Topic: Phase 2 (Dalton/Brosnan) - Reviewing Bond's soft reboot era
For the record, I've been a lifelong fan for a good 25 or so years. Brosnan and to a lesser extent Dalton were my current Bonds. TLD, LTK and GE form a unique thoroughline for the character and I always feel compelled to watch those three in a row when I feel like watching one of them. Then I'm thinking, why not see the rest of Brosnan's? But its actually been a while since I saw any Bond. Probably since 2016, actually.
But, I actually started showing Bond films again to an old friend of mine who's never seen them, but didn't want to start off with the old ones, so I decided to start with the Dalton/Brosnan entries, or as I call them Phase 2 of Bond (fanon where I pretend their six films are a different continuity from Connery/Moore), and basically we saw The Living Daylights up to and including Die Another Day. He liked most of them, his favorites were GoldenEye, Die Another Day and Licence to Kill, in that order - he prefered when the formula was a bit tampered. He also thought the story was too complicated in TLD and TWINE, and he was bored by TND.
Personally, as I've been seeing these films for the first time since before 2015, I admit I enjoyed the experience more than I thought. And there was a loose sense of an arc for Bond, with him being world weary and unenthused by his job's bureaucracy, then abandoning it all for the sake of his good friend's tragedy, to returning to the job and accepting that its part of who he is, if not who he is entirely, to his ability to still feel empathy but unwilling to fall for anyone ever again, and then basically displaying his progress as coldly professional killer when he goes out to find one of the men responsible for his months of captivity.
I freely admit this is a tenuous arc to read, at best, and I won't deny that not everyone has or should see it that way. However, I do think there is a character progression and accentuation towards Bond's persona, even if its indirect and suggested at, rather than explicitly displayed and explored as in the Craig entries. Basically, its there, its just at the center of attention all the time, certainly not in TND.
Beyond that, I just enjoyed this round of Bond flicks. Most of them hold up, although my usual issues with some of them are still there. TLD's main weakness are the Roger Moore mainstays, which still annoy me - get Gogol and the Minister outta there, dang it! With GE, I've been wondering what was Travelyan's game - was he aware Bond was going to escape most of the time, or was he always intending to die, yet he always had a back-up plan? Its kinda obvious after a while, in a Joker-in-TDK kinda way. As for TND, I think the main problem with the film has always been its undercooked, overworked script. Clearly, the film peaks in the first third, right up where Bond offs Dr. Kauffman - who is seriously so brilliant, and yet he's in only one scene! Why couldn't he have been in the movie longer? Afterwards, it becomes a Roger Moore pastiche, complete with Bond's relentless barrage of one-liners and clever quips. Its too bad, because that first third is just as good as TLK and GE, with a hint of moral qualms present in the Bond-Paris bedroom scene (easily the best in the film). I just wish the rest of TND was like that. And TWINE... As good as it is, I think it suffers the opposite problem of Skyfall, which is not enough character exploration. And I'm not greedy - a little longer character interactions could've gone a long way. And I guess, I'd have kept Denise Richards' Christmas character as an insurance investigator, since the nuclear scientist is not AS prevalent or even as necessary to carry around the plot. Beyond that, I maintain TWINE has Brosnan's peak performance as Bond, and was an equal to Dalton here. And he was equally good in DAD, where his coldness almost has overtaken him and made him driven in an opposite way to how he was in LTK. I didn't like that at first, but then I realized that for this Bond, his job is his life, and when that was taken away from him, he still had to find who wronged him and he only could go with it a specific way. It made sense to me, and it was even clearer now.
Its a shame Brosnan didn't do Casino Roayle, because it could've completed or sealed, if you will, his tragedy as a cold, efficient killer, who did nonetheless still have a good heart. And as much I like Craig and his CR, I lament the Brosnan version.
Finally, here's my ranking of Phase 2 of Bond:
1. Licence to Kill
2. The World is Not Enough
3. GoldenEye
4. The Living Daylights
5. Die Another Day
6. Tomorrow Never Dies
Interestingly, TND was supposed to have been titled Tomorrow Never Lies. A bit more fitting, if you think about it. Anyway, next up, Phase 3 - the Craig era!
- but unlike you I disagree the screenplay issues for TND hamper its success. Like TB, which I also enjoy, TND's script is all over the place script-wise, but also like TB, it overcomes these with verve and vigour; like TB it also lags badly in its final scenes. The two-man attack on the stealth boat is one of the stupidest Bond finales, not because of its execution, but because its so daft - two agents against a mini-army? This is Stallone / Schwarzenegger territory. Once the hole is blown in the boat, the SBS should have been launching an amphibious raid. Bond doesn't have to do everything himself. Sadly that is exactly what happens in these four films and it does become repetitive.
