Bond, James Bond

Some brief thoughts about Mr. Bond and his films, in the wake of watching many of them on Spike TV last week. One note: I've never read any of Ian Fleming's novels.

Sean Connery: I think what I enjoy most in the Connery films at this point is Connery's expressions. For instance, in From Russia With Love (1962) when Bond and his cohorts are stealing the device from the Russian embassy, just after the bomb goes off Connery gives the panicked receptionist one of his "I'm terribly sorry for your misfortune" looks. Connery was also able to look serious and intense better than any other Bond actor (although Pierce Brosnan did pretty well, too).

I think Russia is probably my favorite of the Connery films. Goldfinger (1964) is quite good, too. A little on the campy side, but it has some great lines, and the basic plot idea is very cool. Also, Oddjob is the first great Bond villain.

Diamond Are Forever (1971) was kind of a mistake, I think. The sixties are over, and the ugly decor and silly humor of the seventies arrive in this film. Charles Gray just seems wrong as Blofeld (with hair!). The only scenes of this film that I truly enjoy are when Bond is climbing up the penthouse of the Whyte House, and when he's getting out of the sewer he's been trapped in (although the bright lights in the sewer are completely silly, of course). Jill St. John is completely unconvincing as Tiffany Case.

I don't think it was a mistake for Connery to come back for Never Say Never Again (1983), as it has some good points, especially concerns about his being an aging agent. The big problem is that - for contractual reasons - it's essentially a remake of Thunderball (1965), another weak Connery outing.

George Lazenby: It's a little weird to see him basically smirking his way through On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). It's not entirely unlike seeing Sam J. Jones mugging his way through Flash Gordon (1980), but at least in that case the latter was just baldly funny (in so many ways, too). Lazenby might have grown into the role, had he remained.

My recollection was that OHMSS was one of the better films, but the plot is disjointed and rather ridiculous on recent viewing. Telly Savalas is a pretty good Blofeld working with pretty weak material. Diana Rigg does a good job and is in most of the best scenes. Despite overshadowing Honor Blackman in The Avengers, I think Blackman comes out on the better end of the stick in their respective Bond films.

Trivia: Future Avengers heroine Joanna Lumley briefly appears in OHMSS.

Roger Moore: One of two actors who was unable to take the role initially because he was under contract to a television show, but who later took the role. (Pierce Brosnan - perhaps more famously - was the other.) I think Moore was also the oldest actor to take the role.

I suspect Moore was desirable because he was a name actor who could bring stability to a franchise which seemed to be floundering. It helped that he kicked off his run with Live and Let Die (1973), one of the better films in the series (and one of the few I didn't see last week, darn it).

The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) is a mediocre entry in the Bond series, almost saved by Christopher Lee, who to those of us who mainly know him as Saruman in The Lord of the Rings seems almost unrecognizable. (My Dad will probably find this observation close to sacrilegious, but at this point I can't remember any of his earlier films, assuming I saw them.)

The 1970s were a period of campy silliness, although The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) is a pretty good film, partly because it's basically ridiculous. "Agent Triple-X" indeed! Unfortunately the follow-up, Moonraker (1979) is nearly the worst of the Bond films, completely absurd all the way through. Oddly, this is the first Bond film I remember seeing.

Amazingly, things turned right around in the 80s, with For Your Eyes Only, one of the best bond films. It starts with Bond visiting his wife's grave, and then facing an unnamed assailant who has to be Blofeld. It's as if the producers wanted to put the past behind them and move into a new era. (It's also just a terrific action sequence.) And Eyes is a generally deadly-serious story of cold war espionage and revenge. It's not very flashy, but it is good. It's the one film between Russia and the Daltons which is basically a straight-ahead adventure with few frills. I watched this film dozens of times in the 1980s on cable TV.

The follow-up, Octopussy (1983), is okay, but Moore's swan song, A View To A Kill (1985) is just drek. Moore - 58 by this time - is looking his age by this point, but it's the script with just lets down the whole movie. This might just be the worst film in the series.

Timothy Dalton: Only starred in two Bond films, neither of which I'm a big fan of. Somehow I just never thought he looked like Bond. I think it's his eyes, which thought distinctive and expressive, don't seem right somehow.

On reflection, it seems that the most successful Bonds have been those who seemed like clear successors to the previous one: When Connery left, Moore seemed a good candidate due to his work on The Saint, and Lazenby didn't work out. When Moore left, people talked about Pierce Brosnan being a logical heir due to Remington Steele, but Dalton got the role instead. Each of the former men in the pairs got the role a short while later, and have proven more successful.

Pierce Brosnan: To be fair, Brosnan got the role partly because the producers apparently dithered so long after making the second Dalton film, License to Kill (1989), before making Goldeneye (1995), so Dalton decided to pursue other work. Goldeneye is a pretty good film, though. Contrast Sean Bean here with his appearance as Boromir in The Lord of the Rings. Then there's Famke Janssen's femme fatale, which she plays enthusiastically to the hilt.

The World is Not Enough (1999) is a fun little film; Sophie Marceau's turn as Elektra King makes her seem like the evil twin of Carole Bouquet's Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only. Unfortunately Denise Richards' Christmas Jones seems kind of ridiculously characterized.

I still haven't seen Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) or Die Another Day (2002).

I guess the producers ousted him following DAD. He turns 53 next year, but he's been a pretty good Bond, from what I've seen.

Daniel Craig: Cast as "James Blonde" (as some snarks in the press have put it) in Casino Royale (2006). If you accept my observation above about Bond successors, how do you think he'll turn out? Who is the logical successor to Bond at this point?

Apparently the Bond series was originally (way back 45 years ago) projected as a six-film series. I think it would be interesting if they put together a four-film arc, perhaps with a growing plot thread through the first three films to climax (heh) in the fourth film. After decades of Bond stopping villains creating space-based lasers or threatening to detonate a nuclear bomb, something more complex and subtle would be a welcome change. Maybe even the return of SPECTRE?

I bet we get more of the same, though. But that's not the worst thing. Bond is just fantasy, adventure and fun. That's how I take it, anyway.