Term limits for Bond
The Domino Effect
Posts: 3,638MI6 Agent
The U.S. and some other countries have term limits for their presidents. It's not something I agree with: I believe that in true democracies as long as the people want to keep re-electing someone, they should be allowed to, but that's beside the point...
However, having watched a rather old-looking DC cavorting with someone possibly half his age to conclude his Bond tenure in NTTD after having seen a very old-looking Roger Moore limp to his end, and an ancient-looking toupe finish atop Sean Connery's head, I think it's time that Bond actors hung up their PPKs before the hair greys, the crow's feet set in and the backs creak and groan with every movement.
I know that it takes forever to make a film these days and therefore unless you start with a Bond in his (or her) 20s - which I am not generally fond of - you can't get more than a couple of films before they reach their best before date. However, I'd rather see each actor only get 2 or perhaps 3 films than end up looking like the proverbial mutton-dressed-as-lamb.
Comments
I think it's up to the actor and producers (and internet fan forums) to decide when an actor is too old. As Gymkata says, people age differently. I don't think leading men in their fifties and actresses in their twenties as their leading ladies has to be a problem. Some fifty-year olds are look ten or even twenty years older, others don't. Some actresses who are 25 look like teenagers, others look like they are in their thirties. We also need to remember that this isn't a Hollywood invention. Some young women have relationships and even successful marriages with men who are 20-30 years older.
But when the actor looks significantly older than the actresses they are paired with in movie after movie it becomes a problem.
While I think Craig looked overall fantastic in NTTD I'll admit there were certain shots of him where I thought "yeah, its time for a new Bond".
For this particular story, the "craggy" look was finally appropriate.
The Domino Effect makes a reasonable point and it's an interesting topic for us to bat around but as long as any given Bond is putting bums on seats they will still be Bond. After NTTD came out I saw one comment on YouTube from someone that said they thought that DC looked more like Sid James every day. Perhaps a bit cruel, but then in the right light.....
Well, it may almost be deliberate, to have people think 'It's time for a new Bond now...' One reason for picking an actor in his late 30s early 40s is because 10 years on they'll be ready to move on, having aged. This works for the producers because they get the actor under contract for the first three, then the actor can ask for and get silly money. Seems Brosnan got to do that with one movie - DAD - but then they called his bluff, his hand wasn't that strong after DAD and with CR in the pipeline.
But if they hire a younger actor, then 10 years on when it's time for a change and he's getting big bucks, it's hard to sack them if he's still popular and the new guy isn't so appealing. You then have a problem where you have a new actor while the previous one is in his 40s and still looking viable. It almost happened with Connery but he'd aged so much and his look wasn't fashionable either in the 70s that Moore wasn't much under threat.
In some ways, Connery had aged unacceptably in DAF but at that point leading men did tend to look a bit rough by today's standards, all the same he was overweight. Moore was a kind of comedy Bond so he could hang on in there. It is sort of a problem of course because women age too, so you throw that into the mix, you have two leads not always going to appeal to disinterested teenagers.
Roger Moore 1927-2017