Was Roger Moore a rubbish Bond?
spiderfrommars
Posts: 13MI6 Agent
Okay, first things first, Moore was MY favourite Bond. But there are other people who think he was pretty awful. Too old, too much comedy, didn't look the part, wasn't fit enough, sleepwalked most his films, too wooden, storylines too far fetched, etc.
So are you a Moore hater? If so speak now or forever hold your piece.
So are you a Moore hater? If so speak now or forever hold your piece.
Comments
Roger Moore is my favourite Bond as well.
dont things like
Is Roger Moore a good Bond /Bad Bond /
Who was the Best Bond
What have u got against Roger Moore - All mean the same thing???
If moore was 'far too old' then surely the difference between the right age and too old is say, 10 years...
If that was is the case Pierce is too old already!
All in all, I think Moore did an admirable job, but I do not like many of the Moore-era films, but that's mostly to blame on the time period and not the actor.
I mean, I was shocked at how old Connery looked in NSNA when it came on tv recently. Like Fred Astaire in his older films, sort of toupeed and rickety at times.
As for Moore, I grew up with his stuff and his films have an enjoyable, Disneyish sense of fun about them. But he now he seems awfully camp in some of his films, with a very arch delivery. Still, for me his films displaced or supplanted the Connery classics in a way that the Brosnan films should have too, but didn't imo.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The James Bond Dossier | SPECTRE | Q-Branch James Bond Podcast
That's precisely why I like him. He could have a laugh at himself and never took Bond too seriously, realising that this was the best way to play an improbable secret agent.
And Moore looked better in Octopussy and A View to a Kill than SC did in Diamonds are Forever (aged 40 compared to Moore's 55 and 57 respectively.) I don't remember Moore having grey hair and wearing toupees.
I also think Moore was a very good actor, though Bond didn't showcase his greatest talents. Even more importantly, if Moore hadn't come along when he did, the Bond franchise would be long long dead.
In order to continue the series, and adapt it to the times, the series took a turn towards black exploitation with Live And Let Die, a forced serious that's nothing short of pathetic in The Man With The Golden Gun, over the top sillyness in Moonraker and Octopussy, and a complete lack of orginality in A View To A Kill. I spared The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only as they are the two Bond films of the Moore era to succeed as films, maintain the spirit of Fleming's 007 and the earliest films in addition to being unique and distinctive in their own right. In spite of these two films however, this era represents a drastic course change in the series that took us far away from what Ian Fleming, or the inital films were shooting for. Perhaps I'm just playing Monday-Morning Quarterback here, but I'd rather have taken a few shots at the box office for authenticity's sake than a large tone shift that would alter the perception of the series to this day.
All of this certainly is not Moore's fault, and much of the blame can be given to the directors and screen writers of the era. However, Roger Moore endorsed this kind of 007 because it played to his own strength as an actor, sophisticated comedy. Moore is not a bad actor, but he is not 007. The teenage-like horny-ness he dispays in attempting to court Goodnight is pathetic, and only a complete bimbo like Goodnight would fall for it. Mostly however, I could never take Moore seriously because he never took himself seriously. Granted, to paraphrase Sean Connery, Bond isn't shakespeare, but that doesn't mean he is a joke either. For someone who is supposed to be a killer, and a trained assasin with emotions and an enigma, Moore's Bond comes off as a self-parody rather than a different but equal interpretation of the role.
Honestly, I would have preferred Lazenby stayed. I know the box office would have suffered, and perhaps the films wouldn't have garnered the mass audience following some of the later Moore films did, but it's not like Live And Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun were all that successful with the tone they had. Had Lazenby stayed, the public would have eventually accepted him as 007, especially if Diamonds Are Forver was transformed into a serious revenge thriller. Who knows what would have happened then? After all, Lazenby would have been young enough to play Bond until the mid-1980's, and Dalton could have then followed him.
I realize I have the advantage of analyzing history after it's happened, but that senario is just too tempting to not contemplate.
I think many of our opinions are based on who we first saw play the role. I was 10 when "The Spy Who Loved Me" came out, and it was the first Bond movie I saw...and I absolutely loved it. Roger was part of the reason, and he was who I saw as Bond for many years. As for his age, he was looking pretty old by FYEO, but having just watched DAF, Connery looked absolutely horrible (toupee and belly) when he left the EON series.
I think every actor had his strengths and weaknesses, and I also believe the series actually would have died by now if every Bond played it exactly as Connery had. Connery may have provided the best overall balance, but I also will maintain until I die that he could not have played Bond in the version of OHMSS that we have all seen (and in my case, made my favorite Bond film). By the time it came out, he and his Bond persona were far too cynical to fall in love. Roger was the most comical, but when push came to shove, he could be very serious if necessary (just ask the guy in the car rolling down the mountain in FYEO). And let's face it, he had some really bad material with which to work (TMWTGG, AVTAK). Brosnan is probably the smoothest of the first five, Dalton is the most intense (and may actually be the best actor of the bunch), and Lazenby was amazing in the fight sequences. So, all of them gave us something special.
Rubbish? I could never say that about any of them. Some of the films maybe, but not the actors.
One of my favorite shows on TV as a kid was "The Saint," and when Connery left Bondhood, Moore seemed like a natural to replace him. If the scripts had been more serious, like "The Saint" or Connery's Bonds, I think Moore would have been just fine.
I'm a fan of Roger Moore---the Saint, Beau Maverick, Ffolkes...and especially as Sean in The Wild Geese. I wish he'd played Bond that way---or rather, that the era of his tenure would have allowed him to.
But not rubbish. Never rubbish
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I grew up during Moore's era, and I enjoy most of his Bond films, although I must say that he was too old by the time of AVTAK and he should not have done that film.
It seems that people often have the same general criticisms of Moore; he wasn't tough/ruthless enough, he didn't take the role seriously enough and he was too camp/self-parodic. I completely disagree with these criticisms. I don't think he was either camp or self-parodic. Nor do I think he failed to take the role seriously. It is true that he was more relaxed, and perhaps even more fun, than someone like Dalton, but I was always more convinced that Moore was James Bond than Dalton or Lazenby. Additionally, in terms of tughness/ruthlessness, Moore was arguably among the most ruthless of all Bonds. LALD, TMWTG, TSWLM and FYEO are testament to this. Also, while Moore wasn't among the toughest of the Bonds, I think he was very tough, but more importantly, I think he was convincingly tough. I don't have a problem with the way Moore played Bond because IMO he, along with Brosnan and Connery, understood that Bond is a ruthless spy but he is also a gentleman. It is Moore's combination of suaveness and ruthlessness that IMO makes him a legend.
Look at him in 'The Spy Who Loved Me', 'For Your Eyes Only' and 'Octopussy', for me his three best and my favourites of his. In those, he takes proceedings seriously, making for a far more satisfying film. Of course, there are jokes, but most Bond films had humour in- that's part of the appeal.
He's also terrific in his first 'Live and Let Die'. Though sillier than almost every film that went before it, he marks his territory out clearly there. However, it's probably his first film that was the jokiest.
His other films are less exceptional. 'A View To A Kill' I don't mind and it's inoffensive really, but the other two are probably the nadir of all Bond films. I watched them again recently and my opinion still hasn't changed.
'The Man With The Golden Gun' is clear evidence, imo, of how Moore's own performance is affected by the scripts. In the first half, he is hard edged and no nonsense. In the second half though, it's a different story with bad jokes and relentless silliness- mainly because the film takes a nosedive with the Kung Fu school scene and it's duff thereafter.
'Moonraker' he just seems to be sleepwalking. He barely even registers due to the spectacle and bombast of that affair, and even his one liners are mostly not in evidence. This is probably the film he seems wooden most, because to me, he's actually not given too much to do.
This is a big issue for me as a fan of Moore's that people say he was not a good actor. In the three favourites I mention, he is as good as any Bond before or after him.
And as has already been said, Moore to me only looked old in AVTAK. Roger was older when he joined than Connery was when he did DAF- who looked older at that point? It's remarkable Roger managed to look as good as he did for so long. Incidentally, on the 1987 'Happy Anniversary 007' documentary, bizarrely he looks better in that than he did two years earlier on AVTAK!
What's more, Moore is a great ambassador for the films. He took time out to do commentaries for all seven of his films (which I've really enjoyed of the ones I've done so far), and has done numerous commentaries/documentaries for other shows and films he's been in. A man that puts so much effort in celebrating what he did for the fans benefit shouldn't be criticised, imo. No other Bond so far has done so much retrospectively.
Voodoo, blaxploitation, "Names is for tombstones, baby", "half-cocked", J W Pepper, Nick Nack, slide whistle, karate girls, "Keeping the British end up", double take pigeon, Bondola, Jaws, Dolly, love, Bond in space, laser battle, "I think he's attempting re-entry", Bald headed man dropped down a chimney stack, Bibi Dahl, ice cream, parrot, Margaret Thatcher, mini-jet emerging from a fake horses ass, gorilla suit, clown suit, safar suits, Tarzan yells, "That's my little Octopussy", Beach Boys, quiche, Dick Tracy, fire truck, "James! James! Don't leave me!", "More, more powah!"
And through all of this: An old, pretty boy, arch, camp, international playboy Bond who was faster with a cheesy one liner than he was with his gun. A Bond whose knowledge consisted of the entire universe and everything in it. A Bond who wore his trousers so high they almost met his sagging nipples on the way down. A Bond who couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag. And a Bond who occasionally resembled his stuntmen.
Those were the days.
Moore's Bond was never rubbish. He did everything the producers ever asked of him and he did it with a becoming style and grace. He shepherded Bond thru the choppy waters of the 1970's and early 1980's. He starred in what is for my money one of the top three bond movies ever (TSWLM). He kept the series thriving and introduced a whole new generation of fans to Bond (I should know, I was part of that generation). He adapted the character of Bond to suit the changing times and no matter how outlandish the plot became he provided a steady anchor to every movie he appeared in. He probably overstayed his tenure by 2 or 3 films (in and of itself that is a sign of just how important the producers thought he was) but his contributions to Bond's ongoing success and vitality are beyond measure or reproach.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I wouldn't rank his films among my favorites, but they are definitely darned fun to watch, and Moore is certainly entertaining, even if he isn't my favorite. And Bond probably wouldn't have made it out of the 1970s without him.
He was more of a comediene bond than a super spy
Dan, what ever gave you the idea that I love Roger Moore?
Roger wasn't a bad fighter at all. The fight in Saida's dressing room (TMWTGG) with those three thugs is a good example. For the most part, Roger suffers in comparison to Sean Connery and George Lazenby. More so because he didn't benefit from Peter Hunt's editing style and direction in the same way that Sean and George did. I was interested by markdown's suggestion that this may have been a deliberate ploy to play to the image that Roger is not as tough as Sean. I hadn't really thought of that before.
And Roger was not camp.
That's an interesting point. It's probably true. Nonetheless I thought Moore was pretty convincing. As you noted, the fight in TMWTGG was terrific.
Hear hear. {[] I mean, he wasn't as serious as Dalton, but that doesn't mean he was camp.