Will Brosnan go down as a great Bond?
bones1971
Posts: 2MI6 Agent
I personally think he was fantastic and managed a certain Bond presence on film. He had just the right touch of humor and he wasn't over the top corny like some others.
Comments
Well, too use an old cliche, curiosity killed the cat, what do you think The Cat. Go on, let the cat out of the bag. (And with that, Im out of cliches - not a moment too soon)
Independent, one-shot comic books from the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia.
twitter.com/DrawnOutDad
If I could answer this one for The Cat. Curiosity killed The Cat, but satisfaction brought it back!
Satisfaction??? WHERE? Show me!
I'm not pushing my luck on this subject.
unfortunatly,his movies were pretty weak. Goldeneye was the only winner, as far as I'm concerned.
he ain't got nothin on Sean or Rog though....those are my homies
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
He can certainly hold his head high and be compared favourable as a Bond actor to the others. However, each has their own strengths and weaknesses as Bond, so I think they all brought something significant to the franchise. There we go ... Predator sits on the fence ... they are all great!
Oh Cat,you are a spoilsport ... and when you've finished maybe we'll ask MarJil his opiion as well
This has little to do with our opinions of his portrayal or his films. I'm like many others in admiring his performances a great deal but feeling that his films, for the most part, leave a lot to be desired.
For me, only TWINE even FELT like a Bond film. Director Apted was the only one who seemed to know how to set up a one-liner. That said, the film should have been a bit more colourful.
Brosnan was lucky in that he LOOKED like James Bond and his films were well marketed. And the press were very much behind him.
He was only as good as him material though. He could rarely put a spin on a duff line, though he shouldn't have needed to. 'You're mad', his reponse to Carver in TND is a cliche, but Mel Gibson might have said it in that 'hey-ho!' blue-eyed, punchline manner he had when needling Joss Ackland in Lethal Weapon 2. Brosnan just says it flat and some of his delivery is too plaintive and knackered out sounding imo.
What's more, lack of top one-liners = lack of personality = Bond becoming more iconic, with references to his trappings more than ever to compensate ie vodka martinis, Aston Martin etc. The changeover of directors caused this too! His Bond never had a terribly consistent personality cos his films don't. Similar, in fact, to the 1965-1971 years which had four different directors from Thunderball to DAF. Truthfully, Bond himself seems a different sort of guy in each film the iconography prevails.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Errrr. . .what does a "semi-American" look like?
Anyway, I'm not bothered by the Brosnan Bond not being in the U.S.--I'm more bothered by the fact so few of his locations have been particularly exotic or romantic (Hamburgh, Azerbaijan, etc.).
He will be the ONLY Bond for a whole generation, although my 8 year old nephew knows that he is Number 5. He Knows SC was no.1 from the LXG. He doesn't know who the 3 in between were and probably doesn't care. With the action movies and action games the last few Bond movies have been on par with their level. I don't think kids could watch FRWL today and enjoy it like I did when I was 8 in the 70's.
I know it's my mistake, since I can't possibly know what's the impact of the video games, but I think that's a bit of an overestimation of the role of video games...
That is sad. I care aboout scripts, I wanna know what is happening. But, Brosnan still was a good Bond, classy, eh... (see I have a system Sean is Bond, George is the rest, Roger is the funny, Tim is the serious, and Pierce is the classy). I really liked GE. It was the first film I saw but his other 3 were...eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, (personally, I liked DAF more than TWINE). And, sayanara...
To me his main strengths lie in a complicated morass of issues:
I think that he was the first Bond of the information/technology age, and therefore benefitted by being on TV, on Internet, in adverts for the huge product placement that his films contained. He therefore was seen as being "James Bond" by people who had not only seen the films, but by people who were merely curious and in a jewellers looking at Omega Watches for example. They may even have been influenced by his image and appeal to have a look at the product so placed. Therefore his overall visibility was much higher on the film going public's radar, and was more associated with the Bond role than any other Bond before him. For a generation (As 10 years is enough to grow up with an actor/series-look at Star Trek or the X files)he WAS Bond, and for many fans, he was the FACE of Bond.
His interpretation of the role, I agree, did vary depending on the situation that he was in. I think that he went from tired playboy to introvert. Consider GE, at the casino for the first, on the Cuban beach for the second. He was able to convey a range, and whether it was a WIDE range is another matter, of emotions and thoughtfullness about the character that most people hadn't seen in Roger Moore, for example. I do think that sometimes he did seem rather flat, a little embarrassed and I don't think that he did "angry Bond" that well. Compare, Brosnan's "Personal vendettas" to Dalton's and you see what I mean.
So in many ways, he was a bit of a hybrid of the styles that came before him. He did have an air of the debonair, but he never managed SC's "Coolness". Noone, would ever have thought of him as "cool". He did have some of SC's arrogant swagger and conceitedness but not enough, and this was accompanied by periods of introvesion, perhaps contradicting the arrogance and leading us to think that this James Bond is really, well, insecure. I think that actually Bond is insecure, in many ways, I think that it took PB for some people to see it. I think that he also had some of the better more human attributes of GL, and I think that there were times when his emotions obviously did get the better of him, and again, we return to the emphasis on soulfulness. The effect that Elektra King had on his Bond, as an example. He had some, but not all, of TD's intensity, and darkness, witness the feelings of desparation and betrayl that he feels when seeing Trevelyan in the statue park in Russia. He also had charm, like RM, and he had it, perhaps not like RM's spadefuls of inappropriate charm, but still in an overt and obvious way. Look at the way he charms his instructor in GE, for example.
Whilst his Bond may have been a hybrid, and so, perhaps, no bad thing, I think that his films, had bad screenplays, some poor direction and a misplaced idea of "spectacle". I agree, I think that the majority of people don't go to see a Bond film because they want to see explosions, or an Aston Martin, they go because they want to see Bond. I think that a lot of empahsis in his films was placed on his trappings, his environment, and not enough emphasis was placed on characterization, and plot development. My only exception to this I feel was TWINE, which was slightly better in this regard, and also some parts of GE, which in places seemed as though it was less return to the mainstream and more a return to the more character driven plots of before.
I don't think that any of PB's films had the writing or depth of characters or plot that FRWL, GF, OHMSS, FYEO, OP, TLD or even LTK had. Is that a shame? Did the Bond fit the film? Well, actually, yes I think that it is a shame, I think that he could have done better than what he was given.
I would have liked PB to do one more, a more character driven piece, an attempt to close his era with a FRWL, a OHMSS, a TLD, a FYEO, something that would have made us, fans , say, wow! Now that was a GREAT James Bond.
To paraphrase PB's interpretation of our hero:
"Close.....but no cigar"
~PD
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
DAD was a bad one to go out on
(then again, so were AVTAK and NSNA (or DAF))
(but for different reasons)
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
~PD
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
The critics? The fans? The general public?
The critics rave about him. So when he was cast that was half the battle won (the critics wern't so easy on Dalton ie Alexander Walker in the Evening Standard and they roasted Lazenby). Every TV write up seems to quote him as "the second best James Bond..". They also are kinder to his films then the fans. Even DAD got good reviews from some critics particularly if they liked Brosnan. He was a media darling and done well on the chatshow circuit and magazine covers - somethind Dalton never looked comfortable doing. In short, he played the game and won friends amongst the media.
The fans?
Well, these are more discerning. Its part of their lives and they are far more exacting and demanding then the critics in their own way.Many have read the books and it is not a contest on whether 007's should be worn on the left hand side or right.Not that kind of geekiness. They seem to be the bearers of the Fleming legacy - keeping the character in check and knowing what works and what doesn't.
And they seem to be the main critics of him and his films.
I've heard epithets on other websites about Brosnan such as bland,beige, "greatest hits package" and I have to agree that there is something missing in his portrayal of Bond ie the elegant growl of Connery, the humour of Moore, the dash of Dalton. He seems to be an elegant crowdpleaser exemplifying the 007 traits without making the role his own.
And the films have let him down. His four are not classics like GF or OHMSS. And the blame must lie with the producers for inconsistent directors, lousy villains and weak scripts. The main pull is in fact Pierce Brosnan but the fans hark back to the days when we had good identifiable Bond and good films..
The general public?
Well, he seems popular. They've been watching these things for forty years and they still sit down on the TV and watch them instead of Fame Academy. His box office pull is enormous and a new generation after 1995 say that he is their James Bond.
So who writes history? You decide...