It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Moore, never quite the finished article as the Bond character, does well in both, a few sporadic moments of (ill advised) humor here and there, put perhaps slightly more serious in Spy.
This comment does not make any sense to me. "Never quite the finished article as the Bond character"? What kind of Bond character? There is no ONE Bond character, as the eight actors who have portrayed the character, proven.
I admit he did look a bit out of proportion in TMWTGG during a scene like with Andrea, or even in LALD when he threatens to kill Rosie Carver. I think he got better at it though, such as the scenes in his future Bond movies where he kicks Locque's car off the cliff or when he kills Grishka in the shack. Those seemed more in place with him than in his early outings.
I agree, i think Moore was probably a bit uncomfortable when doing a scene where he was somewhat cruel to a woman. But i think he was great in the scenes you mention with Locque and Grishka. I've heard that Roger himself wasn't too sure about the Locque scene at first though. but it is one of my favourite Roger moments.
Without a doubt! "You left this with, Ferrara, I believe." KICK!! Brilliant scene, epic stuff.
I touch on some of these points on what might be called Roger Moore's quotient of toughness in my article here:
http://thebondologistblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/kingsley-amis-draxs-gambit-and-reform.html
A quote from the relevant part of the article is here posted below:
"Another reason cited for the reluctance of EON to film Colonel Sun, one of the most authentic of the post-Fleming James Bond continuation novels (perhaps as it was the first and was written in the requisite period of the 1960s with its contemporary Cold War backdrop of the rivalry between the Soviet Union and Red China) was that the remaining producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli was put off by Amis’ publicly stated dislike of the James Bond films of Roger Moore. While Roger Moore captured the suave and sophisticated element of the James Bond character construct of the Eton drop-out of the original Ian Fleming novels, he played the character much more lightly than the likes of Sean Connery, Timothy Dalton or Daniel Craig. However, there were some elements of toughness that the lighter-touch James Bond actor Roger Moore brought to the role in his record-breaking seven James Bond films such as his fisticuffs with Saida’s minders, beating up of Scaramanga’s girlfriend, Miss Andrea Anders both of which featured in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), knocking the muscle-bound henchman Sandor off a roof in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and kicking a car containing Emile Leopold Locque off a cliff-edge to his death in For Your Eyes Only (1981). While the first two of these incidents were just plain nasty, and not having any precedent in the works of Ian Fleming, the killing of Locque is reminiscent of the Bond of the novel Live and Let Die (1954) kicking Mr Big’s henchman The Robber into a shark pit as revenge for the shark-mauling of his friend Felix Leiter. Locque’s brutal end was revenge on the part of Moore-Bond for the murder of his Italian ally Luigi Ferrara by Locque, hence this toughening up of Bond was justified. This dislike of the Bond films of the 1970s and the wrong direction that Amis felt that they were going in (away from their earlier fidelity to the works of Ian Fleming) is evidenced in his book reviews of James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and For Special Services, the relevant extracts of which are quoted above. Evidently, this antagonism to the film version of James Bond must have alienated Cubby Broccoli and his production team. And so it came to pass that when Eon Productions ran out of original Fleming material there was always the James Bond character from which they had the rights to make new film adventures from – they did not have to resort to the sole continuation novel of Amis, or latterly those of Gardner or Benson."
Yes, it's Moore's toughest, most Flemingesque portrayal of Bond, apart from FYEO, but he was a lot older then. Such a pity it is wasted in this film. Christopher Lee is great in it too, of course.
I think given his boyish good looks and his light hearted approach and the tongue in cheek direction the films were taking since DAF it was wise to lighten him up for the third film, TSWLM and that was when Moore finally hit his stride.
I'm confused @doubleoego. Who's GE? Or am I missing something significant here?
TMWTGG is a terrible movie with great performances.
Indeed. That's what saves it from the bottom along with the likes of DAD, DAF and YOLT!
Perhaps a bit of both. His brilliant performance in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) is nothing short of remarkable. Roger Moore is a very good actor who doesn't get enough praise at all.
It was all down the how not-as-well On Her Majesty's Secret Service did. The lighter tone that started with Diamonds Are Forever was continued on as it worked and poor Moore was caught up in it all. He deserved better.
This is a very good point but as much as I love Moore's Bond I'm not sure it's entirely fair to say that he was caught up in it all. He didn't write the scripts but he was certainly ready and willing to ad lib some humorous line or another at any given moment. He was naturally funny and audiences (for the most part) approved. You have to imagine that this lead to the script writers adding even more humorous elements than they would have if someone not so comically gifted was in the role.
I once started a thread wondering about what would have happened had Roger Moore done OHMSS. I think it would have drastically changed his tenure as Bond.
Moore was perfectly tough in his own, subtle way in those LALD scenes in Rosie Carver. It was his style to project toughness with subtlety.
TMWTGG was a problem, because Moore was acting like Connery 2.0.
And an actor can be both tough and/or tongue-in-cheek as well. I do get tired of fans who insist that an actor portray a certain character ONE WAY. I find that kind of thinking rather narrow-minded and ridiculously macho, if I must be honest.
I think that during his long tenure Roger Moore brought more shades to the James Bond character than any other actor who portrayed him. This was no mean feat. Partly it had to do with his range as an actor,. partly the changes in directors, scriptwriters and the era and partly it came down to his unrivalled longevity in the role. It's this diverse range of James Bonds that he plays that may well make him the best James Bond. Most of the other actors merely played the one James Bond - although Sean Connery also played Bond differently in YOLT, DAF and NSNA than he did in his earlier Bond films.
Indeed he does. That was what I was kind of getting at above there, though you stated it more elegantly. Roger Moore remains the most underrated of the James Bond actors. He was a much more diverse and better actor than he was often given credit for at the time and since.
Does it have something to do with his ageing too? I think both Connery and Moore got softer with age. I wonder if there is a reason.
Well, they both played Bond beyond the age that they should have probably. Although I am grateful that they did!
I wonder if when one gets older he would need to be softer to appear seductive. Maybe that's the reason?