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I will definitely not be coming to your defense anymore if this is your idea of an excuse for all of Brosnan's glaring inadequacies. Which are part and parcel of why he was fired.
Perhaps a mod trying to make me look bad? ;))
Oh well what do you expect with the Big Brother NSA InterDragonpol breathing down your neck. Now as to my opinion of Brosnan? As I said before in my (now deleted) post I am a big fan. If you put Moore in a blender - add three parts vanilla one part sweet-ass strawberry a sprinkle of dark chocolate and VOILA so smooth!! A big fan.
Big gun too. :))
I've already stated that I'm NOT a mod nor have I any desire to be. Please drop this pretence. I don't feel I deserve this. PM me if you have a problem with me and we can discuss it civilly there.
I think it's harsh to insinuate Brosnan was fired based on a string of inadequacies.
The producers wanted to take a significant change of direction. The only feasible way to achieve this, and guarantee the audience were to buy in to it, was to recast the lead. It wasn't ever going to be plausible to take a marked deviation with Pierce returning to the role. I've seen many sound bites from Babs talking openly about how her view of Brosnan and his ability to bring a humanity and vulnerability to the role. Whether one would disagree with this is of course up for discussion, but I don't think Barbara ever doubted Pierce.
I blame Tamahori for ending the Brosnan tenure, even more so than P+W. I always assumed their original script, featuring Gala Brand would have been somewhat more character heavy, reduced to the lightweight Frost role once Tamahori boarded. I also blame Tamahori for persisting with a cartoonish visual style, an over-reliance on CGI and green-lighting some seriously dreadful set work (the airfield inserts with the 2D physical ice-bergs are appalling). All this combined to deliver a film which, rather than being timeless, looks like what it is - an early 2000's actioner.
This isn't to say Brosnan is immune to criticism, I just feel, while he could have done more to help himself, he certainly did nothing to warrant a firing. He was let go to facilitate a creative change, not because he was shit.
You do realise that Brosnan wasnt "fired" he had a 3 Movie Contract with the option of a Fourth Film (Die Another Day) and fufilled his contract
In fact he had a 5th Bond albiet as Everything or Nothing (true it was a video game but with its casting and visuals it feels like a bond movie) and its a better send off than Die Another Day
Brosnan holds a unique distinction in the series in that he was the only of the 6 actors who did not walk away from the role on their terms (Connery, Lazenby, Dalton) or mutually and amicably agree (Moore) it was time to move on. Not being asked back to your job can also be seen as a form of termination. That's how I would view that circumstance as well.
As for his glaring inadequacies, I'm just going to keep repeating myself and I have better things to do at this time. There were people like me who saw them and felt this way after TWINE, and that number grew after DAD to include his employers at EON, and now people are looking back and seeing the same things in hindsight. And the Brosnan fans out there don't like that and have a seemingly endless supply of myriad excuses such as this "backlash theory". Brosnan never had to face what Craig did before he even started filming, so it seems to me that at least some of his more fervent fans took his dismissal for exactly what it was. Obviously it's quite the bitter pill to swallow.
While I'm no Brosnan stalwart, I just don't think this is verifiable. It's fine for people to knock seven shades out of Brozzer, but I think you at least have to face facts and accept that while it would be wonderful, for some, to cement his supposed 'firing' in the annals of Bond history, the reality just doesn't really tally. The following is what Babs had to say regards DAD - CR
In terms of DIE ANOTHER DAY we’d become too fantastical.The invisible car. It’s kind of crazy, because the invisible car was based on some military technology about camouflaging military vehicles out in operations, and it kind of went from being something that was semi-practical, to being too fantastical. Our approach to it was misguided. So we felt... It wasn’t that we were unhappy with Pierce Brosnan, it was that we felt we had to take a change of direction in terms of the Bond character and the series, and we had to go back to reality, because we’re living now in a post-9/11 world. Frivolity didn’t seem appropriate. So around that time, or a year or two before, as a result of the settlement between all the legal wrangling, we’d gotten the rights to Casino Royale, which had been the Holy Grail of the Bond books. And the book that Cubby [Broccoli] and Harry [Saltzman] had wanted to make, but Fleming had sold the rights to TV and then to Columbia, who’d made a spoof out of it. So, the two events collided. One was a decision to take a change in direction, and the other was that we had the rights to Casino Royale. So Michael [G. Wilson] and I felt it right and appropriate to tell that story. And in order to tell that story, we needed to recast the role, because we had defined a Bond who... The whole point of that story is that it’s Bond becoming James Bond. So it’s the man who is basically a blunt instrument, who, through a sort of rite of passage transforms into the James Bond that we all know now, so we had to recast the role. And it was extremely difficult to say that to Pierce. Because A, he was incredibly successful, and the public loved him, and B, we loved him. We’re very close to him and his whole family, so it was a very tough decision. But we felt we had to do it for the longevity of the series. And he understood that. He took it like a gentleman, and we remain very close.
Yes I know, Pierce was pissed because he'd wanted to make CR and understandably felt aggrieved. All I'm suggesting is that we don't go too far in our bending of the truth to justify the apparent failings of Brozzer. A combination of factors all contributed to the transition period between DAD & CR, my point being that Brosnan being 'inadequate' was certainly not a motivating factor IMO. From the POV of some fans, yes, but I don't think that is the general reality of the situation. As the saying goes, sometimes 'Shit happens'.
Playboy: Do we detect some bitterness?
Contains swearing.
Or this when asked about the films:
All the movies made money. Creatively, maybe, they could have been stronger, but they were Bond movies, and they advanced a certain degree out of the dolddrums where they had been. They were tricky to do. I never really felt as as though I nailed it. As soon as they put me into a suit and tie and gave me those lines of dialogue, I felt restricted. It was like the same old same old. I was doing Roger Moore doing Sean Connery doing George Lazenby. I felt as if I were doing a period piece dusted off. They never really took the risks they should have. It would have been great to light up and smoke cigarettes, for instance. It would have been great to have the killing a little more real and not wussed down. My boys watch the movies on DVD, so I see them from time to time. I see myself with nowhere to go, and it’s all rather bland.
Or this when asked about The Matador. He changes the topic back to Bond:
Contains swearing.
You can't say he's wrong. This is basically how I've described Brosnan's tenure on several occasions. Where he hates it from a creative standpoint, I take it for what it is and rather enjoy it. Regards him feeling restricted, I can sympathise and believe he'd have played it entirely different in other circumstances. Others on here believe he just wasn't up to it, period. Each to their own.
I also think that his comment about not "nailing it" has been fairly used in criticisms of his overall performance. If he didn't think so, I think it's fair for people to agree with him that he didn't.
If you've ever read Roger's autobiography he was most upset by the comments made by Cubby regarding his contract negotiations. Not always as clear cut as it seems when someone gives an interview to the press. There's often other things going on between the scenes that we're not aware of. I always thought the relationship between Cubby and Roger was sound.
Oh, I have it and was almost expecting this to come up. It appeared to me that he blamed the belief that he was not asked to return on Cubby's autobiographer as erroneous information. Sir Rog always seemed to me to be an extremely honest man and not a bad sport when things didn't go his way, which is the antithesis of what Pierce appeared exactly to be in that Playboy interview, so I would tend to believe his version of events. What gives his words further creedence is the fact that he also felt that Octopussy was going to be his finale as Bond, and was not expecting for Cubby to ask him to return for AVTAK. At that point, and I am recapping this for those who haven't read it, he and Cubby discussed him returning for TLD (and there is an deleted scene with Dalton that was something right up his kind of comedic alley and gives further weight to his story), but mutually agreed after AVTAK that a new Bond was needed. Contract negotiations, Sir Rog always left that to his agent and tried not to let those disturb his friendship with Cubby.
We'll never know, of course, if Sir Rog was diplomatically stretching the truth to defuse that gossip, or if Donald Zec or his publisher purposely wrote it to help sell more copies of the book. It's called "When The Snow Falls" and one that's on my list to read one day.
All the aforementioned actors including Moore never came off as desperate regarding the role of 007 but with Brosnan, it seems to me that, he was more interested in coveting the role than anything else. It's all well and good talking tough in a titty magazine (which I find somewhat ironic) but if Brosnan was that popular with a global audience, his films being such successes and EoN still feeling somewhat stirred and shaken from the 6 year hiatus, I feel Brosnan could have manned up and at least threatened to walk if he didn't get the creative changes he wanted.
Imo, most of Brosnan's playboy interview is him inadvertedly calling himself out with his own insecurities and masking it with a tough attitude that just comes off as juvenile ranting. I still find him to mostly be a fun Bond to watch but I'm not buying into what he's selling. He had the opportunity for potentially better movies but again, he was too desperate and enamoured with coveting the role above everything else.
I still don't think he's watched TLD after all these years, which prior to '94 I could totally understand given the circumstances to which he missed out on the part at the first time of asking. But since he became Bond, why he's never sat down to watch the film I don't know. He does seem to let ego get in his way quite often.
The Playboy interview makes him a big crybaby in my eyes, juvenile ranting as you've said. After re-reading it, I'm convinced that all his fanboys are in even more denial of his faults than he is. I feel insulted when he says "f**k off" to those who have called him a pretty boy and a wuss. The latter I would not dare to say he was in real life, I don't know the man. But for such a perfect amalgamation of the traits his predecessors brought, here's what I see- I don't see it. He lacks the cold icy stare of a professional assassin and provocateur. I rarely believed he was capable of what Connery and Dalton could do on a consistent basis, convince me he was the stone killer that Fleming saw him as. We get more of the "reluctant" quality from Brosnan. But that's OK, Sir Roger's approach was very similar. Neither were "dangerous" Bonds, although I might be convinced with a little persuasion that those who think he is aren't familiar with the term in a Bondian context. Now we get to the pretty boy side of things. Watch GoldenEye where after a grueling fight with Trevalyan that sees Bean bleeding and bruised, there's hardly a trace of blood nor bruising on Brosnan and somehow, he still looks GQ perfect. Hardly a hair out of place. If any of you have ever been in a knock down, drag out fight you will know that this isn't realistic and acceptable for a Bond film, and borders on cartoonish. Now there's the charm (I swore I wouldn't repeat myself but what the hell). Yes he's fun and charming to a certain degree, but compared to Sir Roger's inimitable brand of that, he lacks there too. So, is Brosnan truly the perfect amalgamation of his predecessors? Well, certainly those who feel he is all that and a big bag of potato chips can think so, they are entitled to their opinion. For the kind of Bond I want to see, he is serviceable and I always credit him for what I feel he truly deserves credit for without fail, but he is FAR from the perfect amalgamation and I'm not so sure his portrayal of a sensitive and emotional kind of Bond doesn't lend to the "wuss" theory. Wiping computer tears and looking dopey in love doesn't help him. He could have never done the Vesper death scene half as well as Craig did it, bringing such a range of emotions in such a brief time. It's not in his skill set and frankly, not many others could have left some men and many women weeping in their theater seats as Craig did. Opportunities to do just that with Paris and Elektra didn't happen.
Now I'll wait for the fanboys to tell me to "fook off" or defend the indefensible. Like him all you want. But don't expect me to be less than amused at your theories. Again @doubleoego, a fantastic post!
This is a really good analysis. I think it was the main problem with Brosnan: he never nailed the role of Bond because he always took it more as an icon than a character. He wanted to play this alpha male icon, he had it, then did not know what to do with it, the only thing he wanted was to keep it. In the Playboy interview, he does come off as a sore loser.
I think it's more down to the fact that it was the 90s.
Yeah, that nails it!
For the lack of menace they had the non shaven look in GE.
Dalton did not use a machine gun as far as I remember and he was in the 80s.