How Pierce Brosnan pushed James Bond forward—and paved the way for Daniel Craig
Brosnan may not have been as brutish or soulful, but his version of 007 seeded some much-needed doubt
Image: Graphic: Karl Gustafson Film Features James Bond
Whatever one thinks of the now-concluding Daniel Craig era of James Bond, it obviously represented a major change in direction from the Pierce Brosnan years, which carried the franchise from its 1995 reboot into the early 2000s.
While Craig’s Bond took a more serious, realistic, and serialized approach to the unkillable spy, Brosnan’s Bond was more … say, what was Brosnan’s deal as Bond, anyway?
He wasn’t a devastatingly handsome brute, like Sean Connery, or a “blunt instrument” like Craig (though he’s briefly described that way in Die Another Day!). He also wasn’t exactly a Roger Moore-style avuncular swinger-quipster. He was better-received in his time than his predecessor Timothy Dalton, yet both Dalton and one-time Bond George Lazenby have since garnered some appreciation for movies that attempted to alter the Bond formula.
Brosnan, the ultimate in-betweener, is seemingly considered almost nobody’s favorite. He’s the compromise Bond who ushered the franchise through a changing blockbuster landscape, then was abruptly dropped before he could really fulfill his vision for the character. (This despite each of his movies making more money than the last.)
Yet in retrospect, Brosnan’s era of Bonds holds up better than its reputation circa Craig’s takeover would suggest, through a combination of its own ’90s-isms and anticipation of what Craig and company would later do with the series.
First, there’s no discounting Brosnan himself, an actor both perfectly cast in the part and quietly skeptical of it. It’s not that he appears disengaged or stranded by the silly material. He’s as capable as anyone at reciting the classics with élan, especially his regular issuances of “Bond. James Bond.” But his take on the famous spy has a workaday vibe that suggests some discontent beneath the debonair exterior.
The Craig series foregrounds Bond’s screwed-up psyche; when it’s not providing an origin story in Casino Royale, it’s elaborating on that origin and/or filling in more backstory in subsequent films. Brosnan’s Bond doesn’t carry the same grim anguish or reluctance—he retires far less often than Craig, and he’s more playful than the serious-minded Dalton.
But Brosnan still has a louche quality; when he turns up in a scraggly beard and long hair in Die Another Day, it just feels right, as does the occasional intimation that his womanizing is more weakness and pathology than fantasy.
Some of this is easier to read in retrospect; taking the James Bond role can re-orient an actor’s career, and this is especially true for Brosnan. He was seen as so well-suited to the role that he was poised to take the part a decade earlier, before it ultimately went to Timothy Dalton—and like Dalton and Moore before him, Brosnan saw the biggest hits of his career as Bond.
His subsequent roles sometimes seemed to be interrogating his rightness for Bond, as well as the character’s place in popular culture: The Tailor Of Panama and The Matador in particular depend on Bond for their effectiveness. That self-satirizing/self-loathing take on the character may not be a part of Brosnan’s actual Bond movies, but it doesn’t come from nowhere, either.
Despite his lightweight reputation, Brosnan doesn’t smile nearly as much as Moore, delivering his laugh lines with dad-joke deadpan. In his later entries in particular, he seems to be steering Bond in a less ridiculous direction.
The movies didn’t always oblige their leading man. It’s been pointed out repeatedly, for example, that Brosnan’s swan song, Die Another Day, features Bond surfing, fencing with Madonna, and driving an invisible car around an ice castle. Despite these outlandish trappings, there are sustained passages in the ’90s-era Bonds that share some common ground with the Craig series, most likely because they share plenty of personnel.
Despite the hard reboot that Casino Royale was supposed to represent, that film rehired Martin Campbell, director of the previous Bond reset, GoldenEye; several of the Craig Bonds maintain Judi Dench as M, casting from the Brosnan era so irresistible that, like J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, it was deemed foolhardy to make an immediate substitution; and all five Craig Bonds are at least co-written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who worked on Brosnan’s last two outings.
It’s that last rehiring that seems to have generated the strongest connections between the Brosnan and Craig eras. Purvis and Wade’s very first credited Bond film, The World Is Not Enough, makes a conscious effort to give 007 a bit more human frailty, both professionally and physically.
In the extended opening sequence, MI6 suffers an attack from the inside, and after a long, destructive chase scene, Bond loses his mark, who blows herself up rather than submitting to capture or cooperation, and sustains a serious injury as he just barely escapes. The movie throws to the usual theme-song credit sequence with him hanging helplessly off the side of a building, and when it rejoins Bond, his arm is in a sling. As George Lazenby would say: “This never happened to the other fellow.”
The movie still Roger Moores its way out of Bond’s predicament—Bond seduces the MI6 doctor into clearing him for active duty, and he’s only mildly hobbled by his shoulder injury.
The Brosnan series takes another crack at bringing the splashy opening action sequences back down to earth in Die Another Day. Once again, the spectacular opening chase ends with Bond far from triumphant, this time captured by North Korea; in a major break from tradition, the ensuing credits sequence is part of the narrative, portraying the 14 months of torture that Bond endures at the hands of his enemies. Bond doesn’t even escape; he’s traded back to MI6, where his double-0 status is promptly revoked, forcing him go rogue.
The idea of a breakable, fallible Bond is tantalizing enough that Skyfall essentially hybridizes the openings of World and Die: Once again, Bond is injured and left for dead before the credits role, then later fudges the paperwork allowing him to return to the field.
The casual-Bond sneakiness of his disavowal and rogue spying in Die Another Day is mirrored by a majority of the Craig films, including the new and similarly titled No Time to Die.
GoldenEye even has a dry run of sorts for Silva, the Skyfall villain played by Javier Bardem.The earlier movie pits Bond against Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), a former Agent 006 who, like former agent Silva, feels betrayed by his former employer—and even shares Silva’s facial scarring to literalize his pain, albeit in a less memorably grotesque fashion.
Skyfall-style revenge against M also figures into The World Is Not Enough. Repetition and recurrence is part of Bond’s whole formulaic deal (why else would Brosnan engage in the series’ umpteenth ski-action sequence in World?)—but the Brosnan series deserves credit for introducing elements, decades into Bond’s on-screen history, that were promising enough to repurpose for more stylish, more critically acclaimed movies later on.
Though Purvis and Wade seem to have worked the hardest to give Brosnan the more distinctive and grounded version of Bond he often spoke in the press about wanting, his first two movies hint at some greater depths, too.
In GoldenEye, some of this is plainly “lip service,” as Bond says during one of his obligatory double-entendres: Having M call him a “misogynist dinosaur” and Moneypenny making reference to sexual harassment don’t actually affect the character much; they could just as easily be rewritten to say “it’s the ’90s, now, baby!” (Though, on the other hand, they’re not exactly outdated 25 years later, as far as winking self-criticisms go.)
Some other dialogue and plot points, though, feel like teasers for what’s to come, both in this series and the next one. “How can you act like this? How can you act so cold?” asks “good” Bond girl Natalya Simonova. “It’s what keeps me alive,” Bond answers, though Natalya has a retort: “No, it’s what keeps you alone.”
Evil 006 asks Bond whether he can “find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women, for all the dead ones you failed to protect.” Again, the movie doesn’t exactly follow up on that idea, but Bond’s brief relationships do produce more anxiety in subsequent installments.
In Tomorrow Never Dies, he’s provoked into a chilly rage by the death of the “bad” Bond girl, who is treated as a genuine ex-girlfriend, rather than a former conquest. He appears similarly unsettled by the betrayal of Elektra (Sophie Marceau) and her loyalty to her former kidnapper. Bond has shown pitiless anger toward this kind of behavior before, but he rarely seems so intoxicated—and so personally insulted by his own misreading.
Throughout these developments in the four Brosnan movies, the standard flirtations, dalliances, and beddings continue. While this (and other assorted Bond backsliding into over-the-top spectacle) might seem like evidence of this cycle’s muddled quality, in context of the broader series it makes more sense.
If the Craig movies (which, to be clear, are generally quite good, with several all-time highlights) spend a lot of time openly mulling over whether there’s a place for James Bond in today’s modern world, the Brosnan movies portray a superspy who doesn’t hesitate to complete his crowdpleasing mission, while still betraying little glimmers of uncertainty about his lifestyle.
Craig’s Bond takes this further by going rogue and/or retiring frequently, and at his own discretion. The Brosnan 007 maintains a sense of duty to everything from his country to his pun delivery. When he’s forsaken by MI6, he ultimately wants back in.
His four movies want back in, too. They want to deliver old-fashioned James Bond-brand spectacle even in the face of nagging doubts about the formula’s, and its hero’s, viability.
Today, even a self-doubting Bond is supposed to come with the confidence that a whole universe of Bond lore is exactly what audiences want and need. If Brosnan seemed too easy a choice to make for truly inspired casting, maybe that was his strength: His ability to seed doubts in plain sight, without a lot of self-serious fuss, as blockbusters unironically exploded around him.
319 Comments
The World Is Not Enough is my favorite of the Brosnan films, mainly because it lets us see the rage beneath Bond’s cool exterior, which makes him a little less cool but about a million times more interesting. Sure, it has the utterly ridiculous casting of Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist named Dr. Christmas Jones (although she sure gives it her all), but Sophie Marceau and Begbie Robert Carlyle are fantastic, effective villains.I grew up on Moore and then Dalton as Bond, wondering why they cast Dalton instead of Brosnan (yes, now I know why), and was thrilled when they rectified that issue (not that I had anything against Dalton* particularly, but to me Brosnan just absolutely looked the part of a smooth superspy in a way that no one else, not even Connery**, ever did to me).*Dalton is always great in everything, especially his two best roles, as Neville Sinclair in The Rocketeer, but in a very different way as Malcolm Murray in Penny Dreadful, which gave us my favorite single-word line reading of all time:**By the time I got around to seeing any of the Connery Bonds, I’d already seen Connery in a ton of substantially older parts (The Untouchables, Last Crusade, Red October) and so for me he just never felt like Bond.
It’s slightly more than one word, but Dalton’s delivery of “Good God, it’s Dr. Frankenstein” in the series finale was just… everything it needed it to be, and not an ounce more.
And I agree, Brosnan, and to a slightly lesser extent Dalton, just LOOKED like how Bond is supposed to look, to me at least…
Having watched the complete Cornetto Trilogy, hindsight makes ask why Roger Moore was cast in Shaun of the Dead.Assuming Simon & Edgar were doing some sort of Bond appreciation in chronological order.
He’d have been great – if his Brian Pern cameo is anything to go by.
Typo alert: that should say
“hindsight makes ask why Roger Moore wasn’t cast in Shaun of the Dead.”
hindsight makes ask why Roger Moore was cast in Shaun of the Dead.Is this a typo for “wasn’t”? I didn’t recall him being in it and IMDB doesn’t show him in it either.
Yep it was a typo. Annoyingly I only spotted it well after the time limit for editing had passed.
I love Bill Nighy, but I would happily trade him out for Moore, just to see this happen.
BTW, he was utterly fabulous in Hot Fuzz. Older, playful, IDGAF Dalton is the best Dalton.
Top moustache twirling – basically a comedic version of his Rocketeer character.
“I’m a SLASHER! … OF PRICES!”“This… Really… Hurrrrts…”
Mr. Dalton’s Scenery!
If nothing else, that casting choice led to Richards playing herself in ‘30 Rock’ and delivering the line, “I played a nuculer psychiatrist in a James Bonk movie.”
I work in a mental health unit and being a nuclear psychiatrist would be an awesome career path and quite illuminating!
“there’s too much hydrogen! it’s going to explode!” has been an inside joke between my wife and I ever since The World is Not Enough’s opening weekend, and we loved 30 Rock, so that was a genuine laugh out loud moment for us.
I tend to think that, if that movie didn’t have Denise Richards and if the character’s name wasn’t Christmas Jones, that it would be far better regarded than it is today.There’s some fantastic scenes in it.
Now, if her name was Hanukkah Cohen,
“I thought Hanukkah only comes once a year!”“Yes, but for eight nights and days!”
This makes me want to see Sarah Silverman as a Bond Girl. I honestly think she could pull it off!
I know! She just doesn’t age! She’d actually be the age or older of the next Bond actor!
Denise Richards is BAD in The World is Not Enough, but holy hell did our snickering “Sure, that girl would be a nuclear scientist” jokes not age well.
Wasn’t it around the same time Keanu Reeves played a nuclear scientist in “Chain Reaction”?
It was! That movie’s “people will commit literal genocide in order to preserve fossil fuel profits” plotline has aged EXTREMELY well!
And they actually filmed (part of Chain Reaction) at Argonne National Labs in Illinois where I was working at the time. We got to see them film and were excited for the movie. We were less enthused when we saw it.
Honest to God, you can just fast-forward through any of Denise Richards’ scenes and still have a great movie.
The scene where Bond shoots Elektra is top 5 for the entire franchise.
Doom Patrol all the way for me. I was always lukewarm on him as Bond, but IMO the material really didn’t let him show his strengths.
He stands his ground with Peter O’Toole in full PETER O’TOOLE!! mode in the Lion In Winter, and he was only 22!
8 year old me was perfectly fine with Denise Richards casting…
Brosnan had been the consensus next Bond up for so long that a LOT of people were confused why he wasn’t cast when Moore called it a day. Finally getting his turn years later seemed more like fulfilling a requirement than something he or anyone else was really excited by at that point.His best spy role is clearly The Tailor of Panama – a great film.
String cosign on Dalton. He’s always great but his work in Penny Dreadful was just next level amazing. I’m glad we’re still getting little snippets of him this season of Doom Patrol.
Sure, it has the utterly ridiculous casting of Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist named Dr. Christmas JonesThey absolutely named her that just so they could make the “I thought Christmas only came once a year!” joke at the end. Unforgivable.
Uhhhh – I can’t even….
I agree with just about every word of this. Especially Sophie Merceau and Robert Carlyle elevating The World is Not Enough. Pretty good theme song too.
Excellent theme song, and a great villainess that was basically Traci Bond and Blofeld in the same package. I would have liked Renard to be a bit of a stronger, nastier heavy, though. And obviously change out Denise Richards.
Who would you guys have picked to replace Denise Richards?
Who would you guys have picked to replace Denise Richards?Neve Campbell. And by “replace” I mean “join”.
My first thought was, “Almost anybody”, but then I remembered it’s a 007 movie and she’s the Bond Girl he ends the movie with.
Jennifer Connelly.
Good choice! But I think she was getting into her serious acting career by then. I think Requiem for a Dream came out just the year after?
Awesome theme song!
I always call TWINE “the Spy Who Loved Me of the Brosnan Bonds,” in that it’s arguably the high-point of a run people don’t always take as seriously as others. The whole idea that Christmas Jones delegitimizes the whole film always strikes me as silly, especially when people just cite the character’s name/existence as some sort of argument-ender in writing it off.
I’ll stick up for Denise Richards and say I didn’t think she was bad in TWINE.
Her character name was stupid and putting her in hot pants was the height of tacky, but she didn’t ruin the film at all (IMO).
Brosnan took the correct approach. He didn’t throw away the legacy that Connery and Moore built. He integrated the best of both and pushed the franchise into the modern 90’s. He was born to play James Bond. Even when he’s not playing Bond in other films or speaking in public, he is Bond.
I’m not sure if The Broz is no one’s favorite Bond, if only because your favorite tends to be the one that rings your own personal nostalgia bells. Goldeneye is sort of a personal classic for me, just representative of a certain era, even if Moore’s late movies were really the ones of my childhood. I think Brosnan’s era in general was hurt by its confusion over its own relevance. It’s true the actor himself seemed to want to take the character in a more serious direction, but the movies themselves could never really commit to that despite trying superficially. The serious parts seemed to water down the fun and the silly aspects made the seriousness seem awkward. As you say, Brosnan is the compromise Bond in that his era tried to be everything to everybody. But fundamentally I see it as getting stuck in a sort dysfunctional adherence to tradition. In that sense, true to the tradition of Bonds being reflective of their time, Pierce Brosnan is sort of the Bill Clinton of the series. I feel bad making that comparison. He seems like such a nice guy.
My first Bond movie was The Spy Who Loved Me, so Roger Moore has always been Bond, someone who seems to realize how silly it all is. Pierce Brosnan tried to recapture that, and Goldeneye was at least a “gritty” Bond. But he will always be Remington Steele to me.And I’m meh on Daniel Craig. Bond should at least appear a bit happy.My wife’s and my daughter’s choice for new Bond is Tom Ellis. I think it’s an eye candy thing though.
I like Craig’s Bond films just fine, but agree 100% that the character needs a bit of that too cool for school swagger to really work. Craig’s version seemed like a special forces operative the government converted to spy work rather than someone so effortlessly cool in his own skin that he’s unflappable in most every situation (and takes a bit of R&R time for himself to get laid on the regular).
Completely agree. Brosnan is probably the weakest of the Bonds for me because he doesn’t seem to add anything of his own to it (even Lazenby was the romantic Bond, even if that’s more down to the story he had than his acting choices). He looked exactly how you would expect Bond to look and was a nice balance of Connery and Moore – the two popular ones. He’s just very… generic, even if he’s fun to watch (and clearly enjoying himself). And that’s not necessarily his fault – it seems it’s by design. Because it’s exactly what the franchise needed after its poor 80s run (box office and critically – I like the Dalton Bonds) followed by the legal and financial battles that put it on hold for 6 years. It needed someone to be the sort of risk-free Bond that audiences would enjoy in the sort of films they liked (big villains, big action, big budgets) – and it worked. It may have ice-surfed off a cliff at the end and its legacy may be the least interesting era of the series but it gave the people what they wanted and kept the franchise popular and viable.
GoldenEye was too good in a way. It did such a great job setting up a post-Cold War Bond that it committed the franchise to moving forward on that timeline. Unfortunately, a lot of the plots that came after were hokey and forgettable and tried to hard to be relevant with cyber-handwaving and pathogens, etc. Now that we have some distance from the 1990s, I’d be all for resetting the franchise with a return to the Cold War-era.
Goldeneye has a good plot, and amazing stunts and action sequences, but a terrible script and one of the worst scores in the whole series. It’s not as good as either Dalton.
I also liked Izabella Scorupco’s Natalya. She and Bond are a good match.
Definitely. In fact, the whole cast of Goldeneye are working double time to make up for the dialogue.
I mean, not to introduce a heavy element here, but it’s not like the current era is lacking for cold wars.
This.
Not that Hollywood has any apatite for it but the West vs the China Russia duo is pretty much the next Bond struggle served on a silver platter. It’ll be a damn shame they ignore it.
Unfortunately, we can’t afford to offend the delicate sensibilities of our opponent this time as China has become so important to global box office.
Exactly. The issue is not a lack of espionage and subterfuge among modern nations, it’s that selling film rights in certain territories matters more than making their governments out to be the villains. Combine that with sequelitis/the escalation of threats in blockbuster franchises and you’ve got the disastrous perfect storm of world-ending danger being masterminded by ill-defined, amorphous villains.
I think not adapting some of the Raymond Benson novels into scripts for Bond films was a missed opportunity, they were very good (but are anachronistic now).
Mentioning that the Craig Bond movies had the same writers as most of the Brosnan ones, and then mentioning how the new movies recycle the same ideas… all I get from that is Neal Purvis and Robert Wade did some self plagiarizing.
Well, that and (IMHO) they had some good ideas, which they actually used in the Brosnan ones, which is to say: There’s a lot of good stuff in the Brosnan ones. Both of the silly and less-silly variety.
When I saw the villain in Skyfall was a former 00-agent, I was like, “oh, we’re doing that again?” Then it’s personal against M and the villain blows up MI6. Bond likes to homage itself, but it felt more like a do-over.
If you don’t want to see Bond use the roof of his rocket sled to windsurf an arctic tidal wave caused by a glacier collapsing due to a satellite laser from space chasing him across the ice, do you even really want to see a Bond movie? I don’t want grounded goddamn it, I want invisible car chases through melting ice hotels. I want Bond barreling through the streets of St. Petersburg in a tank. I want Bond escaping a helicopter on a motorcycle through Saigon while handcuffed to Michelle Yeoh.Pierce Brosnan is my favorite Bond. His joy at playing the character came through in his performances. He’s the only Bond actor who was fired: all the others quit. And he’s been great in everything I’ve seen him in since then.
This guy gets it. 🤘
“And he’s been great in everything I’ve seen him in since then”I’d like to know what you’ve seen because he’s done some awful stuff since Bond. The November Man, The Love Punch, The Misfits, The Only Living Boy in New York, Final Score, I.T., Urge, Survivor, Shattered, Cinderella… I’m not saying he doesn’t occasionally have a good role (The World’s End, The Ghost) or is at least enjoyable to watch (No Escape, the Mamma Mia films) but a lot of his post Bond roles have been glossier versions of the same dreck he was making before Bond. And he made a *lot* of dreck before Bond (though some of it – Taffin, Live Wire, Nomads – is very fun dreck)
Taffin gives us one of the top tier most legendary scenes in motion picture history!
All of Taffin is great but that scene is a great example of why.
By the way, I learned a while back that supposedly Pierce Brosnan was in the running for the role of Maxil in Arc of Infinity in Doctor Who. Could you imagine?
The Thomas Crown remake was well received, but that may not count since it was mid-Bond for him, not post-Bond.
It was but I didn’t give him props for The Matador which was post-Bond.
I’m excited to see him as Dr Fate in Black Adam.
Nomads is a great underrated film. I wouldn’t call it dreck in any sense.
We might have to agree to disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I had fun watching it – and I’ll definitely watch it again – but it was as nonsensical as Brosnan’s French accent. It’s definitely not on the same deck level as, say, The Only Living Boy in New York. I’ll give it that. Nomads – to me – is fun dreck. Only Living Boy is irredeemable, tortuous dreck.
If it’s fun, why care if it’s dreck or not?
What if it’s dreck and not fun?
you should watch The Matador.
The November Man!
He was amazing as the robot-house in that Simpsons Halloween episode
Sure, a lot of those are bad movies, but is he bad in them? I would argue not. The Matador, The Ghost Writer, Mamma Mia! are all perfectly cromulent.
His crime revenge movie with Jackie Chan was fun.
I’m with you on all but the invisible car. I only need maybe 0.1% believability in anything that happens in a Bond film, but the invisible car dropped way below that level. Plus it’s just not a very good film.But I do love Pierce Brosnan. His watch-along of Goldeneye is just wonderful.
The real thing isn’t that far off (and this was from more than 9 years ago! I’m sure they could do even better by now!).This has to at least hit the 0.1% threshold now, surely?
I’m still waiting for my flying car that I was promised as a kid by Hollywood, so consider me a sceptic on invisible cars.
Well, if they’ve got invisible cars for real, for all we know flying cars are already around us!Also:
Captain Sisko? I thought you told Kasidy and Jake you were Communing with The Prophets, not shilling for IBM…!
I’m with you on all but the invisible car. I only need maybe 0.1% believability in anything that happens in a Bond film, but the invisible car dropped way below that level.Why does everybody draw the line at the invisible car? As somebody else pointed out, it’s not that implausible (while imperfect, the technology exists and has for a while).
It’s Bond, they’ve had a flying tea-tray that could dismember people, a hookah-machine-gun, and a crocodile submarine. But the car that uses the same tech as the SHIELD hover-carrier, well, that’s just too much.
Yesss. Brosnan is my favouite bond too, Ijust enjoy his movies so much and his performance. I don’t mind performances like Denise Richards’ Christmas Jones…its fun. That is what is missing from Daniel Craig’s Bond for me, the fun.
Yeah, this smacks of Jesse coming up with a shitty thesis, loading himself up on the laxatives, and then shitting out a thousand or so words trying to justify it, in prime AV Club fashion.“I can’t really think of anything to say about Brosnan’s Bond. I know! He must’ve been lacklustre, that’s why!”You’ve nailed the problems with Craig’s Bond: you take away all the laser wristwatches, and fights on the goddamn cradle of Arecibo (RIP), and you’re left with…not much. You get Bond crying on a train, and that’s about it.All Craig’s Bond run seemed to do was constantly ask “Should Bond still be a thing?” and never answered that question.
Strong disagree with your take. I like goldeneye a LOT, But to say Craig’s films are left with “not much” is silly.
All that shit sounds boring as hell. Slightly heightened realism is the way to go.
The “surfing an arctic tidal wave” idea sounds better in concept than it looked in execution, though.
Yeah, that was really going all-out, and they missed. That was some janky green-screen.
Kind of like Kurt Russell and Peter Fonda surfing down Wilshire Boulevard, you mean?
Precisely: sounds awesome, looks kinda ridiculous
Fuck yes.
Brosnan’s portrayal of Bond was the most “Bond” portrayal to date. The article calls it a compromise but I see it as a synthesis of everything good the previous actors brought to the role. He has the no-nonsense approach to his work from Connery’s bond, contrasted (but not overshadowed by) with Moore’s expert delivery of quips and one liners. There’s a bit of the world-weariness present in Lazenby’s performance, along with the soulful, almost introspective take that Dalton brought to the role. His Bond is brutal and violent when he needs to be yet doesn’t relish the violence like Connery’s Bond and doesn’t dismiss it with humor and too cool for school charm like Moore’s bond. And with all that, he still manages to (just barely) move Bond forward into the 90’s and make him relevant for audiences who would rather see capable female co-leads by his side (Michelle Yeoh being a notable high point). personally I think his Bond is absolutely great. Craig’s Bond is arguably better but it’s a tough comparison to make becuase Casino Royale was such a huge step forward for the franchise in general.
But relishing the violence is one of the best things about Bond.
I like this. They’re both excellent Bonds.I think if there is one thrust in hassengers solid but typical hassenger’d column, it is a truth that Brosnan does seem to be overshadowed or kind of “left out” of the conversation. Craig, Moore, Connery; Lazenby and Dalton’s recent reappraisals or at least textual outlier status; and then… Pierce Brosnan, seemingly better known for an all-time great video game.
Do you even Bond, bro?
Agreed. The Craig movies have never done it for me.
He’s the only Bond actor who was fired: all the others quit.While technically true, Moore quit recognizing he had gotten too old (once they started casting Bond girls younger than his daughter), and he was still clearly enjoying it to the end. It also sounds like Dalton wasn’t finished playing Bond, but had just moved on after legal issues between MGM and EON took too long to resolve.I’m with to the point that a certain amount of ridiculousness totally belongs in the franchise (the GoldenEye tank chase you mention hits the perfect balance for me), although they definitely need the occasional reset if things go too far (although, Die Another Day is the only Brosnan that went too far for me). If nothing else, Brosnan can sell the grounded stuff (which still has a place) way better than Craig deals with the outlandish (although, Benoit Blanc and Joe Bang point to that being a directorial/production issue rather than his).
The thing about getting too old … it’s how it’s changed over the years.Once it was William Hartnell being too unwell to keep doing the Doctor from ages 55 to 58, I think.Then it’s Roger Moore by also 58 for a View to a Kill but he wasn’t struggling as much by the end, (admittedly not chronically ill as William Hartnell).Then you have Tom Cruise at around 56, I think.And now 59 but still at a comparable level of insane level to this stunts.
Dear God, Tom.
There’s a part of me that think Cruise wants to die (or wouldn’t mind if he did) while making a movie. He would become a legend at that point, and I don’t think he wants to retire. His whole life has been dedicated to being a movie star. He wouldn’t know what to do if he wasn’t making or planning to make a movie.
A pithy illustration of how aging has changed is the Twitter account noting when celebrities cross the “Brimley/Cocoon Line,” and their exceeds that of a man who was cast in a movie because he looked so old there was nothing left on Earth for him to do but die.
Yeah, you’re only baffled because none of your precious “medical science” can explain the glorious power of Xenu, Cura.
This. You summed it up better than I could.
Nah that shit is laughable. Basically Austin Powers but dull. Craig’s Casino Royale and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service are the best Bond movies, but Timothy Dalton was the best Bond.
I want…handcuffed to Michelle Yeoh. With you all the way.
Preach it brotha! The Craig movies are just too dry and serious for me. They’re great action movies, but not great Bond movies. Bond should have a degree of silliness to him!
Yes! Hello Kindred Bond Spirit!Bronson Bonds had the most fun Bond girls and villains since Connery era. While Craig’s Bond was memorable, outside of Casino Royale all the supporting villains and Bond girls were fuckin’ forgettable.
Yeah, I’m trying to think of a “kick arse” Bond girl after OHMSS. None comes to mind. Barbara Bach was meant to be the female, Russian James Bond, and…ends up tied to a chair. And Dr. Holly Goodhead…ugh. She had less chemistry than an Amish science class with Bond. In fact, Lois Chiles’ best performance in a British spy film is a deleted (in some regions) scene from Austin Powers:
For me the best Bond girls are memorable because they are integral the story. The Craig Bonds don’t have that. Some (but not all) of the Moore-era Bond girls at least had a point even if the plot was silly or they ended up tied to a chair (and I don’t think we can hold this against them, Bond is regularly tied to chairs). The problem with Moore-era Bond girls is that NONE of them had chemistry with Roger Moore…and that’s not their fault, he kept getting older, they stayed the same age. Allrightallrightallright….Dalton and Brosnon’s Bond girls were all memorable because they had a POINT. You understood who they were and what their motivation was and they helped move the plot forward (even if they were not actually helpful to the mission). Whether they were kickass (Michelle Yeoh, Pam Bouvier) or vulnerable (Terri Hatcher, Miram d’Abo) or kinda pain in the ass for Bond (Izabella Scorupco, Halle Berry) the Dalton and Brosnon era Bond women felt like they were actually a part of the film and not just a vagina airdopped in for Bond to bang.
That’s why I struggle with all of the Craig Bonds other than Casino Royale, the Bond girls add nothing to the story. Craig’s love interest in Spectre was so thinly sketched and their “love story” timeline was so ridiculous it completely ruined the movie for me. I can’t even remember what the Bond girl in Quantum was doing there. They could have removed her entirely and it would be the same movie (probably, I honestly can remember very little about this plot, something about Bolivian water and there’s a giant cargo plane and that’s all I’ve got).
For me the best Bond girls are memorable because they are integral the story. The Craig Bonds don’t have that. You know what? Thanks for this. You absolutely nailed it why the Craig girls are forgettable. Never could work why none of them gelled with me, and that is a pretty good explanation.I think I’ve written elsewhere in these comments that I think Natalya is the best Bond Girl, since she has so much agency and skill, yet isn’t just “Bond With Vagina”, and is genuinely necessary to the plot – not only that, she drives it forward.Pam Bouvier’s great as well. She genuinely gives off “I was an Army Pilot” vibes. Xenia was necessary for the villain, Domino was a precious pawn, even Holly Goodhead, as terrible as she was in the role, was an actual scientist with goddamn astronaut training. Hell, going back to Dr. No, Honey Ryder provided valuable information, and Sylvia Trench even gave Bond his iconic introduction. Eva Green is a bean counter who basically shows up to watch a briefcase, whose role in the plot it is due to…her former boyfriend…that we haven’t met…from several years prior…and only literally in the last five minutes of the film. I think Olga’s character from QOS was actually more kinda in line a traditional Bond girl – she’s actually a Bolivian secret agent, so she’s not useless, and has her own reasons for going after…I dunno…water…what the fuck was that movie about again? I seem to recall Jeffrey Wright proclaiming the anti-dysentery properties of chillies? Shame QOS was a mess, what I’m saying. Skyfall? Well, there is that hooker/sex trafficing victim he Harvey Weinsteins in the shower (what the fuck was the point of that scene?) And that random backpacker. And Moneypenny, um, erotically shaves his face? (Note: no woman who doesn’t know what a magazine on a rifle does is going anywhere near my fucking face with a cutthroat.)SPECTRE? OK, I gotta admit I kinda laughed at him banging Monica Bellucci, because all I could think of was Archer hitting on the widow at the funeral of the agent he got killed: “LEMME BE THE FIRST TO WELCOME YOU BACK INTO THE DATING POOL!” Craig’s love interest in Spectre was so thinly sketched and their “love story” timeline was so ridiculous it completely ruined the movie for me.Oh, god, yes. It was utterly appalling and pathetic. Literally the last twenty minutes, and he falls head over heels for Lea Seydoux. I literally have no idea what role Lea plays in the mess of the whole retconned SPECTRE cinematic universe they’re trying to pull. And apparently they’re bringing her back? (Haven’t seen it, movie doesn’t drop in Australia till December.)I’m not being facetious or snarky, I genuinely don’t understand what she does for the films. Yes, she was Mr. White’s daughter, but so what? She, like most of the Bond girls in Craig’s tenure, have no agency or purpose to the plot – except for, I guess occasionally ramming home the point Bond Has Deep Feelings Now.It’s like they got through the script on the third or forth rewrite and before they shipped it off someone went “Um, isn’t there meant to be a chick in this? Somewhere?” and they shoehorned in Lea’s character. Most of the Craig girls have been, well, just dead weight.I get it: just banging chicks like old Bond is, apparently, bad (no one seems to ask the Bond girls about what they feel about havin’ sex with James Bond, but I digress). But having a bunch of female characters who are, somehow, worse than damsels-in-distress (since there’s no reason for them) ain’t an improvement.
BRUH! You SEE me! Yes yes yes to all this. Don’t even get me started on Spectre. I fuckin hated it. And that Sam Smith theme should be shot into space in Hugo Drax’s space shuttle. I’m about to embark on a rewatch of the Bond films (much to my wife’s chagrin, she says they’re too long). But having a bunch of female characters who are, somehow, worse than damsels-in-distress (since there’s no reason for them) ain’t an improvement.YES! The driving instructor Bond bangs in Goldeneye is more memorable than all the Craig Bond girls. I SAID WHAT I SAID!Absolutely agree that Natalya is one of the best Bond girls, both as a character and the actress portraying her. She was smart, funny, and skeptical of Bond’s bullshit. Brosnon and Scorupco’s chemistry and rapport were fantastic, and every choice that character made not only made sense for the character (of course she went to meet Boris in the cathedral, she trusted him!) but was integral to the plot. FUCK, GOLDENEYE WAS SO GOOD!!!!!I sometimes think about how Dr. Christmas Jones (despite the silly name) could have been a really great Bond girl if it was cast differently. That was a Natalya character turned into a Mary Goodnight because of bad casting. That whole first interaction where she sniffs through his bullshit IMMEDIATELY, testing his Russian and then calling him out as a fraud was a really great scene. I mentioned this elsewhere and I know it sounds crazy, but you know who would have been a good Dr. Christmas Jones? Fuckin’ Jennifer Lopez. Her star was rising in 1998, she had proven comedic and action chops, and she would have nailed that first interaction with Bond and actually build some sexual tension with Bond. I hate Kinja, it took me 11 years to find this conversation. Why doesn’t it take me back to this convo when I click on the notification???!!!!
Absolutely agree, although that wasn’t a Driving Instructor in the DB5 in Goldeneye; she was a shrink sent to evaluate Bond. But it’s great, because it’s relevant to one of the themes of Goldeneye: is James Bond still useful in the 90s, post-Cold War? Goldeneye handled the “is there still a point to having Bond around? Is he a liability?” much better than Craig, whose movies have asked that for like five movies and they still haven’t answered the fucking question.
People are whinging about Bond just bangin’ broads and ignoring them afterwards (again, no one seems to ask if it’s also not the broads bangin’ Bond…), but pretty much every single Bond girl before Craig had a point. Hell, he was even in a committed relationship with Trench for two movies.So, they’ve replaced them with women who……literally just exist to get banged by Bond? Oh, except for the fact he falls in love with them instantly now. Is that progress? It’s telling that the only Craig Bond girl with purpose and agency – Olga Kurylenko’s Camille – is the only one he doesn’t sleep with. and every choice that character made not only made sense for the character (of course she went to meet Boris in the cathedral, she trusted him!)Yeah, at that point in the movie the audience doesn’t know that Boris is dirty – not until Xenia pops out of the shadows. But let’s recap what happened up until that point: she ably dealt with Boris’ misogyny, survived all her colleagues getting massacred, an EMP strike, the building collapsing after a damn MiG-29 crashes into it, climbing the wreckage to get out of the building over the bodies of her friends and colleagues, and taking a fucking dog sled to St. Petersburg, before conning her way into an internet connection (“Madame requires some privacy”). That’s all on her own, before even meeting Bond. And when she meets Bond, she’s just as capable – hell, she saves his life at the end by directly disobeying him. Oh, and before anyone mentions Bibi Dahl: Bond does nothing but shoot her down. She literally comes on to him, and he’s nothing but a gentleman about it. She’s a teenage figure skater who literally breaks into his hotel room, greets Bond wearing nothing but a towel, gets into his bed and gets naked, and all he does is tell her to get dressed, and says he’ll buy her an ice cream. Plus, Lynn-Holly Johnson has way too much fun with the role, and she’s just a joy to watch. I mentioned this elsewhere and I know it sounds crazy, but you know who would have been a good Dr. Christmas Jones? Fuckin’ Jennifer Lopez. Her star was rising in 1998, she had proven comedic and action chops, and she would have nailed that first interaction with Bond and actually build some sexual tension with Bond.Her, or Salma Hayek, or Penelope Cruz – hell, make ‘em Argentinian. Argentina has a big nuclear program (it’s where we got our reactor from!)Hayek, we know, can be funny, sexy, smart, and…yes…camp, though she was busy that year with Dogma and…er, Wild Wild West (c’mon, that brickie’s cleavage-long johns gag was gold). You know, I’ve never seen Denise Richards as…sexy. Sure, she’s got a huge pair of (silicone) chest hams, but that’s literally it. Her entire demeanour and everything comes across as genial, slightly dizzy kindergarten teacher. She’s nowhere near believable as a nuclear physicist, and, sorry, I can’t believe she actually knows was sex is. That “girl next door” schtick doesn’t work with Bond.
This has basically become the both of us saying “yes indeed, yes indeed” back and forth to each other but YES INDEED, THAT IS EXACTLY CORRECT. In an attempt to overcorrect from the biggest issues with the Bond girls of yesteryear ) they also eliminated the BEST parts about the Bond girls of yesteryear. The Craig Bonds are so toothless it feels just as bad and thoughtless and vaguely misogynist. (I guess for clarity, I am a woman, so I feel like I can comfortably assess my perception of how women are treated in Bond films, though by no means do I speak for all women, just me.)The Craig Bond girls feel like plot devices, not supporting roles. I don’t think the Bond girls should feel like the star, this is a Bond film after all, but they should feel as important a supporting character as the villain.
FYEO is my second favorite Moore bond ( Live and Let Die, which is my favorite Moore Bond and I fully acknowledge is also a problematic, racist mess, and has one of the most poorly treated Bond girls in the entire franchise, and they did Gloria Hendry so dirty) and honestly the Bibi stuff (he fully rejected and was repulsed by her age, there was nothing untoward there) was less objectionable then the total lack of chemistry between Roger Moore and the absolute smoke show that is Carole Bouquet (definitely one of my lesbian roots) who was THIRTY YEARS YOUNGER than Roger Moore.
Nah, it’s a good conversation! I’m enjoying it! Sorry for the late reply, took me this long to find the damn comment chain again.In an attempt to overcorrect from the biggest issues with the Bond girls of yesteryear ) they also eliminated the BEST parts about the Bond girls of yesteryear.Instead of making the Bond girls better, they tried to make Bond look worse by comparison by making the girls into…nothingness. Non-entities.It feels like they had a meeting and made a choice.“We need to address the sexism in the female characters in Bond, apparently.”“Well, we could create female characters that have agency, power, independence, self-reliance and are key to the plot of the movies.”“No, no, no. We’ll just really lean in hard about how much Bond hurts them because he’s a piece of shit and women are, in fact, delicate, beautiful flowers whose only role should be to simply exist and look beautiful and any man who interacts with them at all is basically doing the equivalent of ripping down the Mona Lisa from the Louvre wall and setting fire to it.”“Er…maybe we could also make Bond treat women better?”“Ugh. Fine. We’ll have Bond fall head-over-heels in love with themafter five seconds of talking to them and six minutes of furtive sex with them. Probably on trains. Unless he kills them. That’s empowering for women, right? That all they have to do is be found by Bond, wrap their vag around his dick, and, bam, they own him! He’ll want to marry them and buy them a house and pretty jewellery and flowers every day! That’s what women want!”“That’s…awful. For all concerned. On every level.”“Deal with it. Or I’ll tell Barbara you were shopping your resume around to the Mission: Impossible guys.”“At I’m not shopping my resume around to the hacks at Lifetime.”“What?”“Nothing.”The Craig Bonds are so toothless it feels just as bad and thoughtless and vaguely misogynist.It’s because the women are not allowed to do anything.It’s denying the women agency. When the women can’t do anything all they can be is……objects. And all that women have to do is exist and be pretty and, bam, they’ve contributed. It’s up to the men to make sure good things happen to them. This, incidentally, is the response to the (modern) criticism of Bibi in the hotel room: that despite the fact she broke into his hotel room, she came on to him, and she got herself naked in his bed, the responsibility for all this still falls on Bond – the man. Despite the fact he clearly and unequivocally shoots her down and doesn’t do anything other than kick her out, Bond is still criticised for this scene. You can make a case for criticising the writers for putting this scene in – but again, only if you completely remove the context and conveniently forget the whole bit where he’s nothing but an adult and a gentleman. But, of course, modern Bond and its interpretation of female characters dictates that women can only exist as passive objects to be acted upon by men, surely this is all Bond’s fault. “Ah, dressed like that, he was askin’ for it…” They’ve literally all just been T&A snacks in cocktail dresses for Bond. Pulchritudinous baubles for Bond to dip his James Bond Jr. into. Actually, have we had any female villains or henchwomen in the Craig Bonds? I don’t think we have.Yes, denying women the agency to do bad things is still denying them agency. Xenia and Fatima (NSNA counts, dammit) were absolutely psychopaths, Mayday was up there for most of the movie. You had Rosa Klebb, Electra King, Fiona Volpe, Miranda Frost…Yes, Pussy Galore was an attempted mass-murdering terrorist who was going to go Aum Shinrikyo on Fort Knox for some cash (albeit unaware about the nature of the gas), but she still had agency.She chose to do that. Auric treats her as an equal. At no point do we feel she’s doing what she’s doing because some male managed to trick her uterus or whatever (Gert Frobe is many things but I don’t think he could set ladies’ hearts – or elsewhere – aflutter); there’s no scene where he manipulates her along gendered lines or anything like that – he needed a nerve gas pilot, she wanted money.Even the women who are just pretty trophies for the villains, like Lupe Lamora and Andrea Anders are given more to do in their films than almost any woman in a Craig film. What you end up with is with women objectified; they literally just become objects, since they have no role or purpose…except for Bond to catch/give some exotic new form of chlamsyphilherporrhea from/to…and we know what sort of object that makes them.Objects don’t do anything on their own. What we get, at best, is a few woman who, at best, do bad shit because of a man (Vesper because of her ex-boyfriend, Lea Seydoux because of her dad, Monica Bellucci because of her husband – look, I can’t remember their characters’ names and I couldn’t be bothered looking them up) – at worse they’re just fleshlights with a pulse……who normally end up dead.Which, in itself, feels nauseatingly puritanical: keep your legs closed, ladies, else you’ll end up with a Bad Man between them. (And then you’ll end up dead.)It’s these strangely Victorian ideals of femininity that have, somehow, been rebranded as positive and empowering for women. And at the end of it, it’s used to generate sympathy for Bond, or at least some sort of…emotional depth. That poor Bond isn’t actually a philandering pork-swordsman, but a deeply pathetic little man who, despite being someone who can kill with the same ease as the rest of us brush lint off our clothing, will fall in love at the merest flash of skirt. I thought we established all this decades ago? OHMSS explained why he was so guarded – Bond actually did fall in love, and realised that was his life, his job, wasn’t compatible (and they spent a whole movie on it – not trying to dump it all out in five minutes on a train – seriously? Trains? Who’s writing these movies? Ayn Rand?) with true love. LTK has Felix mentions why Bond’s leery of (re)marriage. Goldeneye has Natalya question his relationships, and Bond explaining why, in one of the series’ greatest scenes:There ya go. What the Craig films have spent five whole films trying to tell us (and still failing), Goldeneye did it in a minute-forty five. And without Bond coming across as a 12-year-old boy crying as his nanny drops him off at boarding school. Hell, if anything, it’s more powerful because it’s so succinct – it shows just how deep it hurts, and how deep Bond has buried it – and it’s better, because it shows that because of that burial Bond can still do his damn job. I really don’t know how Craig’s Bond survived his psych evals after Casino Royale. Nor how M would keep his/her job after constantly giving this screw up infinite second chances.Maybe those GCHQ guys in Skyfall had a point…Yes, I know telling a secret agent to just have a cup of concrete and harden the fuck up isn’t very nice, and that’s exactly what Bond would’ve had to have done to keep functioning, but them’s the breaks in that line of work. As he said: it’s what keeps him alive. Actually, that’s the main question the Craig films have raised for me: how the hell has Bond kept his job? At the very least, how has he not been stuck behind a desk reviewing budget reports or something? And, at the end of the damn day: yes, we want to see sexy people in sexy clothes kick arse and take names and fly Bede Microjets out of fibreglass horses’ arses and through Cuban hangars, and drive fast sports cars (or Citroen 2CVs – dammit, Melina had good taste in cars), and coolly wander around exotic locales. It’s a Bond film, dammit.
I just saw the No Time To Die this weekend. You’re going to be so pissed, because it takes everything you just wrote and ratchets it up to the final and the inevitable conclusion for how they’ve been writing their female characters in the Craig Bonds. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I will die mad about this one.Ana de Armas was AMAZING though and the exact type of Bond counterpart we have both been waxing poetic about this whole thread. I hope she’s in the future installments. Even my wife, who is lukewarm about Bond movies and only watches them to humor me looked at me and said “are you fucking kidding me?” when the credits began to roll.Also that Billie Eilish theme song sucks and is identical to the Sam Smith theme song.
Jacobin Mag (of all places) had a decent review of it, and raves about Ana’s performance and character – and then about how they just fuck her off after five seconds because of course you’ve got to have emo Bond pining after Passive Villain’s Daughter and looking for a Deeply Serious Relationship instead, and you can’t have women looking too capable. (Remember: if you’re showin’ women as being just as capable as men, you’re actually denyin’ them femininity, because apparently capability is gendered!)https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/10/no-time-to-die-james-bond-007-daniel-craig-film-reviewHell, I’m still pissed about Moneypenny from Skyfall: “Hmmm, actually, as a woman of colour, perhaps I’m better off as a secretary for a white man, instead of a field agent.” Also that Billie Eilish theme song sucks and is identical to the Sam Smith theme song.Ugh, I’ve suspected as much. I knew her selection was just “Hey, why don’t we see which singer is trending most on twitter today?” when they were looking for the theme song. “Who is this William English fellow? Good British lad by the sound of it! Like Sam Smith!”“Sir, it’s Billie. Billie Eilish. And she’s a woman. From California. And people hated that Sam Smith song. They said it was sung by a eunuch, for eunuchs, and if you weren’t a eunuch a single chorus of this song would make your gonads run away.”“Huh. And the kids – the kids like her?”“According to these social media metrics, yes. They do.”“Great! I’m sold.”I tried listening to it, but it comes across as a store-brand version of an Adele song, by someone who has nowhere near the pipes or chops of Adele, and without the legendary, descending hook of “Skyfall” (one of the few good things about that confused mess of a film). It feels like something a Soundcloud singer recorded in her bedroom into her vintage Sanyo boombox, tarted up with slow piano and the reverb chambers underneath Capitol Studios, Hollywood (or, more likely, a Pro Tools plug in). I don’t want to spoil it for you,Thanks, although I doubt I’ll be able toNo kidding, it doesn’t come out here until November 11 – Remembrance Day. Hey, movie and TV studios: you know why Australians pirate so much? This. This shit is why. You’re trying to selling the holistic, timely experience of seeing the movie/show as part of a community just as much – if not more – than the movie itself.Don’t be surprised if we want in on that. And don’t be surprised if we’re not willing to pay the price of the movie and the experience if we’re only getting one of those things.
I’ve got a soft spot for “Die Another Day.” First Bond movie I’d seen in years after just separating from the woman who I’d been together with for 8 years and who hated Bond movies. It’s ludicrous and cartoonish, but have to say it was a bright spot that week of all weeks.
…while handcuffed to Michelle Yeoh…. who is awesome in her own right.Starred for this point all by itself.
It says a lot about the franchise that a tank chase through the streets of St. Petersburg is pretty damn grounded, relatively speaking.
The main thing the Brosnan Bond movies get wrong is they give him such a crazy number of kills he’s not at all believable as a spy. The Craig Bond movies mostly fix this, even going so far as to have M chastise Bond for blowing up that embassy at the beginning of Casino Royale.
Nostalgia dictates that Brosnan might be my favourite Bond. Tomorrow Never Dies was the first Bond movie I saw theatrically, being just old enough to take the bus to the mall with my younger sister for a movie night without our parents. And I fucking love The World Is Not Enough, which has one of the all-time great Bond themes (though TND is no slouch in that department, since it gives us Sheryl Crow’s theme, KD Lang’s end credits track “Surrender”, and Pulp’s rejected “Tomorrow Never Lies”).
Tomorrow Never Lies is great! It’s a shame that Madonna’s Die Another Day exists – without a doubt the worst Bond theme for me – because Brosnan’s first three themes were all fantastic. GoldenEye is exactly what you expect a Bond theme to sound like but it’s no less brilliant for it.
I remember sitting there watching Bond getting tortured over the opening credits while Robo-Madonna sang “I’m gonna. des-troy. my e-go!” and wondering where it all went wrong.
I would love to see a version of that song Let it Be Naked style, removing the studio jiggery pokery and just having the vocals and instruments. I think it would be better if not-techno (not that I even hate techno) or done by someone different. The actual sequence of Bond being tortured was great, I also wish they didn’t have Bond just bounce back in the movie as if nothing happened.
I remember sitting there watching Bond getting tortured over the opening credits while Robo-Madonna sang “I’m gonna. des-troy. my e-go!”Yeah, and what the North Koreans were doing to him wasn’t that pleasant, either.
When you hear Tina Turner singing a Bond theme it really makes you wonder why it took them so long to get her to sing one… seriously it could be Shirley Bassey then Turner (I’ll make an exception for Live and Let Die becuase that one kicks ass)
And I think that theme could have worked if they had a more steady hand guiding it. But Madonna was in her French Disco phase by then, not her vamp era anymore. I like Mirwais a lot, but the production on that track is all wrong.
Conversely,Billie Eilish and her collaborator Finneas kept it pretty classic for NTTD, despite their usual output not resembling that type of music that much.
Whereas her work with William Orbitt on Beautiful Stranger for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was perfect for the film and and great song to boot!
Also, the CD single of The World is Not Enough had the track Ice Bandits on from the score and, while its probably just the fact I heard it so much that way, it’s one of my favourite bits of Bond music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM5ZXkGwu00&t=12sMaybe I just like Bond skiing music because my other favourite piece of Bond music is Bond 77, the disco-ish version of the theme used in the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwG21NaRSI
That’s good taste in Bond music. Both good tracks. I love the scores almost more than the movies.
No collection of Bond skiing music is complete without something from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Tomorrow Never Dies has one of my favorite movie openings with the criminal bazaar and Bond wrecking shop and hijacking the plane with the nuke on it. Also, David Arnold’s score just feels like a Bond movie, much more so than Eric Serra before it. Had GoldenEye had a different score, I would’ve absolutely loved it. But, it didn’t, so I only like it a lot.
The score for GoldenEye is what dates it the most. It couldn’t be more mid-90s action movie score if it tried.
Yeah, I hear ya…but sometimes I like my Bond movies to be a time-capsule of that era or particular year.
I think the score for GoldenEye is serviceable overall and unmemorable at worst…save for the “driving test” sequence right after the opening credits, where the music is so spectacularly bad that it’s a wonder it didn’t torpedo the franchise. It’s about 10 minutes into the new guy’s movie – The first Bond film in 6 years; The first one post-Cold War! – and the soundtrack is suddenly this overbearing, amelodic synth “composition.” It does not instill the viewer with confidence for what they should expect from this “New” Bond over the next two hours.
When I think of the 90s, I always think of those metallic synth percussion noises that the Goldeneye score constantly uses.
“Backseat Driver” is my jam.
That whole scene was great; David Arnold could do no wrong with that score, and it was just wild to watch that scene on the big screen.Here’s where I admit I saw TND in theaters and immediately bought the soundtrack on cassette when I got out. This was also my first Bond movie, so take that for what it’s worth.
David Arnold was one of the best decisions EON made in hiring the guy. Every time I watch GoldenEye, I lament at the lack of decent music in it. Arnold came in with his musical guns blazing right off the starting line in Tomorrow Never Dies. I remember sitting there in the theater thinking, “Now THAT is how a Bond soundtrack should be!”
I REALLY love a good terrorist arms bazaar. It’s right up there with a ninja / assassin training camp. There’s no movie that isn’t better with one of the two.
“A Terrorist Arms Bazaar” gets funnier every time I see it.
I’ll defend The World is Not Enough, it’s my favorite Brosnan Bond film. A great companion to OHMSS since Elektra is the anti-Tracy and Bond falls for it. And Denise Richards isn’t that bad, but has become the low-hanging fruit used to discredit an otherwise solid Bond movie.
World is one of my favorites, absolutely for Sophia Marceau and Robert Carlyle’s fantastic villains for the delightfully retro-ski chase, and yes, because we discovered if you pause it JUST right you can see Elektra’s boob…. but c’mon friend….Denise Richards WAS that bad. Her line delivery is physically painful to endure. Is the dialogue she was given scintillating? No, of course not! But an even marginally better actress could have made that role a little more palatable, believable, and enduring. Natalya had about as much to do as Dr. Jones, but Izabella Scorupco made that character interesting and a great foil to Bond! Denise Richards was terrible in that role. Terrible!Hell, you know who would have knocked it out of the park and was blowing up in 1999? Fuckin Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer Lopez would have killed it as Dr. Christmas Jones.
Natalya is the greatest Bond girl. Full. Fucking. Stop. Capable (but without the “let’s just make her a James Bond with a vagina” of Halle Berry’s painful Jinx), smart, independent, and calls Bond out on his bullshit.Remember, she pulled her damn self out of the wreckage of Severnaya, surrounded by the corpses of her friends and colleagues, and took a fucking dog sled out of there. Wheedles her way to an internet connection, and doesn’t once deliberately play the damsel. Her mag-checking and cocking the Makarov in Cuba is perfect, plus she gets arguably the best lines in the film, and often leaves the male characters flat-footed.“Stop it! You’re like…boys with toys!”“Do you destroy every vehicle you get into?” (And Bond’s reply: “Standard operating procedure. Boys with toys.”)“It’s a duplicate of Severnaya. Like your secret transmitters in New Zealand.” (“I’ve never been to New Zealand…how’s she know about that?”)Plus, she rocks one of the hottest outfits ever: tight top with cargo pants. Mmmmm.
I really liked Sophie Marceau as Elektra; she was a great bad Bond Girl and managed to wring a lot of nuance out of the character.And yeah, the dunking on Denise Richards is overstated. Sure, they costume a nuclear physicist like she’s Lara Croft, but Richards acquits herself just fine in a role that wasn’t exactly demanding. Even the much harped upon name Christmas Jones seems less odd in a post-January Jones world.
Even the much harped upon name Christmas Jones seems less odd in a post-January Jones worldIt’s only a week earlier, come on!
For me, World is my least favorite film. Mainly because expecting Denise Richards to be a nuclear physicist was a hilarious stretch, but mostly because I was and still am so tired of what I like to call the lazy “Oh, he’s not the real villain. I am!” bs trope. Secondary to that was we were expected to believe that Mi6 could be infiltrated. Yeah, right. Thanks for playing. Try again.The thing I did like about that film though, is the David Arnold soundtrack score. Just super epic. I can blast that music and pretend I liked the film it was in.
The only Pierce Brosnan James Bond movie I’ve seen is Goldeneye. The graphics aren’t very good but it’s probably the most fun I ever had playing a movie especially when there’s 4 of us and the remote mines mode is on.
Everybody loves the remote mines, but for my money, it’s all about throwing knives, because you have to run around awkwardly karate chopping each other to death once you’re out of ammo.
I’m all about Proximity mines in the facility.I had few mates around a couple of years back for a few drinks and rounds of Goldeneye and it still holds up as a fucking blast 25 years on.
Proximity mines, for sure. Nothing like setting up so many traps for your friends that you can’t even remember what paths are safe to travel. That’s real fear.
I did a dudes’ reunion trip with some old college buddies this summer (we’re all in our 40s) and we took a N64, Goldeneye and four controllers with us. It was like being back in college again. We didn’t miss a beat. Glorious.
Last time I tried to play the game, probably over a decade ago now, I couldn’t figure out the controls at all. It saddened me.
I was about to say Slappers Only, but you’re right – the illusion of a second weapon choice makes the inevitable decline into chop-smacking that much more satisfying. That said, my friends and I were all about sniper rifles in the caves.
If it’s knife throwing you want, Octopussy’s the James Bond film for you!SoMuchKnifeThrowingin that film.
I tend to remember the buzz-saw yo-yo thing more.
“….and that’s for 009.”
You joke , but I played the game a lot , and a few years later saw the film, and its weird , as theres several scenes in the movie that give me a ‘holy crap! I know that place!!’ vibe* I’m guessing Rare had access to a LOT of set photos.( if you live in NY, LA , or Vancoover you probably get that all the time .mind you AMC show Kin had a funeral scene that took place about a minute from where I lived growing up , so theres that I guess..)
I actually played the game before I saw the movie, which meant I would always get to the train level and die because I didn’t know Bond had to use the laser in his watch to cut through the door in the train car floor.
The game out two years after the movie, they had the whole thing as reference material.
I also played the game a lot when it debuted and didn’t actually get around to seeing the movie it was based on until much later – doing it backwards meant that there was a vivid deja-vu effect seeing the places I was so familiar with brought to life like that.Anyway, my favorite settings were always Pistols in the Archives (preferably with one-hit kills enabled). Man, it was such a game-changer when the sequel, Perfect Dark, let you build your own custom weapon list and choose which guns would occupy which spots in the level. At the very least, you could make sure that nobody would be put in the situation of having to try to make do with a Klobb.
Is far and away the best movir video game adaptation of all time. It’s not even a contest. But man, I watched goldeneye when it was new and a couple times while my friends and I were having goldeneye/Mario Kart/starfox 64 parties almost nightly. It’s wild how accurate to the locations Goldeneye 64 is.
“For England, James?”“No. For me.”What’s cooler than being cool, again?
ICE COLD!
I remember the game being mostly a race to grab the RC-P90. Whoever grabbed it first usually won. Nobody wanted the Klobb.
License to Kill. Pistols. Basement. Pure chaos.
I’d say I spent approximately 92% of my college down-time playing NHL ‘95 and Goldeneye in a dorm room.
have you played the xbox remaster that was recently leaked?
I still want them to bring back Michelle Yeoh to the Bond franchise because it’s ridiculous how Denise Richards was more helpful against the final bosses then Yeoh was. Michelle Yeoh should come back to the next one, have James Bond be a secondary character and then have her be like a kick ass Chinese M.
one of the reasons I really like the Dalton Bonds is because the plots do not involve world domination or a nuclear threat or something. One is about KGB defectors and the other is about drug smugglers. They also have very good theme songs (especially the Gladys Knight-License to Kill), unlike the Bronsan era.
Goldeneye is still one of the best but the follow ups got a bit too wacky with their set pieces, and plots, for me. The helicopter with the sawblades is very dumb and impractical and has always bothered me. It seems like the chance that sawblade is going to catch on something and crash the helicopter is very high! In Tomorrow Never Dies, the bad guy’s ultimate goal is to get exclusive broadcasting rights in China for a century. Why does Bond even care about that?
I’d agree that it’s hard to imagine you can cut through a car with those saw blades, but those helicopter saws are a real thing and make pretty good sense being in the movie since they’re clearing forest for running pipe through.
He probably cares because Carver is going to launch England and the world into war to achieve his goal.
Also, he killed, like, a bunch of British sailors.
The tree-trimming helicopters are so ridiculous that you just can’t make it up…because they are real and regularly used to cut tree lines along roads and power lines.
Tvtropes calls this “Aluminum Christmas Trees” — a real thing presented in fiction that seems obviously made up but isn’t. The reference is to the aluminum Christmas trees in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that seem absurd but were a real thing in the 1960s.
I would say that 3/4 of the Brosnan theme songs were fantastic (I think we all know what the exception is). Which isn’t to say that the Dalton ones weren’t also brilliant.Actually, I think the Craig era has probably been the weakest for theme songs. There’s precisely one great song in there (Skyfall), and the rest are misfires. Also, the decision to choose Sam Smith over Radiohead for Spectre is something that will never not make me angry every time I think about it.
I will add to that the fact that someone decided to NOT use the Shirley Bassey/David Arnold tune “”No Good About Goodbye” for Quantum of Solace
Interesting, I hadn’t heard about that. I looked up the song and it’s pretty good! I’m curious though, any idea why they were thinking of going with a pre-written theme song? And why that one in particular? And why they then rejected it?
Apparently, it was rejected at all. It was something Arnold and Bassey were barely working on before the decision was made to hire Jack White and Alicia Keys.
https://www.mi6-hq.com/news/index.php?itemid=8079
I think the QoS commentary mentions also that it’s not a great song to place right after such an exciting opening. But it’s still a good track! I really like seeing a version of the credits on Youtube that uses it.
On the NTTD review thread, user Dwigt had this to add:
Cornell’s You Know My Name is the inheritor of Live and Let Die’s muscular take on Bond themes and is the best of the Craigs by a country mile. Another Way to Die is truly demented and a great fit for the staccato action and plotting of Quantum of Solace, the duet reflecting the parallel missions of the two leads. Adele’s Skyfall is just Bond theme parody albeit delivered by a true powerhouse singer, but it doesn’t really merit the praise it has. The Writing’s On The Wall is so thin and weedy it may as well not exist – Sam Smith has his moments but that is not one of them. No Time To Die is much better, the low key, aching vocal really works.
You Know My Name is pretty much exactly what I’d expect from ‘Chris Cornell does a Bond theme.’ It’s serviceable but pretty bland, and the verse lacks momentum.Another Way to Die is… maybe not exactly what I’d expect from Jack White doing a Bond theme, but pretty close (and I would question the decision to let him do one, honestly, as his sound is radically different from the standard). It is demented, true, but not in a good way. And Alicia Keys’ talents are wasted. Wasted!Skyfall probably is a tad overrated, but it’s still great and Adele’s singing is top-notch. It doesn’t exactly attempt to do anything interesting with the formula, but it does get points for at least using the formula well. Not sure how it’s a parody.We can agree that TWOTW is not the one.
No Time to Die is also not one of Eilish’s moments either though, IMO. It coasts on the sultriness and there’s a nice moment in the chorus but aside from that it’s pretty meh.Will say that if you’re gonna break from the theme song formula, that’s totally fine, but I don’t know why you’d do that for Another Way to Die. Also, I’d be a bit more forgiving of Eilish’s theme if it wasn’t ANOTHER percussion-free dirge.Take out AWTD and TWOTW, and I probably wouldn’t be so critical of Craig-era theme songs.
God I love the Radiohead Spectre so much. I do like the new film’s song but I also wish we had another bombastic Bond theme like You Know My Name. As unBondian as that song is I still like it, and how it fits the credits.
Yeah, exactly. NTTD isn’t the worst and I can understand how some people might like it, but it is way too slight for such a game-changing installment IMO.
Also Patti Labelle’s If you Asked Me To- which Bond actually references in his last line for the film.
Brosnan, the ultimate in-betweener, is seemingly considered almost nobody’s favorite.
Well that’s not true. Just by default of a generation who grew up with Brosnan as their Bond, he would be their favourite.For us GenXers it’s Roger. For 90’s kids it will be Pierce.
I’m Gen X and my first exposure to Bond was on the ABC Movie of the Week, where he was a mainstay. The Connery Bonds were in heavy rotation, so I was well aware of him, even though I was 5 when he left the role. I always viewed Moore’s Bond as too jokey, though I certainly seem to be in the minority in that amongst people my age.
I’m an old Gen Xer and I really liked Moore’s Bond … but also thought he was too jokey. That said, I could never embrace Connery … those movies always felt too early 60s old-fashiony to me. I genuinely loved the Brosnan era.
Yeah, given that the films always took place in present day if you caught them years later then it was sort of like watching Mad Men. Still great, but time capsules.
My go-to ‘60’s spy is not Sean Connery, it’s Patrick McGoohan (who was almost Bond, but turned it down and never regretted it). When it comes to groovy ’60’s espionage, I liked that Number 6 had to rely a lot more on brains than guns, and the distinct lack of womanizing was a bonus.
Even if he’s no longer everyone’s favorite, Gen X’ers (myself included) were mostly introduced to Bond via Moore. For better or worse, his version was the basis for comparison.
I recall Roger Moore’s James Bond killing Stromberg in a scene possibly more brutal than anything ever seen in a Bond film precisely because it was so totally different to anything before – or since really. That was straight up intense! (The look of a man who is simultaneously not here to fuck around whilst also having enough of your shit!)
More brutal than most but Connery’s killing of Anthony Dawson’s character in Dr. No still takes the prize, precisely because he makes it look so effortless. He’s killed plenty of people before, and he’s not even mad.
I grew up with Brosnan, and the result was not being a Bond fan. I preferred De Palma’s Mission: Impossible, though unfortunately that series has shifted away from what made De Palma’s so distinct from the Bond series (some baddie is trying to blow up the world!).
I’m GenX, but Brosnan is my Bond.
I’m a 90’s kid, but I’m not sure it’s Brosnan for me, although I also was more or less introduced to him, Connery, and Moore simultaneously (my dad figured Live and Let Die was a good introduction to the series, probably of his own nostalgia, and a local TV station ran a ton of the movies once a week leading up to The World Is Not Enough coming out). Given that Casino Royale is probably the definitive movie for me, Craig might be the definitive Bond.That said, Judi Dench is 100% my M.
90’s kid, can confirm. The release of so many great Bond games during his tenure also helped.
Nope. Gen X but Dalton.
Not so much for me. I was at the age where my first Bond film in the theaters was For Your Eyes Only. Roger Moore’s films leaned a little too much into the humorous, but that was the image for the franchise at the time. I thought Dalton’s Bond stunk, along with the films he was in. If I wanted a story about drug dealers, I’d go watch Miami Vice instead. And Dalton couldn’t even deliver his “Bond. James Bond” line right.I was counting the days until he was canned, so Brosnan could take over.
I watched the bond marathons on tbs that were either on on thanksgiving or xmas so i knew them all.
I did most of my growing up in the 90s, but as a kid Moore was my favorite Bond. As an adult, he’s towards the bottom and I appreciate Dalton and Craig most of all, with Lazenby in there, too. 🤷♂️
“I don’t know any doctor jokes.”Well, actually one but it’s my medical school’s fault for giving me a degree despite my best efforts.
Lemme guess, you went to Bond.(Yes folks. Topical Australian tertiary education puns are just one of the many services I provide.)
UNSW back when there were only the big three (or big two actually plus Newcastle) and pre-GAMSAT being a thing. Earned my way in and proceeded to try and earn my way out ever since.Took me a moment (I’m slow and even more so being obviously old now) but that was good. Very good indeed.
I never really liked Brosnan because he seemed to be Bond-by-numbers, but looking back, that’s probably what the series needed. So many of the old Bond referents were gone – the Cold War was over, a lot of the old gadgets seemed tame compared to what the movies could create now – that I think you needed someone who you could look at and say, “Hey! That’s Bond!” to help the transition into new types of stories.
I’ve said this many times, but each of Brosnan’s films had a central idea at its core that tried to do something new and cool within the Bond formula:GoldenEye: What if the villain is a Bond gone bad?Tomorrow Never Dies: What if a former Bond girl shows up again, and confronts Bond with the consequences of his womanizing?The World is Not Enough: What if the Bond girl is the villain?Die Another Day: What if Bond finally got captured and disavowed?Of these, only GE really successfully explored its premise. Yes, Skyfall tried it again with Raoul Silva, but I’d argue that Alec Trevelyan did it better by casting an actor that in another universe might very well have been Bond. The rest all squandered their terrific ideas; instead of Teri Hatcher, TND should’ve brought back Jane Seymour or Maryam d’Abo, both of whom played particularly naive and innocent Bond girls whom Bond might have genuinely wronged by leaving them. TWINE chickened out of its premise by having its big climactic fight with Renard rather than Elektra. And DAD had a very different intention in mind than “let’s try something new with the formula.”
I’d agree with all that.
These are good points, but what most resonates for me is how unsuccessfully each film after GoldenEye follows through on its ideas. The third act of each of those films just plain gives up and says “it is now action movie finale, ignore thinking”. Tomorrow Never Dies: Rupert Murdoch gets a stealth boat to instigate WWIII for ratings, action assault on boat.The World is Not Enough: terrorist who can’t feel has nuclear submarine that will explode, action assault on boat.Die Another Day: angry manboy has satellite laser that will destroy the Korean DMZ to instigate war, action assault on plane.What none of those get is GE’s action finale suited the story and the premise well because it’s Bond vs Bond. Not every movie can – or should – be the ending to The Spy Who Loved Me.Brosnan is a good Bond burdened with hacky writing, making him a bad Bond.
The biggest weakness of the Brosnan films, other than Goldeneye, is the stunt casting of the female leads.
There is something to be said for casting actresses with a little experience and power over their own careers, as opposed to the parade of beauty queens with no talent and who had to be overdubbed that Connery worked with.
However, Teri Hatcher beat out Monica Bellucci for the role, which should never happen on any facet of the multiverse, because Hatcher would have been more known to American audiences. I don’t know who Denise Richards beat out, but just about any random 27-30-year-old actress would have done better.
Halle Berry has the talent and certainly gave her all to the role, but it was a bad script.
Goldeneye had a gorgeous female lead who had great banter with Brosnan and an absolute goddess of a bad girl in Famke Janssen.
THANK YOU. Goldeneye is one of my favorites purely for Xenia Onatopp.Onatopp?Onatopp.
There’s a kinda irony of OHMSS, where they cast a male model (also combat ski instructor, also hand-to-hand combat instructor, also ex-Commando, also used car salesman, also Marlboro Man, also Kronenbourg shill, also consummate bullshit artist – look, Lazenby might’ve been the most perfect human to play Bond) as the lead and it was panned – but pretty much every damn Bond before it had cast female models who couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag with a pair of scissors and a flamethrower. Not discounting a lot of Bond girls – Scorupco of course was one – were models before acting, but ones like Scorupco could actually, y’know, act. Also, “Izabella Scorupco” is more of a Bond Girl name than “Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova”. Previously, it was just:“What are your skills?”“I can wear makeup and look slightly pouty. Also, if I lean over a bit, I can give most of you an erection. Except the guy who did my hair, for some reason.”“You’re hired.”“American Girls Next Door” don’t really work, which is pretty much what Hatcher was typed as, and she didn’t really work as a glamourous trophy wife.OHMSS played against type – an extremely experienced and talent lead actress – Diana Rigg – against newcomer and potentially talentless lead actor George. Who, yes, gets dubbed, at least for part of the movie. (Hell, why not work his Aussie accent into the script? Say he grew up in Australia? Wasn’t unknown for Poms to do that.)And, hell, George actually does pretty well – laconic, detached, yet with his army background, does a lot of his own stunts and actually brings a sort of physically and grittiness to the fights that we wouldn’t see for decades. Him rolling into Draco’s office, with a knife he took from a goon, before flinging into the next day’s date on the calendar…brilliant. Yet, it gets panned, and they bring back Sean for DAF.
I hear you, but that would mean losing Teri Hatcher, and I just don’t have it in me. She’s one of the best Bond Girls of the Brosnan Era.
GE also contends with a post-Soviet world better than any other Bond film, even the post-9/11 Casino Royale. CR really only tangentially mentions non-government terrorism. The threat isn’t that immediate, it’s just they accidentally give terrorists money. That’s…happened so many times before.
My main problem with the Craig series is that it constantly retreads the same old tired question of “DO WE STILL NEED BOND IN THIS DAY AND AGE?” to which I reply “Yes! Goldeneye fucking answered that.”It did the impossible – took a Cold Warrior, and made him relevant post-Cold War. It looked at Britain’s role in the world, and questioned its past mistakes.
[GRUNTS MANFULLY]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Brosnan was better playing Bond in each successive film, while those said films got progressively worse. Though I’d caveat that sweeping statement, by saying the first half of Die Another Day was really good. Sadly everything goes to pot and becomes very generic as soon as Bond is taken back into MI6 fold.It’s a shame we never got to see Pierce’s version of Casino Royale, especially as he’d been pushing the producers to reclaim the rights to the book. It could have been his brilliant swan song, but alas it was not meant to be.
Earlier versions of Casino Royale are a good fantasy movie exercise. Honestly, given that he wasn’t the most physical Bond and the story might have reigned in the silly, I would have loved to see a Moore version. The smoothy at the card table.
Brosnan would have been 50+ in Casino Royale, had they made it right after Die Another Day. I think they were right to go with a younger actor, it was the perfect story to introduce a new Bond actor.
I do think Casino works best with a “newer” Bond because of the betrayal at the end. Brosnan does imply he has dead lovers and a dead Tracy, so he’s likely too world-weary to fall for the trap.
I have no problem with Brosnan as Bond. He had a bit of a Timothy Dalton problem, though, in that Dalton only got one good Bond movie (The Living Daylights). With that record, of course no one really thought of Dalton as Bond. Brosnan did even worse. He got .25 of a good Bond movie (The first quarter of Die Another Day).*There are no other Bonds who had such bad runs. Say what you want about Lazenby, his movie was actually good (albeit very un-Conneryesque). And while Moore and Connery both made a few really bad Bonds, both men made several good Bonds, too. And the ones that are bad are still often a lot of campy fun (In spite of Connery’s horrific Asianface disguise, I love, love, love You Only Live Twice.). Brosnan’s Bonds, while silly, aren’t quite the right flavor of camp. They try to capture the best of Moore-era Bond without succeeding.*The Brosnan Bonds weren’t without little bits of fun (Judi Dench as M, for instance), but they were such broadly generic blockbusters that aside from a few superficial trappings (“Bond, James Bond,” villains and lady sidekicks with ridiculous names, and improbable gadgets) they didn’t feel very Bond-like.
GoldenEye was good.
I remember liking License to Kill for its raw, unfiltered brutality, but I also haven’t seen it in a very long time. I know it had the highest rating of any Bond film for a long time, at least in the UK.
It earned that rating. Saw it as a kid and the decompression chamber scene was the most disturbing thing I’d ever seen. Still gives me the willies just thinking about it.EDIT: I should add, though, that the movie itself was actually pretty good. I would say both Dalton’s movies were solid efforts, just not particularly standout (and certain aspects of The Living Daylights have aged rather poorly, I think we can all agree).
It’s got that Rambo III issue of supporting certain groups that we grew to hate by 1998
I can’t remember enough of TLD to know if it’s as bad, but I caught Rambo III on TV the other week and the irony there is painful. Rambo’s kidnapped war buddy gives a whole speech on the spirit and resilience of the Mujihadeen, and at one point says: ‘We already had our Vietnam! Now you’re gonna have yours!’ SMH
It’s brutal but there’s a ton of comedic moments like the televangelist and Q being prominent in the movie.
YOLT is really underrated, as is Octopussy (the one where Bond dresses like a clown) They’re both known for the cringe aspects but they have some pretty tense moments. Moore disarms a nuke in a fairly toned down setting (besides the clown costume) and he actually isn’t, uh, clowning around as he usually does, he’s pissed and frantic.
I think this article gets a lot right but the statement that Brosnan is ‘nobody’s favorite,’ while technically correct, seems a bit harsh to me. He’s pretty consistently rated as being among the best of the Bonds to my knowledge, and actually was the favorite of myself and several other people I know growing up. Which is probably because, as the article says, he could combine the signatures of Connery, Moore and Dalton into one coherent package without pushing too hard on any one aspect.Nowadays, I’m not sure who I’d rate as the best Bond – it depends on the style of the film and the tastes of the time. I’d probably say that Casino Royale’s Craig is probably my favorite at the moment but that might just be because I love that film so much. But I do feel like Brosnan did an excellent job and matched the material perfectly.
Brosnan was absolutely beloved during his run as Bond, repeatedly hailed as the best since Connery. I was never as high on him, but as soon as Casino Royale hit and Craig proved the naysayers incredibly wrong, the pendulum swung and Brosnan’s estimation dropped similar to that of Dalton’s in the 1990s. I’m sure Brosnan will get a revision similar to how Dalton’s run has been embraced, especially now that the new flavor is the old flavor.
While I think Craig has a better run overall, Brosnan was my Bond as a kid who grew up in the 80s and 90s and saw his films first in the cinema. Goldeneye is a top 3 Bond for me, along with Casino Royale and From Russia With Love. I’ve also said it before but hey, one more time – Tomorrow Never Dies is super underrated.
I think the problem with the Brosnon run, was outside of Martin Campbell, the directors were less then stellar. I think the World is not Enough has probably the strongest script for the 4 Brosnon movies but the blandest direction and cinematography. Die another Day starts of ok and then goes completely off the rails in the 3rd act.
Michael Apted directed The World is Not Enough and is as well regarded a director as Martin Campbell.
Apted is a well regarded director but not for this type of movie and it really shows. Honestly I like the World is not Enough the best of Brosnan’s movies. I like the scope of the story, but visually and pacing wise it’s dull.
It is screamingly obvious in World is Not Enough that Apted has outsourced all the action to the second unit, meaning the action scenes feel like a completely different movie to the rest of it
I don’t think it helped that World had some of the blandest cinematography of the series. It somehow made all the world travelling dull looking.
Completely agree – Campbell can shoot an action scene…this is proven over and over and over in multiple movies.Apted cannot.
That self-satirizing/self-loathing take on the character may not be a
part of Brosnan’s actual Bond movies, but it doesn’t come from nowhere,
either.
Has everyone forgotten about Remington Steele (1982-1987)? This TV series launched Brosnan’s career and it involved Brosnan’s character acting as a front for a private detective agency because the real private detective was a woman who couldn’t get clients due to sexism. The “I’m handsome and dashing, but ultimately a joke” was inherent in this character.
And he was great on that show. And was surprisingly effective as an Irish terrorist in The Long Good Friday.
I was watching Remington Steele yesterday. Mr. Wu from Deadwood was on it and David Garrison from Married with Children. Playing period detectives.
It was his ironclad (heh) Steele contract that made the producers pivot to Dalton in the first place – his work on the show had made him the first choice to succeed Moore.
Actually they offered it to Dalton first, he was unavailable filming Brenda Starr, so they offered it to Brosnan. Then the network renewed Remington Steele for another season and Brosnan became unavailable. That delay moved the production schedule enough that Dalton became available.
A Small Town Is Perfectly Sufficient
The Spy Who Had A Platonic Friendship With MeCubic Zirconias Are TemporarySomeday Mention Someday Again
Goldeneye is the best of the Brosnan movies. Bond driving a tank in a suit, so cool. Tomorrow Never Dies is the second best because of Michelle Yeoh, a really cool set piece in papermill. World is Not Enough has a good snow sequence at least. Die Another Day is a bizarre movie where Bond has to stop basically a Death Star. Rosamund Pike is beautiful in it at least.
Brosnan gave us the Goldeneye video game and the ridiculous not-Aston-Martin-ejection-seat-car-flip-to-avoid-a-rocket and I think that’s all I really need to know about his run.
The opening 20-25 minutes of Die Another Day, right up to and including the scene where M and Bond talk after the hostage exchange, is a perfect James Bond short film. Seeing Bond fail, get tortured and basically face the consequences of being an international spy is amazing. It’s too bad the rest of the movie has to exist.
I enjoyed everything in Die Another Day, except for Halle Berry’s absolutely terrible acting. She is the only reason I have a hard time firing up that movie for a rewatch.
Nothing against this article, but this is definitely a “for my consideration” and veers super-heavily into YMMV territory. The success of the Bond formula seems to be that each entry (or lead) refracts back the feelings of the movie-goers at that time, through the lens of spy derring-do. And the Bond actor aligns with your generation is going to hold a special place. I’m 46, and Craig is my favorite Bond, but Brosnan is my second-fav, and my first. As a kid I watched the other Bonds on laserdisc, but Brosnan was my movie-theater Bond. Things that stand out without a rewatch:There’s a laid-back smugness that doesn’t scan as snobbery, but that he’s thinks he’s a little too clever for his surroundings. Also that maybe this job is a means to enjoy the finer things in life. And his movies are constantly reminding him that if that was his goal, he failed miserably through all of the hardship. And even through all of that, he definitely was the Bond who loved being Bond the most. Which helps the audience, by proxy, love being Bond the most.The opening to GoldenEye stands out as one of the best. Sure it’s a cool setpiece, but opening with a rug-pulling betrayal and an awesome Sean Bean. It’s hard to beat, and maybe is one of the reasons why Casino Royale has such an awesomely nutty, pre-007-status opener.
I definitely have to disagree about his handsomeness. No, he’s not a “brute,” and again, YMMV, but Brosnan might be the prettiest Bond. It’s a good thing that he doesn’t seem as fragile as Moore, or even Dalton at the time. It took Craig, who literally looks like he was chiseled out of granite, to make a definitive tack.Brosnan’s villains and plots could get a little ridiculous (and that’s part of the fun), but there were some really awesome set pieces. I don’t know if the budgets went up, or action sequences had just advanced overall since the 70s and 80s, but it’s a sea-change from the earlier Bond movies, where there’s a lot of tight shots and green screen. Craig’s Bond continues that trend, but Brosnan’s Bond really was a turning point in terms of on location action and stunts.If I have one criticism of the Craig-era (again, my favorite Bond) it’s that he’s too one-note (hardly a hot take). He’s pretty much a haunted man who is either despondent and bitter, or distracted with brutality. The looseness of Brosnan’s take means he can be more of a vessel to fit the movie, and the mood of moviegoers. Similarly, there’s a brooding heaviness to Craig’s movies that maybe I wish one could have been a slight departure from (which probably would have been the one everyone hated for a decade, before becoming the black sheep favorite.) I mean, for god sakes, even Q’s scenes seem weirdly sad.Also – if not for the movie, we would have never gotten the N64 GoldenEyeSo that’s my consideration. Love me some Brosnan Bond—and would have loved a Bean/Brosnan prequel to GoldenEye. But it was a a more civilized age when we didn’t build cinematic universes—just plain old franchise juggernauts.
If I have one criticism of the Craig-era (again, my favorite Bond) it’s that he’s too one-note (hardly a hot take). He’s pretty much a haunted man who is either despondent and bitter, or distracted with brutality.It feels like the Craig-era skipped a few movies. There needed to be two or three movies in between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall where Bond gets to have fun being in-his-prime Bond. Have some rough serialization across them where each successive “big bad” ties together, ending with Spectre. Then, to throw a curveball at audience expectations, Blofeld is just a figurehead (drop all the “foster brother” nonsense). That leads into Skyfall (it’s been Silva all along!), the death of Dench’s M, and Bond’s retirement going into No Time To Die.
It gives a clear arc to Bond, from his origin and Vesper to “classic Bond” to “bitter Bond”, so that getting shot and presumed dead in Skyfall has some real weight after two or three outings (instead of seeming like he retires at least once per movie) and losing “his” M gives some solid closure when he walks away.
He’ll always be Remington Steele to me. (Not a compliment.)
I think this writeup is too charitable to the Brosnan era, which is all over the place tonally and quite a bit sillier than it needed to be. When they rebooted with Goldeneye, there wasn’t a clear template for success (popular action movies of the time were star-driven and blockbusters were moving towards out-there Jurassic Park territory), so they went huge and silly but simultaneously tried to mine the Bond character for depth and anguish. The whole series feels like that Itchy & Scratchy focus group where Roger Meyer concludes that the kids want the cartoon to be full of zany over-the-top adventures, but also grounded and relatable.But there is merit in Bond embracing the goofiness. The Craig series is too beholden to its initial template — the grittiness of the Bourne series and Nolan’s Batman trilogy — which are completely out of fashion 15 years later. When they reboot it, they’ll have the MCU’s playbook tucked under their arm, which will give them permission to have some fun with it.
With hindsight, Brosnan feels like a really good jack-of-all-trades Bond. If you ranked the Bonds on a series of character traits, RPG-like, he wouldn’t be first in any of them, but he’d be near the top in most of them. He was suave and handsome, even if he never really achieved Connery levels in that regard. He could be pretty funny, in a deadpan kind of way. He wasn’t exactly Daniel Craig in achieving the “brutal killer” side of Bond, but he could convincingly play cold and remorseless when needed to (“For England, James?” “No. For me.”). He’s like a really good baseball player who can do a bunch of things pretty well, but was never truly elite at any one thing.
Dr. Kaufman: “I’m just a professional doing my job.”Brosnan’s Bond: “So am I.”[Bang]
“Belieffff me, Mr. Bond, I gould zhoot you from Ssshtutgart und make it look like zuicide…”
Brosnan: The Kenny Lofton of (James not Barry)Bonds. Not in the HOF but you’d always want one of him on your team
The positives for Brosnan:
* Three of his four movies were fun and exciting. They weren’t ridiculous like late Connery or Moore. They weren’t dreary slogs like Craig’s.
* He found a fairly good middlepoint between Connery and Moore
* He may be the most classically handsome of the Bonds.
The negatives:
* Other than Lazenby, he is probably the worst technical actor to play Bond. Moore didn’t take the role all that seriously, but the man had game in other roles.
* Saddled with some truly horrific female leads
* The movies do not age well, not from a cultural perspective, but from a technology perspective. “I WANT 14.4 modems!!!!”
Another poster talked about the themes of the movies and I kind of want to talk about the themes of the Bonds.
Connery’s Bond is a borderline criminal, someone whose love of country and inherent sense of duty keeps him from being a Glasgow version of Sonny Corleone or a freelance assassin.Lazenby basically copied that approach.Moore’s Bond is an English gentleman (until Craig, he was the only actor actually born in England) who believes that the upper class has a duty to serve. In a previous century, he’d be some colonial officer in South Africa or India, doing his duty for the King.Dalton’s Bond is a burnout. The only thing keeping him from swallowing his gun, or snapping and making a dozen other people swallow it, is his duty to his country and the pleasure he gets from food, drink and women. That is Fleming to a T.
Craig’s Bond is part Connery and part Dalton.
Brosnan… I can’t really define. He may be a borderline criminal, but more of the Thomas Crown (or David Niven in the Pink Panther series) variety. He’s got a bit of the gentleman like Moore. He’s just… a guy.
I think Brosan’s Bond was probably the best actor realistically (silly scenes like surfing down a glacier aside). He is probably the only one that could walk into a room and not blow his cover immediately, while also being handsome enough to have sexy time with all the ladies like Bond usually does. Imagine jacked Daniel Craig with his sharp ass face and piercing eyes walks in undercover as a waiter? I’m having him investigated immediately.
Yeah Brosnan is one of the few to actually use aliases and show a knowledge of other languages. Almost all of the Bond films forget he’s supposed to be a goddamn spy
In real life, the majority of espionage involves less gunplay, car chases and “sexpionage” (though the last one isn’t purely Hollywood, ex. Roald Dahl) and more infiltration/information (information….information…). The former can be pretty damn entertaining when it’s good in film and literature, so the appeal is understandable.
I’m an Old and a big fan of the franchise … and Brosnan is my favorite Bond. Someone else said it better than me in these comments – he has it all … the best traits of all of his predecessors rolled into one. I’ve read several of the original books and Brosnan just feels like what Fleming had in mind. And Goldeneye is the BEST Bond movie, period. It’s an absolute blast from start to finish.
Brosnan is my favorite Bond-I was in high-school when GoldenEye came out, so it was kind of the Bond I grew up with. I think Die Another Day is an absolutely terrible mess, but I really enjoyed GoldenEye, Tomorrow, and World. I have seen every single Bond movie there is, and GoldenEye is up there among the best for me. It is a real shame that Die Another Day was the last time Brosnan played the part-his take on Bond deserved a better finish. Maybe his Bond would be regarded better if the conclusion wasn’t such a dud.
The biggest problem with the Craig films (which as you say are generally quite good) IS Bond’s constant retiring and/or going rogue. He does it in literally every movie he’s in! Bond is more of an independant adventurer with loose ties to the British government at this point, and it just comes across as silly
This reminds me of a “A Bit Of Fru And Laurie” sketch called The Department. Hugh is a super secret spy who wants to leave the service so he can spend more time with his Japanese Fighting Fish, and Stephen Fry is the head of The Department who tries to get him to undertake a mission. I can just imagine a similar conversation with Craig’s Bond and M. “MI6 can go to hell! I’m finished, done away with, at last, period, no more, full stop, the end, full period! You can shove MI6 up your arse!”“I can’t do that, 007, and you know that. MI6 is a huge building housing hundreds of people, I couldn’t possibly shove it up my ass without a great deal of discomfort…”
“surfing, fencing with Madonna, and driving an invisible car around an ice castle”So, Tuesday.
Yah, doubt is just what I want from a movie about the coolest cockiest deadliest imperialist assassin lady-killer sadist spy that’s ever lived. Of course.
I largely agree with this, but for me, Brosnan was my favorite Bond. Connery is still definitive, and Craig does a good enough job, but Brosnan hit the sweet spot – fallible and noticeably human while still being relatively believable as a superspy, and able to balance the dramatic points and dry humor very well. (“If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’d developed an edifice complex!”) Granted, it helps that I grew up with his version – Tomorrow Never Dies was the first Bond I saw in theaters – but I saw them all on video, and he still stands out.Craig’s Bond is deeper as a character, but the one thing I always thought he lacked – and which is key to the Bond formula for me – is a sense of fun. Dalton’s films were dour affairs, and Craig’s films have often veered a bit too far into a grimdark sensibility for me, which isn’t shocking given their post-9/11 (and post-Bourne and Batman Begins) origins, and while Skyfall is a franchise highlight, the others felt like generic action movies more than “Bond films.” Brosnan managed to be much more purely enjoyable as Bond, while still having some depth (certainly compared to his predecessors – Connery was great but ultimately shallow, Lazenby was leaden, Dalton was one-note, and Moore’s films were just silly).
I may be relatively alone in feeling like the Craig-era films largely left behind a lot of what made the series fun (aside from, arguably, Skyfall, which was deliberately an homage to earlier films for the franchise’s 50th anniversary), but because of that, Brosnan still sits in my mind as the best of the Bonds. I just wish he had the writing he deserved, since other than possibly Goldeneye, they never figured out how to play to his strengths, and kept veering tonally too much to make the movies themselves stand out.
I can think of one bit of fun where Craig is concerned, the sequence in Quantum where Strawberry Fields takes him to a dingy hostel and insists that they need to stay there to maintain their cover, as they’re meant to appear as “teachers on sabbatical.” Smash cut to the two of them standing in the lobby of a very chic, well-appointed hotel as Bond deadpans to the receptionist “Hello, we’re teachers on sabbatical and we’ve just won the lottery.”
Of course, that’s literally the only outright joke I can immediately think of from the past 4 films, but I love it.
I should note – in case we didn’t know, Knives Out pretty obviously proved that Craig knows his way around comedy, and can be very funny (in both blatant and subtle ways) when given the right materials. But aside from one or two jokes like the one you mention, you wouldn’t know that from his Bond films.
Yeah I wish Craig had more chances for comedic moments, while Bond in reality would have to be pretty ruthless/messed up, he also would have to know how to act like a normal human being so he can blend in, and Craig’s Bond stands out like a sore thumb.
Think GoldenEye is a classic Bond. Brosnan was pretty much a blend of all previous Bond’s. The cool of Connery, English gent of Moore, killer instinct of Dalton. Probably his downfall. And the stupid Die Another Day, which is awful.
The 90’s kid in me will always appreciate the Brosnan movies because of the games associated with them. The more gadgets the better, I don’t need Bond to be realistic.
I always rooted for Brosnan in the role of Bond. Maybe because his breakout was on TV in “Remington Steele,” it seemed like the media was really enjoying the prospect of writing him off as a him-bo lightweight who would embarrass himself on the big screen (and maybe put the dinosaur James Bond out of his misery in the process). Instead, he did a nice job! In my private rankings, he ranks higher than Moore and Lazenby, and he was more enjoyable to watch than Timothy Dalton (who’s a skilled actor, but what he was bringing to the role never quite worked). It sucks that he got fired but, considering where he started, he has a lot to feel good about.
The Brosnan Bond movies often feinted at doing something new without actually doing it, which is fine because these films are defined by their formula. I think Goldeneye and especially Tomorrow Never Dies are all timers in the Bond canon. And the comments here are making think I should give The World Is Not Enough another try.
Pierce Brosnan suffered from exceptionally poor timing when he became Bond. He was originally slated to take over Bond while he was doing Remington Steele, because, well, as Remington Steele he was playing a character that wasn’t too far removed from Bond anyway – at least the Roger Moore version of Bond.And that was the problem – the comparison. By the time he took the role, Brosnan was now being compared to the grittier, more “real” Bond that Timothy Dalton portrayed, rather than the glam, suave quipster from the Moore films. Brosnan as Steele was looked at as a marked improvement over Moore – younger, more debonair, with more of an ability to play both playful and serious, and a guy who could course-correct the sad old-guy goofy vibe that Moore had reached by the time A View to a Kill hit the screens.But Brosnan was almost a decade removed from the good vibes of Steele when Dalton’s run as Bond ended. Now, Brosnan had to not only deal with the fact that he was older and less startlingly good-looking, but now Bond was not the debonair martini-swilling dandy that Moore turned him into. Now Bond was more of a physical force, someone whose action-to-womanizing ratio had been knocked back across the divide. So instead of being the Moore upgrade – again, at which he would have excelled – Brosnan was now the Dalton course-correction. He was expected to be a Bond with fewer rough edges, but with all of the action-packed force majeure that Dalton had instilled.At the time, I felt so bad for Brosnan because I had loved him in Steele and thought that he could have really made bank in the Bond role, had he gotten it when he was originally planned to take it over. He was in a no-win situation. His take on the glamorous, debonair spy was suddenly out of date, and he was forced to play a more driven, less charming character that was largely out of his wheelhouse. And that, to me, is why he never registered as impactfully as Bond as he should have – time and social mores had passed him by.
On this same note, I feel bad for whoever is tapped to be Bond after Craig. His movies gave Bond a bunch of grimdark backstories that weigh on the character like an anchor. Explicit info about the death of his parents and resulting psychological issues, a crazy foster brother, a soul-crushing lost love, etc. I have no idea where the Bond franchise goes from here. The Craig movies seemed to work to tie the story up in a serialized bow. The hard reboot better be HARD…..as in, complete change of gender and/or race.
I’m not sure that’s right.None of the press or fan conversation around Bond in the Brosnan era gave favourble comparisons with Dalton, whose movies were regarded as a disappointment.Brosnan was widely hailed at the time as an excellent Bond and the best since Connery.The positive reassessment of the Dalton films didn’t begin until well into the Craig era. While today the comparison might be made, nobody at the time was talking about Brosnan or his movies as a step down from Dalton.
Exactly. As I mentioned elsewhere, Dalton was the first choice, but was unavailable due to Brenda Starr, so they offered the part to Brosnan. Seeing Brosnan’s star increase, the producers of Remington Steele renewed the show for another season forcing Brosnan to drop out, which re-opened the door for Dalton.At the time, the reception to Dalton was lukewarm. The audience was used to 15 years of Roger Moore’s buffoonery. By the time GoldenEye opened, after a 6-year gap and lots of anticipation by a familiar audience, Brosnan was fully embraced as Bond and Dalton was a bit of a punch line. It was only during the Craig era that Brosnan’s stock dropped and Dalton’s films were reassessed as a return to Fleming’s Bond. But yeah, Brosnan was universally hailed during his run, I certainly never felt bad for him.
Brosnan certainly wasn’t hailed “universally” during his run. The reviews I read of his movies at the time were full of unfulfilled expectations, and the most common thread was, “I had expected him to be more charismatic.” In other words, people expected more of Steele from him than what they got.It is true, though, that Dalton’s Bond has been rescued in hindsight. I would take your “lukewarm” and raise it to “loathing,” at least from what I remember of the backlash. The funniest comments, of course, had nothing to do with his portrayal – “JAMES BOND ISN’T WELSH!” But most of the reviews I recall were upset at how angry Dalton played Bond, and that consequently any time there was a Bond-style quip, it sounded sour and bitter. Of course, as time has passed, that take has mellowed somewhat – and, natch, when Craig came into the picture, Dalton’s Bond looked positively upbeat by comparison.But to go back to Brosnan – one thing I remember being angry about with reviewers was the standard they were holding him to. The gist was that, by rights, he should have been the perfect James Bond, but somehow he wasn’t. And neither was he Remington Steele-as-Bond, which is what others expected. As poorly received in the moment that Dalton’s movies were, they still shifted the expectations of the Bond character markedly away from what they had been with Roger Moore in the driver’s seat, and my feeling is that the filmmakers tried to shoehorn Brosnan into that more physical, more action-oriented mold where he didn’t shine as brightly as he did whilst playing a more debonair and self-assured cerebral type.
I’m speaking to the reception of Brosnan as Bond, not necessarily the reviews of his films. The press and fan reactions in the late-1990s was generally pro-Brosnan, he was repeatedly hailed as the best since Connery – the perfect balance of all of the Bonds before him, even if the films fell short. Even Die Another Day was generally well-received when it opened, mostly as a 40th anniversary nostalgia celebration.
I thought the Daniel Craig bond movies were boring. Goldeneye was much more entertaining/fun for me. Brosnan is my favorite bond.
This was very light on Tomorrow Never Dies, which I put as the best Brosnan outing and probably a top 5 of all Bond movies for me. It’s got a reasonably grounded plot, Michelle Yeoh kicks ass, it moves at a brisk pace and it’s got a good run time (I think maybe shortest or second shortest in whole series). It makes for a packed and quick-paced flick. None of that backstory nonsense or anything…just straight Bond action mission. (the exception being a little bit of backstory re: his ex girlfriend I suppose).
And I put Dalton as my close second to Connery as far as best Bonds, so I’m glad to see people coming around to him and even Lazenby being not terrible (not great, but not nearly so bad….and OHMSS is kickass)
Tomorrow Never Dies has aged like fine wine in the era of fake news. It’s like a black comedy satire with explosions.
I don’t think Dalton gets enough credit for what he brought to Bond. I see way more of him in Craig’s portrayal than I do any other of the previous actors. Dalton was handicapped by the fact that his abbreviated stint saw the series trying to play catch-up with other 80’s action movies, but Cubby Broccoli was still cutting the checks and the movies were made according to his tastes. It’s how you can get a movie like License to Kill, where the inciting incident is Felix losing limbs while enduring torture after his new bride has been murdered, but the final action sequence takes place in the villain’s mechanized pyramid where Wayne Newton’s televangelist has his broadcast studio. Also, there are ninjas literally out of nowhere for a single scene.
Despite the silly stuff surrounding him, Dalton’s Bond has an iciness behind his smile that even Connery lacked; you get the sense that his charm and charisma are an affectation he only turns on when he needs to, and that this guy has no compunction preventing him from getting his hands dirty in the course of a mission. It’s a glimmer of the kind of all-business attitude that gets taken to extremes with Craig, playing a broken man living in a barely-furnished one-bedroom apartment and compelled to return to the job every time he attempts to walk away.Also agreed on Tomorrow; I think that movie was unfairly maligned at release and still hasn’t really received the re-evaluation it deserves. The only part of the plot that feels “off” now is that the preternaturally savvy media mogul who’s constantly conducting business on a touchscreen tablet computer – in 1997! – proudly boasts about how many magazines and newspapers he owns, yet I don’t think once mentions the Internet.
Also, there are ninjas literally out of nowhere for a single sceneEvery time I watch Licence to Kill, I’m like, oh yeah it’s Shang Tsung! I recall Licence to Kill was initially supposed to take place in China, but it became apparent that would be too difficult keeping the government ther happy so they kept it all in the Americas. I think I read Dalton’s next Bond film was supposed to be Portrait of a Lady for a 1991 release which is one of those big Bond “what ifs?”.
Dalton for all his iciness still to this day is probably the most gentlemanly, he is fairly invested in his lovers and they made a point for him not to sleep around (due to the AIDS crisis) Brosnan is a bit cringe in his horndog attitude and Craig’s Bond is just visibly disturbed as a human being.
if the Craig Bond films weren’t so stiflingly self-serious we wouldn’t have to sift through hundreds of think pieces about whether or not the character should be retired, changed, etc.they gave Brosnan – the best Bond – the worst Bond movies, other than GoldenEye which is, sorry old heads, the 100% best Bond movie period. the Craig era somehow squandered Javier Bardem AND Chrisoph Waltz and I for the life of me cannot understand how anybody says Craig is the best, or that other than Skyfall (and maybe No Time, which I’m seeing tonight) are much better than anything that came before it.
Brosnan is definitely my favorite Bond (and Goldeneye favorite movie). I suspect this is true for a lot of Millennials who grew up with that as our first experience and tied to the famous N64 game.
I found this retrospective on Brosnan’s Bond quite interesting to read. Brosnan was my childhood 007. I hadn’t gone back and watched the older movies before watching the Brosnan movies (mostly in theaters), except maybe to see some scenes here and there when it ran on cable. I saw enough of Connery to understand why his portrayal was so iconic, but it was really Brosnan who molded my conception of Bond. I remember when Craig took over the role I was very sad to see Brosnan go, and skeptical of Craig. I still have a pretty vivid recollection of my first time seeing the Casino Royale trailer, with it’s darker tone, and more sharp and kinetic action, that had shades of Bourne Identity. That trailer made Bond suddenly feel dangerous: he has a licence to kill, and he uses it. It was startling.
Now, all these years later, my conception of Bond has been redefined by Craig, and I have a hard time imagining anyone else pulling off the role. I think I’ve rewatched a Brosnan Bond movie (Tomorrow Never Dies, specifically) maybe once in the last 15 years. And only because it was on TV.So even though I am skeptical of someone new recapturing the magic, I am also excited at the possibility of the role (and the filmmaking style of the movies) evolving in an exciting new direction. I think it would actually be the worst possible thing to approach movies the exact same way that they have with Craig, just replacing him with a younger version of himself.I also think I should go back and watch some of the Brosnan Bonds again.
I was a 90s kid who was not much into action films unless there was a sci-fi element. That said, I read my first Fleming Bond at 14, and then read thru Goldfinger in order. By the time I got to the movies, I didn’t care for Brosnan much, he seemed like a pretty boy without any of Connery’s “run along now, man talk” brutish masculinity, and I liked Moore better just because. When I saw Casino Royale in 06, I thought they absolutely nailed it. He felt like Fleming’s Bond, especially in that he’s not the handsomest man in the world, but a bruiser, could be a bricklayer, and you’d forget about him as soon as you saw him.
Brosnan is just fine in the role. As much as I like Craig, I’ve never enjoyed him as 007. I don’t need another cynical secret agent. As a kid, I wanted a cool hero. I grew up with Connery, the epitome of cool. And I followed into the Moore era (never saw the last two, he was just too damn old). I like Moore, but again, not really as Bond. He always seemed to have this amused look on his face, though he did play it pretty straight (for him) in FYEO, which I consider his best Bond, and a good film in its own right. Saw the Dalton’s, and pretty much forgot about them. I consider Connery the best and Brosnan 2nd. As for the Craig’s, meh, I’ve seen Bourne.
It’s said that favorite Bonds are like favorite SNL casts – it’s the one from when you started watching. And Pierce was my Bond. I think he’s great in the role. What one might call an in-betweener I see as someone who walked an incredible tightrope between wit, charm, comedy, gravitas. A Brosnan 10 years more mature than he would’ve been had it not gone to Dalton is a little more hardened and brusque, which balances his less muscular physique. He’s still a wish-fulfillment Bond but more grounded, even when surrounded by increasingly ungrounded stories.Also his love scenes are SEXY! Rewatching the Bonds recently, I was struck by how unsexy a lot of them are despite their reputation. Some earlier ones feel kinda creepy or aggressive, or at best wry and winking, while the Craig ones are so overly emotional it’s really more of a love story. But Brosnan’s scenes with Scorupco, Hatcher, and Marceau specifically (Die Another Day is the exception here) are still legitimately sexy – and were definitely formative when I was an impressionable lad! He brought sexy back to the franchise.The movies are highly imperfect, with Goldeneye the best of the bunch (Campbell’s that workmanlike action director who’s just so solid and who gets precious little work these days), but Brosnan helps make them all very watchable.Also I think Brosnan’s theme songs are great. Goldeneye and World is Not Enough are bangers, and while Tomorrow Never Dies is fine, Surrender from the same movie (the end title which was the original main title) is great. Again, we won’t speak of Die Another Day here.
I just love Scorupco. She’s smoking hot in that Cuba beach scene.
“It’s said that favorite Bonds are like favorite SNL casts – it’s the one from when you started watching.”See also: Doctor Who
Honestly, I thought Brosnan was a pretty good Bond (GE was the first Bond I saw in theaters). As others have pointed out, he was a solid combination of his predecessors’ best traits, even if he wasn’t the best at any of them. The movies though, largely could not decide what they wanted to be. GE had a good balance of grounded (for Bond), humor and personal/world stakes. After that, things got goofier which as a teen I didn’t care about much, but looking back… they don’t always work.Craig never clicked as Bond for me. He was too far to the extreme of cold assassin in a way that didn’t work. Bond for me was always a lot like classic Batman – a playboy who enjoyed life but when night came around, he was all business (and yes, I know that interpretations of Bruce now focus on him as being Batman all the time and Bruce Wayne is an act to distract people, which is a stylistic choice). Connery in particular had that sense of enjoying cards, enjoying talking to women, but when it was time for the mission, he was a company man. Craig is like the polar opposite of that – someone who doesn’t seem to take joy in anything other than violence and doesn’t even seem to really like his employers. Weirdly, this Bond would have worked better post Cold War, as a “blunt instrument” with no direction.
“Almost nobody’s favorite Bond”
Except for the hundreds of thousands of kids who were first introduced to Bond via GoldenEye and the N64 game. Many people love Brosnan’s Bond.
1995 “reboot”? They cast a new actor. Sure, the prologue shows a mission in Bond’s earlier years but this not a true reboot like Casino Royale.
Brosnan was a great Bond who never got a great movie to be in. A couple were okay, a couple were not.
I prefer Brosnan’s Bond to Craig’s. Craig is a good actor and a very convincing action star but he doesn’t look or act like the character. The one thing that will define his version more than anything else is that his was the only Bond who never really seemed to like his job. I’m fine with the character questioning his life as a professional killer at some point but should the tone be always this morose? It is above all else an escapism franchise, and more realistic or not, even Craig’s films had silly stuff in them.
Brosnan, on the other hand, was always very clearly James Bond, even when he added personal touches to the character. The movies weren’t always great but they were unmistakably Bond movies*.*Although Die Another Day may have broken an important rule when it added a CGI invisible car.
Brosnan generally had trouble throwing a good punch, but surprisingly enough one of the best, if not the best, boss fight is in dish fight between Bond & Trevelyan in Goldeneye. Maybe that had more to do with Martin Campbell’s directing, but it’s a primal, fast and well shot fight sequence.
And Brosnan couldn’t have done it without Dalton paving the way for him! It’s clear that the original idea behind hiring Pierce Brosnan was so Cubby Broccoli could have Moore of the Same after Timothy Dalton’s darker flavor of Bond, but both Brosnan and the writers didn’t really want that.
Thank you for giving credit where credit is due to the Brosnan Bonds, which have a replay value that is a bit lacking in the Craig films. I have enjoyed rewatching all of the Brosnan films, including the one people laugh at (Die Another Day, with its invisible car and all that, but that intense fencing sequence is fantastic). Don’t get me wrong, the Craig films are indeed worth the praise folks heap on them, it is just that there is a particular heaviness about some of them that make them a bit of a grind to sit through again, if folks grok what I am trying to say.
Also, I forgot that the Craig Bond film that still garners the most praise, Casino Royale, was also directed by Campbell, who jump-started Brosnan’s Bond career with Goldeneye. Craig’s first Bond film is still considered by many to be his best, and Goldeneye, Brosnan’s first Bond film, is also considered to be the best of the bunch, funny that.
What keeps me from Goldeneye being an upper Bond is the horrible score. The funny thing is the parts of the score that work great are used in the N64 game but the majority of it is terrible in the movie.
I grew up watching Remington Steele and remember always saying, “This guy should be James Bond! Why isn’t Pierce Brosnan James Bond?”Then, years later, when the show ended and Dalton’s contract was up, we finally got Brosnan as James Bond. When Goldeneye came out, while I enjoyed it, I just couldn’t get past “That’s Remington Steele!”
I rather liked Timothy Dalton’s turn as Bond.
Brosnan’s Bond is any 90s kid’s favourite.Goldeneye is still my favourite by far, and that’s not even considering its awesome N64 game!That being said, the weird sex assassin lady was certainly a confusing thing to watch as a kid.
Brosnan, the ultimate in-betweener, is seemingly considered almost nobody’s favorite.You take that back.
I’m surprised the article didn’t mention Remington Steele. Brosnan was on EVERYONE’s wishlist as Bond because of that series.
After much delay and anticipation, he finally got the gig and underwhelmed, but fans accepted him because he followed the Dalton Bond, a version that wasn’t too popular at that time.
Going back to Goldeneye, I was surprised at how brutal that final fight between Bond and Trevelyan was (that fist fight in the dark was particularly intense – it was like something out of a Jason Bourne movie). I think the Brosnan Bond movies were always good about balancing that stuff with the comedy and silliness.
Actually, Brosnan *IS* my favorite Bond. I had him in mind while reading the books, before finding out that he was supposed to have played the role during the run of Remington Steele, and before Golden Eye came out. I was heartbroken when he stopped playing him.
Pierce Brosnan is absolutely my favorite Bond. He played the friction between “Problematic Bond” and “Cool Spy Bond” about as well as possible.
I didn’t mind the Brosnan movies at all, except The World is Not Enough. I didn’t really get the gimmick of the bad guy who could feel no pain. I also thought another snow-ski-action sequence was too much. I can watch Die Another Day again without a problem, though I suppose the racial-swap via sci-fi plastic surgery angle could get critiqued deeper nowadays. I wanted Halle Berry to get her own film. Catwoman was not the vehicle.
Goldeneye is one of the all time great bond movies and one of only a handful with a robust theme and some genuinely excellent dialogue. Not to mention some series best action set pieces. Situating the story in a real time and place, a post cold war Eastern Europe, then using that as meta-textual commentary on Bond’s relevance in culture was a totally revolutionary notion for the franchise at the time, and makes it one of the most rewatchable entries in the series. Also, there’s this lady villain who gets off on crushing men to death with her thighs. That’s WILD.
Brosnan had a bit of both sides to Bond: The Moore suaveness combined with the Connery/Dalton/Craig ruthlessness. People forget that Brosnan’s Bond straight-up murders a few people in cold blood. Has Craig even done that?
If the Craig movies (which, to be clear, are generally quite good, with several all-time highlights) spend a lot of time openly mulling over whether there’s a place for James Bond in today’s modern world, the Brosnan movies portray a superspy who doesn’t hesitate to complete his crowdpleasing mission, while still betraying little glimmers of uncertainty about his lifestyle.
…
[Craig’s]four movies want back in, too. They want to deliver old-fashioned James Bond-brand spectacle even in the face of nagging doubts about the formula’s, and its hero’s, viability. And that, precisely, is why to me, they never really worked – especially not the later ones. They are disjointed attempts at combining a humanized Bond with superhuman opponents. That’s not “quite good”, it’s the complete absence of a consistent concept. The Blofeld’s and Goldfinger’s of yore worked because Bond matched their confidence and their capability bit for bit and could play off them. Craig’s Bond should have been dead by the middle of Skyfall, being obviously outclassed by an opponent who knows everything, predicts everything, can do everything, has supernatural resilience and pockets with infinite capacity.The Craig formula worked somewhat in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace because it was reasonably consistent – even though it was justly described as trying to imitate Jason Bourne and as such didn’t bring anything really new to theaters. But the subsequent movies were an attempt at having your cake and eating it, too. The desperate attempt to cramp two completely different movies into one.
https://www.fiverr.com/web_ashiq2019/design-wordpress-website-with-divi-avada-child-or-any-theme
Pierce Brosnan will forever be “my” Bond. Even though a ton of people roughly my age who say that about Daniel Craig (who for sure did a great job), I fell in love with the franchise when Pierce was in the role. And I cannot understate what an important role the video games had in cementing that view. GoldenEye, obviously, and the N64 version of The World Is Not Enough, but also Nightfire and Everything or Nothing, which occupy a permanent spot in my heart.
Pierce’s saga is the best: flawless action, great set pieces and he just nailed the character! Daniel is too good looking and they turned him into a pathetic problematic daddy. Skyfall and Spectre offer great spectacle but Quantum of Solace and No Time To Die are pretty weak entries.