadultered enjoyment. This is not to suggest I don't like Fleming, I read the books every year without fail. I just don't need to justify or validate my enjoyment of a Bond film by citing it's connection to the big man. Times change, incarnations come and go.
I think a lot of fans have an unequivocal vision of Bond in there head. I don't particularly. I can enjoy Roger on the same level as Daniel, despite the fact they are worlds apart. It's just about getting your head in a different space. I don't put on a Roger film to watch him suffer, and I don't put on a Daniel film to be whisked away on an outlandish adventure. I'm happy to indulge in the many incarnations, of which I find Roger the most fun, the most watchable, and the most downright cool. He effortlessly breezes through his movies in an almost untouchable fashion. Yes it's ridiculous, yes it can be kitsch, and yes you have to suspend your disbelief. But hell, it's just so much goddman fun, and not a sullen, pouting face in sight!
Having watched every film again recently, I genuinley believe that the Rog films are the most re-watchable.
Brosnan seems to be getting bashed a lot these days, to me it seems that Rog has that certain something that even the most ridiculous moments he can get away with, yet not Brosnan, perhaps the word I'm looking for is "Rogness".
'Rogness': the art of 'getting away with it.'
'Getting away with it' it should be said, with a great deal of panache.
I feel for those poor closeted Moore fans. They should be tempted out of the darkness and into the broad sunlit uplands of Moore Appreciation.
In all seriousness, his films certainly are very re-watchable, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of fun escapism every now and then.
The world would be happier place if everyone just admitted that Rog belongs atop the pedastal of Bonds.
A man killed with a quip is equally as dead as a man killed with a snarl.
Sir Rog holds a place of great affection in the hearts of many Bond fans, who appreciate what he has done, and what he continues to do, for the series.
Now, he has to show that new Simon Templar how it's done...
If I do a quick run down of my overall enjoyment of Moore's seven Bond films -
LALD - 9.5 / 10
TMWTGG - 8.5 / 10
TSWLM - 7 / 10
MR - 8.5 / 10
FYEO 7 / 10
OP - 7 / 10
AVTAK 2 / 10
You can see there that Moore for the most part, while a mixed bag - put together some fun releases that offered a bit of everything. He came in at the right time I feel with an outstanding debut and overall movie release, but sadly stayed on longer than was necessary. Damn pity in retrospect, in that he embarrassed himself a bit towards the end there
I read that Cubby wanted Rog for AVTAK because he didn't want it to appear that Sean's comeback in NSNA, two years earlier, forced him (Cubby) to run off Rog from the franchise. I don't think it's a coincidence that "insiders" speculated during the filming of AVTAK that this was Rog's swan song. That's why the crew and cast gave him a long standing ovation at the end of his final scene in AVTAK. I've always been under the impression that Rog was ready to voluntarily turn in his license after FYEO. I think if Rog had known how unbearable Grace Jones would have been to work with, he would have told Cubby "no way" would he do a 7th Bond.
I agree with many, above, who say that Roger Moore's ...Bond.... was a "good time" Bond. As I've said before, Rog's ...Bond....was a loveable rogue.
I always got the sense that Cubby & Co. weren't done with Blofeld at the end of DAF, but McClory's lawyers must have gotten in the way immediately after that. Thus, the brief confrontation with "Bald Guy" in the FYEO PTS was just a means of bringing closure to the matters of Tracy and Blofeld. Also, the acknowledgement of Tracy and her tragic death in the Moore films was the first step in the rehabilitation of OHMSS, a film that for a while was largely forgotten or ignored.
Yeah, what happened is that, with Dalton's Back-to-Fleming experiment deemed a failure, MGM and EON spent the next several years trying to recapture the magic of Moore's heyday. As it turned out, however, the spell just didn't quite work right without the secret ingredient. Rogness, indeed.
The bland repetition that was Bond in the '90s may well be what '70s Bond would have been like with someone else (say, Michael Billington) in the role.
Well Roger almost made his debut as Bond for OHMSS but since he was doing The Saint at the time he couldnt.
So ive heard....
:-&
http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/71/something-of-a-must-with-me-ohmss-appreciation/p1
Plenty of Lazenby love can be found in the link posted above.
But sure, let's get back on topic.
As many here know, Roger Moore was seriously considered for Dr. No, and Fleming himself apparently endorsed the idea, but Rog was unavailable due to his commitment to The Saint.
I, for one think Rog could have pulled it off. He was a better actor than he is often given credit for. Granted, he created a characterization with which he was extremely comfortable when he played Simon Templar, and continued that characterization through his Bond films and many of his other later works. Nevertheless, in the early '60s, when he was a young and hungry actor, he could have delivered some terrific performances in the first few Bond films.
The question is, could the Bond franchise have survived if Roger Moore had held the role from 1962 until 1985? And what would have become of Sean Connery?
We'll never know how Moore would have approached the role in the 1960s. If he had taken up the holster in 1962 instead of starring in The Saint, then it's fascinating to speculate on which direction he would have taken the character, and the angle the creative team would have leaned, without the bright glow of Simon Templar's halo fixed above their leading man's head in the public consciousness.
I finally saw The Man Who Haunted Himself in its entirety for the first time last week and I was tremendously impressed at the way that Moore portrayed a tormented man crumbling in front of our eyes. The malevolent streak of villainy he also showed made me appreciate that somewhere, beneath that 'good guy' exterior, was one heck of a villain just waiting to come out. It's a shame he wasn't given more roles in that vein. That being said, his performances as James Bond were no where near as 'effortless' as he made them look.
As his friend Sir Michael Caine said: 'If he makes it look easy; it's not I can assure you.'
I admit that a few of his movies were not that well written or produced (TMWTGG and Moonraker especially), but Roger being the class act he is, holds it all together. His best movie of the series, The Spy Who Loved Me, happens to be my favourite of all the Bond films too. :D