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I find it quite hard to disagree with this. I just have to remind myself that there's more to James Bond than class, style and sophistication. Then I remember how awesome Craig is.
So what the other Bonds were not good actors? All the Bonds pre Craig ( Ok Lazenby not so much ) were good actors.Brosnan in particular has proven since he finished playing Bond how great an actor he is.
I dont find Craig to be really any good as an actor to be honest.He was ok in Layer Cake but the part was just a thug which suited him but he was absolutely dreadful in Cowboys and Aliens.
I think Craig is in a different league from Brosnan in terms of acting ability. It's not even close from my perspective.
If Craig wasn't such a good actor, I'd want him gone in a second, because to this day I find him the least satisfactory in the looks dept (personally speaking of course).
With Brosnan, it's a completely opposite opinion: Incredibly handsome man, but not able to project the essence of Bond as well despite all the physical advantages to me, except, ironically, in DAD.
Much prefer Brosnan in his non-Bond roles. Interestingly, I don't really like Craig in his non-Bond roles, except for the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I think he's awesome as Bond.
Totally opposite opinions of the two of them
Brosnan is much better outside of Bond and anyone saying Craig can't act needs to be tied down and made to watch Our Friends In The North and say that.
Pierce fans can carry on watching Death Train or Dante'sPeak and fool themselves into thinking he's playing anything else but Pierce Brosnan, it wasn't till he left Bond that rarely played anything else.
Craig outside of Bond though since starting his era has not given us anything truly great with the obvious exception of his excellent reading of Mikhael Blomvist in David Fincher's Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but as Bond he's been simply magnificence and will no doubt hit out the park as Bond in SPECTRE, this I think will be his best performance yet in the role.
I love you too. ;)
Okay, look, there are some actors you just *like*.
Like Clint Eastwood, or Michael J. Fox, or Sandra Bullock, or Will Smith... I don't care that they bring a lot of themselves to a role because what they bring I like.
I don't take the criticism of Brosnan on boards like this seriously because it's so retrospective. I browsed all the Bond sites/boards when Brosnan was in the role and there was no debate about him being James Bond whereas even now after three films and a gazillion dollars of Sony's money promoting him you'll get people popping up moaning about Craig and saying he looks like Putin etc.
The way members on fansites like this suddenly turned on Brosnan felt to me like a defensive reaction to the fact that Craig was always going to be a somewhat offbeat choice to play James Bond and therefore a desire to prop him up and embrace the here and now.
I supose it seems to be a tradition to dump on the last actor and praise the new one to the rafters. I have a Starburst Living Daylights back issue raving about Timothy Dalton and yet later he was depicted as a failure who had nearly sunk the series.
I daresay that when the next Bond actor arrives boards like this and elsewhere wil be acting like he's Marlon Brando and talking about how that shortarse Derek Deadman lookalike Daniel Craig was horribly overrated and his films so depressing you can't even watch them at Christmas like the old ones. Or something.
:P
;)
However, as I've said before, Brosnan is the only actor I know in the role whose reputation declined precipitously from when he actually took the role. All the others either stayed the same or improved (including Craig).
So I personally think Brosnan was an exception, because a lot of people just lost faith in his interpretation over time. Craig's portrayal only served to reinforce that fact.
While I realize there are fans who blow with the wind, I always felt there was something missing in Brosnan's portrayal (which all the other actors brought) but I can't quite put my finger on it. Craig has that missing factor in spades. I noticed it in his first appearance as Bond, when he offed Dryden. It's an edge maybe. Not sure.
We just need to remember Brosnan's job was to revive and sustain the series ....Craig's era took it to the next level.
Filmmakers weren't ready for Dalton and his acting wasn't either.
Btw with TWINE they tried to push ...weren't ready ....they hit it with the same goal in SF.
I remember that. Goldeneye was the first one I saw in cinemas. It revived the Bond series, and people were so hyped about it. The story was good, Brosnan's acting choices seemed appropriate, so everyone was hopeful. People wanted to like it.
As it was, the powers that be opted for more CGI and a less character-based approach. Already by TND, people started to complain about the lack of depth and gripping story lines, at least as far as I remember. Which is a pity. Look, for instance, at the beginning of DAD: an agent going rogue because he was given up on - a perfect chance for a more character-based story, for Brosnan to shine, but then they blew it. People still went to see it, but the criticism was very much there then. Shame for Brosnan, since he had waited for the opportunity for so long.
Having said that: I'm still fond of Brosnan's portrayal. But Craig is just so much more real. I can see his feelings, his inner struggles in his eyes. When he is desperate, you know it: he smiles uneasily, he fidgets, he sweats, he closes his eyes for longer than normal, his face is much more mobile ... all those little things. We see much less of that in Brosnan's Bond - very likely because it wasn't required, because the screenwriters and directors didn't spend much time exploring the inner struggles of Bond. Whether Brosnan could have portrayed those struggles as convincingly as Craig will, unfortunately, forever remain a mystery, though I tend to think not since he generally seems much more aloof/less all-in when it comes to his acting choices.
I agree @roko.
For me, the key is two scenes in CR (Craig's best performance to date as Bond in my opinion).
The first is when he is looking at Vesper in the shower. His face and eyes told a lot even though he said nothing in that scene.
The second is his reaction to being tortured in the chair by LeChiffre. He should have won an Oscar just for that.
Now compare that to Brosnan in a chair being tortured by Electra in TWINE. He gave us the famous 'pain face', but I did not see much else. Craig's fear was almost palpable in CR in comparison.
Or Brosnan touching a computer screen delicately to show sympathies for Electra's plight in TWINE. Again it did not have the same impact like it did with Craig's reaction to Vesper in CR.
So they tried to give Brosnan some attempts to show depth, but Craig just does it so much better. It could be in the mobility of his face, as you say. I don't know.
One of my favorite Craig scenes for sure. I agree - he should have won a big huge award for that. You can practically taste his fear - the way he grimmaces, that grotesque false "brave front" smile, the way he breathes shakily, his whole body is quivering ...
... whereas the Brosnan scene was about Elektra and her evil scheme more than about what Bond was going through. A pain face did suffice - more wasn't required for the story, so neither the director nor the actor tried for more. I can just imagine how much Craig's torture scene must have taken out of him.
You must remember that Bond fan forums like this were invented while Brosnan was Bond, and people who had lost interest in the franchise due to his films were unlikely to sign up.
When Craig took over, the Brosnan fans did not sign out for good.
I'm a Brosnan defender/supporter but you must be joking.
Also, regardless of acting ability Craig's "insights into the character" have mostly been superior writing in this era than Brosnan's. Broz himself has been on record stating that he really wished he would have gotten more character development in the writing. I think people bash Brosnan a bit too much. He gave it his all.
That's true @ThighsOfXenia, some people have it in for poor Broz.
I personally am not one of them. I know he gave it his all. I'm not questioning his commitment and professionalism. I liked his portrayal in DAD. However, I really don't think he captured Bond well otherwise, and although the writing was abysmal during his time as you say, I look beyond that (Moore had crappy writing too during a lot of his tenure but that has not impacted my view of his acting or portrayal).
For me, it has to do with Broz himself. He was given plenty of opportunity to prove himself in TWINE which was designed to give him depth with all its melodrama (neither Moore nor Connery were given such an opportunity). His performance was one of the worst things in that film imho,...... terribly affected acting in my eyes.
I think of all the 6 actors (including used car salesman/model Lazenby) he captured Bond the least well during his tenure, which was such a disappointment to me, because I had such high hopes for him.
GE is one of my favourite Bond movies because of all the other things around Brosnan, including the charisma blasting out of the screen from all actors concerned, the excellent location work and the tight story.......Brosnan played a strawman Bond in that movie in my mind (more so than Lazenby in his only outing) and so just did not screw it up.
I mentioned a missing x-factor in his portrayal in a previous post imho. To me, Sean Bean, for example, had that x-factor in spades in GE. I noticed it the first time I saw GE, because the contrast was quite telling in my eyes. It's an edge I think. Not sure.
And i dont buy that the writing has been superior in the Craig era so far, Skyfalls script is just so poor and full of plotholes and the film is so pretentious and stupid! QOS is little better.Casino Royale is decent but has some really poor scenes and dialogue ( '' You dont know what i can do with my little finger '', '' Is that a rolex? '' )
"Omeeeeeega" :)
Wait, so, are you telling us you think the Skyfall script is poor and full of plotholes?
Regarding everything else, no one can accuse you of having bland opinions, I guess!
I'll always love Goldeneye as my first Bond film. Also because it's sweet.
Does anyone genuinely think that Bros did a better job as an actor than DC in this area. This, after all, is where actors earn their money: portraying dramatic scenes that are way beyond our or their personal experiences. Its a very one sided contest IMHO
Agreed. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is one of the key scenes that cemented Craig as Bond clearly for me in CR. Magnificent acting in that scene and hands down superior to PB's torture efforts in both TWINE (pain face) and DAD (better work here but still no where up to Craig's work in CR......I was scared for the guy.....and not just because he was strapped to a chair with his privates hanging out, but due to the emotion and fear that he showed in his face).