Burt Reynolds as James Bond
Gassy Man
USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent
Put aside all that you think you know about him now, including whether or not he could pull off an English accent. He was at the height of his abilities in the early 70s, had a lot of Connery's masculinity and self-confidence, and could do both action and humor. Connery was a diamond in the rough before being pegged for Bond -- with coaching, could Burt Reynolds have been James Bond?
Comments
Horrible idea..
One way to kill off the franchise
And why exactly would Reynolds have been required to pull off such an accent? James Bond isn't English.
We can be quite happy that EON went with Moore! -{
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Personally, I am very happy that EON went with Moore! -{
It would have been quite some risk to cast another non-Brit after George Lazenby. Failure was not an option. Burt Reynolds was a good enough actor that given the right coaching he may well have been a presentable James Bond to the general public. If''s, but's, maybe's. They went with Roger, they made the right choice.
Yes -{
What about Roger Moore or Sean Connery for "Smokey and the Bandit"? with coaching and pulling off an american accent maybe?
No, I don't think it could have worked.
True. They made the right choice.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Me too, me too... wait, on second thought, maybe Roger....nah, he was the right choice
A young Connery alpha male thing going on !
Could never see it working.
Yes, I know Rog appears in Cannonball Run as Bond. That's my point. He doesn't appear as a Reynolds type of guy; Reynolds does.
Connery was 10 years younger when he played a cowboy in Shalako and it flopped, because Connery is Connery with his accent, not with a fake american accent and a cowboy hat. Same as Reynolds faking a british accent and playing a british spy.
I see Reynolds alpha male thing closer to a young Brando than anything like Connery. All american. Same as Clint, also mentioned for Bond but totally inappropiate.
Shalako suffers from any number of problems, including having a middling plot and tedious pace. Connery sounds the same to me in that film as he does as Bond, so I'm not sure he's affecting an "American" accent at all in a movie about Europeans struggling to survive the U. S. frontier.
The point about Moore is that he does appear in a Burt Reynolds type of film, even if he does not play the Burt Reynolds part. As a mostly light comedic actor, Moore could have played Bandit if they had tweaked the character -- certainly Reynolds' attempt at light comedy owes itself on some level to light comedies of yesteryear. The difference was by the 1970s, instead of a Cary Grant or Rock Hudson type, which Moore more easily fits, the lead became some hairy alpha male with a porn stache, in part, I suspect, because Connery had redefined what the male lead was supposed to be like physically.
The film doesn't rely on Bandit being an alpha male so much as being charming and rogue-ish. But to play a Bond that has Connery's characteristics, as we're talking about succeeding Connery in the early 1970s, someone approximately Connery's masculinity would have made more sense. Lazenby had it. Reynolds has it. Moore does not, hence the Bond films becoming more campy comedies than testosterone-filled romps. I'm not begrudging Moore's Bond films -- I enjoy them for what they are. But he definitely did not have Connery's machismo, which few actors do, of which Reynolds was one.
You focus only on masculinity as the main ingredient for Bond, but britishness is the key to the character. Bond is quintaessentially british. Reynolds is quintaessentially american. That's why Moore's Bond worked even if he didn't project the same masculinity as Connery did.
I can't imagine Reynolds in TSWLM PTS parachuting under the Union Jack (released in 1977, the same year as "Smokey and the Bandit"). Totally unbelievable.
I have to agree. Although I understand what Gassy is saying about that certain machismo Reynolds possessed that could remind some of Connery's swagger, Reynolds was too closely identified with an "American type" to really work well as Bond. I just don't think audiences, especially those who were true Bond fans, would have bought it.
I agree with Gassy too. Reynolds projected that swagger and virility. In "Deliverance" for instance is quite obvious. But that's not the key. I believe Roger Moore and Sean Connery saying "the things I do for England". Nobody would buy Burt Reynolds saying that.