It’s looking really good. It seems like they’ve gotten rid of the light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek nature of the older films, and started over again with a film that more accurately portrays what a man who kills people for a living would really be like. The trailer doesn’t really show it, but I hear that the special effects and gadgets have been toned down as well. Q doesn’t even appear in this one.
I can’t wait to watch it. I’m already hoping it’s a huge success and they make more in the same style.
The Roger Moore / Pierce Brosnan-style Bond was enjoyable enough, but twenty films is enough. Eventually you run out of wisecracks and stupid gags. It was time for a change, and it seems like they got this right on the money.
When Timothy Dalton took over the role, they promised us a grittier, edgier Bond.
When Pierce Brosnan took over the role, they promised us a grittier, edgier Bond.
Some parts of the trailer looked pretty cool, some parts had someone jumping through the air and catching hold of a crane. Maybe they got it right this time, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Dalton *was * a grittier, edgier Bond–especially compared to Roger Moore.
I’m really looking forward to this, too.
The one little thing that bothers me is that they reportedly changed the big showdown card game from baccarat to Texas hold-em. Bond should start trends, not follow them.
Sure, Bond movies are anachronistic, cartoony and childish, but I have to ask - what’s the point of a realistic James Bond? Without the light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek humor and the gadgets, in what way is it James Bond and not just some other secret agent?
If I want an emotionally scarred man save the world and have a bad time doing it, I’ll watch 24. And I do watch 24, when it doesn’t get too ridiculous.
Timothy Dalton was very believable as an assassin. Much more down to earth and gritty than Moore. Brosnan was a bit more light hearted, but still not nearly as toungue in cheek as the Moore flicks. I thought they hit a very nice blend of serious and humor in the Brosnan shows, especially in the last one.
As for no Q, that sucks. Q is part of the Bond mythos, it is entirely possible to have him in the film without it being too over the top.
Daniel Craig is just too fuckin’ ugly to play James Bond.
I know I’m going to get it for saying this, but Daniel Craig looks like a cross between Vladimir Putin and Bill Murray, and he has a square head and the physique of a boxer.
There is nothing suave about Craig. Bond needs to be rugged and suave at the same time. Nobody will ever top Sean Connery, in my opinion. I do understand the desire to give Bond a new and unique face, and go against the grain, and all that. But why re-invent the wheel? I’m sure they could have found an actor with a more rugged and aggressive look who also had conventionally handsome features. Why not have the best of both worlds?
When I hear “tongue-in-cheek humor and the gadgets” I think Rodger Moore and I want to throw the TV out the window. Moore, or the producers during Moore’s tenure, totally corruped Bond. James Bond, as written and played by Connery, especially early Connery, was gritty and cold. And that will be fun to see.
While I do agree with everything that was wrong with the Roger Moore era movies, he will forever be my favorite Bond because of Moonraker. That was a sweet movie.
I don’t find him ugly. I thought he was great in Layer Cake. Pierce Brosnan is definitely better looking, but he’s not someone you can really connect with. He was just the good looking actor playing James Bond.
Bond didn’t start out with “light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek humor”; the early Bond movies were (especially for the mores of the day) cold-blooded affairs with an unsentimental, brutal anti-hero of a protagonist. From Dr. No through On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Bond was a ruthless, slightly sadistic, hard-edged agent. Starting with Diamonds Are Forever, Connery’s last canonic and inarguably weakest Bond film, the movies started to take a much lighter hearted tone (perhaps because they couldn’t take Bond past the personal level of angst he suffered in the previous story and still follow the successful formula). Even Roger Moore’s first film, Live And Let Die, while trying (painfully) to tap into the whole blaxipolation phenomena, still managed to be brutal.
Moore, however, brought along the whole lighthearted persona from Charteris’ The Saint (sort of a somewhat comedic forerunner to The Equalizer, not at all like the Val Kilmer film), and while some of the Moore-era movies were kind of fun in a disposable way, they were never really iconic; they all sort of melded together, unsurprisingly since many of the plots were essentially recycled from earlier films. The Brosnan films were more of the same, only even more incoherent than the the worst of Moore’s movies. (I defy anyone to really make sense of Tomorrow Never Dies or Die Another Day.) And such films have been so widely parodied (and recent ones are almost to the point of self-parody) that making yet another is really pretty pointless. They might as well just contract with George Lucas to update the effects in You Only Live Twice and Moonraker and rerelease them.
Personally, I liked Dalton as Bond, especially in The Living Daylights (the The Third Man and Lawrence Of Arabia references made it kind of fun, too), and felt that the over-the-top stunts and lackluster Bond girl were balanced out by the great cinematography and Dalton’s steely delivery. (Okay, the Aston Martin coupe was pretty cool, too, but not essential.) Playing Bond out again as an Inspector Gadget clone is just tiresome. (It does, however, make for a good drinking game. “Hey, one shot for every gadget Bond collects from Q Branch which ends up being utterly essential in his mission.”) There needs to be more to Bond movies than guns, gadgets, and girls: anybody can do that.
I’m looking forward to the new movie as a reboot that gets rid of a lot of the residual chaff but keeps the wheat. (Judi Dench was the best thing that happened during the Brosnan period, and hopefully they’ll keep Samantha Bond as Moneypenny, too.) I’m moderately hopefully about the film. As for Craig not looking the part, he certainly fits the literary description of Bond to a tee (except for the hair color), and he has the sort of intensity that makes the characters he play memorable even in otherwise forgettable films. Bond isn’t pretty; he’s a ruthless (but intelligent) assassin, a hired wetboy working for the elite Double Oh Section of Her Majesty’s Secret Service with a penchant for fast women and strong drink. And my money is on Eva Green to be the best Bond girl since Diana Rigg.
[QUOTE=Caridwen]
I don’t find him ugly. I thought he was great in Layer Cake./QUOTE]
You may not think he’s ugly, but hundreds of people seem to think he is. (Read the IMDB boards or any movie forums discussing Bond.) There have been countless news articles questioning his looks. There is a whole website, Craignotbond.com lampooning his appearance.
When was there ever this sort of reaction to the looks of any other actor portraying James Bond?
James Bond should be unquestionably handsome. Just the fact that people have to argue about whether he is handsome or not is a big red flag. Nobody argues about whether Pierce Brosnan is handsome or not. Even people who claim that he “isn’t their type” would never say that he’s an unattractive guy.
