Daniel Craig - any good as a Bond?Follow

I'm going to upset people and say I prefered Brosnan to Connery.

Opinions are like ********** everyone has one and that one is mine.

I'm one of those that agrees with this. Connery was great, Moore and Brosnan were just too pretty (and Brosnan runs like a girl), but I like Craig. Not having seen his second Bond effort yet, I still think he makes the best Bond since Connery.

Of course, no one will ever come within the same solar system as Lazenby.

Bond is a Royal Navy Commander, All Royal Navy Commanders run like girls.

At least I do not talk from mine. Potty Mouth

For his time and pretty much throughout the history of the Bond films, to me there was nobody better than Sean Connery. However, Daniel Craig is awesome and I look forward to seeing him play Bond for as long as he wants. I think he's the best Bond since Connery, for sure.

While I didn't care for Roger Moore's Bond, I will always admire him for his Simon Templar (aka, The Saint) portrayal. I love catching an old Saint show or The Avengers when I can. Mmmmm Mrs. Peel, you saucy vixen!

I never liked Connery as a Bond. His eyebrows were more groomed than mine, he was excessively slimy to the point of skeeviness, and frankly not that good. He tried really hard to be what Pierce Brosnan naturally was. The problem with Brosnan was that his scripts sucked. I went to The Bourne Identity franchise as my go-to action fix, since Bond got so comical and gimmicky.

Casino Royale is in my Netflix queque, but even the previews look more promising.

Edited, Nov 10th 2008 6:52am by Atomicflea

George Lazenby was appallingly wooden. Might check out this Robert chappy

You people have no appreciation for the genre-of-its-own that is James Bond. Casino Royale was garbage, just another run of the mill action movie. I don't like the new guy.

If I had to order the Bonds, it'd be

1) Connery
2) Moore
3) Brosnan
4) Dalton
5) New guy & the one-timer.

Each of the Bonds brought a different appearance to the role, to fit with the world times.

Connery was the kind of Bond that could be eating dinner with a girl, stick a knife into her stomach beneath it while kissing her, and say "She was just dying for a bite to eat" or something, and get away with it. He delivered the role in a time period in history where he was the kind of hero people wanted, in their books especially. His treatment of women fit into that time period too. The Bond women were all needing to be rescued, and were best fit as secretaries or as women who couldn't possibly understand or live in his world for very long.

Lazenby I think had potential, if he had chosen to stay with the role longer. He was much like Connery in how he moved, but he was constrained by the writing of OHMSS. If you watch, you see that he doesn't speak quite as much as the Bonds do normally in other films. Even though he was offered a contract for seven films, I don't think anyone had any intention to keep him for that long.

Moore was the escapist Bond, which is what audiences were looking for at that time period in the 70's and part of the 80's. The world was under the eye of the Cold War, so Bond films provided escapism for the public. I don't think a serious Bond like Connery would have really worked in this time period.

Dalton was a lot like the TV shows of that time period, and seemed to be geared more towards an American audience. License to Kill is a glorified Miami Vice episode, for example. The public watched TV shows with explosions and drug deals and ruthless characters, and they got them. Whether it was Leiter getting his leg chewed off, or the 'little valentine', it fit the bill.

Brosman was an attempt to bring Bond into the post-Cold War world, and modernize him. He relied on slick tricks and Q branch toys to a degree that not even Moore did. He was very action oriented (Die Another Day anyone?), stopped his smoking, wore Italian-suits, and was more than willing to be equal to women, unlike Connery (for example).

Craig is the new generation. A lot of movie franchises are being rebirthed, and are all going back to the source material to bring it closer to what made them popular in the first place. Gone are the days of Batman and Robin or Super Man III, we now have The Dark Knight and Superman Returns. Craig is a sign of the times, of people wanting to see all the excess stuff stripped away, and the characters being returned to solid, even sometimes more conservative, roots. And that is what this actor does.

My preferences though:

1) Connery/Craig
2) Moore (The Spy Who Loved Me)
3) Lazenby
4) Brosman
5) Dalton

We can always just make fun of terrorists, Ari. Bearded Middle-Eastern men are the new *****.

Edit: I say "new", but radical Islam has been present as an antagonist in Hollywood for most of the 90s. It's just, y'know, Iron Man...Batman Begins. The new nemesis is some vaguely bearded Oriental guy who turns out to be working for an evil white guy who's betraying his country or whatever.

Man, I miss the *****. You knew where you were with *****. They were evil, and Indiana Jones had to shoot them. End of metaphor.

Edited, Nov 11th 2008 9:45am by zepoodle

I was speaking kinda more broadly. I can see where I might not have been clear about that, though.

The earliest Bonds were about the Cold War German Communists, and they were easy to confuse with the *****, stylistically. Lots of snappy grey wool uniforms and jack-boots.

Actually, maybe the first Bond was about the ***** in the war. I'm feeling confused.


Yeah, I really hate the modern trend for generic Middle-eastern terrorist bad-guys, when there's no balancing good-guy Muslims or Middle-Easterners, except in independent productions that hardly anyone watches. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just one movie, but it's dozens and dozens of mainstream movies and TV series with baddy Muslims/Middle-Easterners, and not one solitary good side-kick Muslim/Middle-Easterner.

There's been a couple of Hollywood movies in the past decade where there has been a handsome Arab CIA agent who's the buddy of the hero, and I've been happy, and then both times the plot twist was that the Arab was a double-agent baddy after all, and I've been extremely dissapointed.

Edited, Nov 11th 2008 10:46am by Aripyanfar