Did he? I remember Moore from The Saint (although that was before his time as Bond), The Wild Geese, and Ffolkes. He did a couple other roles that played on, or against, his Bond persona, though.
I’d never heard that. I know they were considering it for Berry’s character from DAD, but not Yeoh’s.
You forgot The Persuaders! and his short tenure as Beau Maverick, the English cousin of gambler and raconteur Brett after James Garner left the show (which he had experience with in his previous role as “Silky” on The Alaskans, which literally just reused scripts from Maverick) but while Moore had held other roles, it was as Bond that he was known on film and for which he received the CBE. Like Connery before him, he had difficulty getting other work beyond playing parodies of the Bond role, and while ffolkes is really a pretty good turn as a decidedly non-Bond character I doubt you’d find one person in twenty who has seen it; even more The Wild Geese. In contrast, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig have all gone on to other starring roles.
I don’t know that it even got to a development phase or if Yeoh actually had any interest in starring in spinoff franchise. But she clearly made an impression as being able to carry an action role in an era when neither women or Asian actors were accepted as being able to do so in the US and European markets.
Stranger
I’ve never seen The Persuaders!. I was aware that Moore was on Maverick, but that’s about it. He made his biggest splash as Bond, but there were a few other ripples, as well.
I don’t think that Ffolkes is better known than The Wild Geese. TWG used to show up on TV from time to time. Had a hell of a cast; Richard Burton and Richard Harris, and Jack Watson very good as a drill instructor. I’ve seen part of Ffolkes once; keep thinking it might be fun to see again one of these days.
ffolkes (two small fs) is a great movie. James Mason and Tony Perkins chewing scenery magnificently! Clever plot.
The iold Geese as noted was shown on TBS regularly. I’d seen it a lot and I never knew that they cut out the same 10-15 minutes every time. Until I got the DVD I never knew anything happened between the plane taking off and Burton going to see Harris’s son. Quite a lot did! Funny how they always removed that part.
And Michael Parks showing how good a character actor he could be.
Re: ffolkes not being well-known. It was an HBO staple around the time we got cable. With Phantasm and Heaven Can Wait.
Somewhere, Roger Moore’s corpse is cracking a smile in delight that no one has yet mentioned Cannonball Run. Sorry, Roger.
I said he played on the Bond persona. That was the movie I had in mind.
“I got that reference”
I don’t know my Bond flicks- is the one with the tanker trucks with liquified drugs going down the mountain the same one where Bond goes to the circus dressed as a clown? Didn’t care for that one.
License to Kill
Octopussy
Tomorrow Never Dies has my favorite Bond (Brosnan), my favorite “Bond girl” (Yeoh) and my favorite Bond theme song (by Sheryl Crow). A pity the plot was so stupid (albeit still better than DID and TWINE).
It is essentially the same basic plot as You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me except with a villain whose fiendish goal was to…sell more advertising space? I just felt bad for Jonathan Pryce and was relieved to see him get a far better antagonist role the following year in Ronin along side other former Bond villain actors Michel Lonsdale and Sean Bean.
Stranger
That still beats the nefarious plan in Quantum of Solace. Which was actually tried in real life, and worked even worse there! (no spoilers!)
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
There’s actually a lot to like here. Pierce Brosnan comes into his own as 007. I thought Brosnan was a bit bland in Goldeneye. Here’s what I said:
And I stand by that. But here, Brosnan comes across as the cool, aloof Bond, though he does have some nice moments of intensity when he lets his guard down, then quickly puts it back up. Brosnan has figured out who his James Bond is, and I kind of dig it.
Then there’s Michelle Yeoh, who is just fantastic. Outstanding. Brilliant. Think of a superlative adjective, and she’s that. If they’d made a series of Wai Lin movies, I’d watch every one over and over. Her presence alone should earn this film a higher ranking than 22 of the 27 Bond films that Rotten Tomatoes gives it.
Judi Dench, who didn’t have much to do in Goldeneye, is now a new, hands-on type of M, and she’s a badass.
The action scenes are quite fun. Bond’s parachute drop into the ocean was very cool. The remote control car chase and the motorcycle chase, though both a bit silly, were quite exciting.
On the other hand, yeah, the plot is a mess. The Big Bad is a news media mogul who wants to start World War III because of… ratings? And he’s amassed an army of henchmen willing to kill and die for this? If his plan were successful, I can’t imagine his profits would come close to the overhead involved in building his invisible-to-radar ship, and GPS-jamming satellites, and his undoubdedly sky-high henchman payroll. Jonathan Pryce quite adequately chews the scenery in a Bond supervillain kind of way, but I can’t buy his motivation for a second.
The #2 bad guy is nothing but a generic big muscular blond guy. Meh. And the climax is just kind of a cacophony of explosions and chaos.
So, though I don’t think TND fully deserves the bad reputation around it, it’s surely not a top-tier Bond movie.
Next up: The World Is Not Enough
Helicopters do not work that way!
One of the best exchanges of the entire series:
Admiral Roebuck “You know, M, sometimes I don’t think you have the balls for this job.”
M “Maybe. But that means I don’t have to think with them all the time.”
It was particularly amusing for British audiences given Roebuck was played by Geoffrey Palmer, who had starred opposite Dench in the long-running sitcom As Time Goes By, in which the plot revolved around the two rekindling a long-past romantic relationship and often featured ‘spiky’ dialogue such as this.
Someone upthread commented on the Dr Kaufman assassination scene, another favourite bit of mine.
Overall this is my second-favourite Brosnan Bond after Goldeneye and I’d probably put it top 10 overall, despite the fair criticisms of it.
Over to Wiki to explain it.
They soon escape and contact the Royal Navy and the People’s Liberation Army Air Force to explain Carver’s scheme. Carver plans to destroy most of the Chinese government with the stolen missile, allowing a corrupt Chinese general named Chang to negotiate a truce between Britain and China, both of which will have begun a naval war. Once the conflict is over, Carver will be given exclusive broadcasting rights in China for the next century.
So, the intention is not to actually come to war, but pull back from it, and not for ratings but an exclusive deal worth billions. A somewhat better motivation.
The exposition isn’t done well, a couple of throwaway lines to explain it, and an important character that is shown only very briefly. I don’t think Chang has any actual lines.
That scene bugged me in real time. I just thought it was emblematic of the Brosnan era. Even for Bond movies it left science behind and ran on down the road.
Of course, supertankers with holds large enough for nuclear submarines would fold in half at the first big wave. And let’s not talk about hollow volcanoes. 
I have a similar view on this film as I do on Octopussy, but for slightly differing reasons. Octopussy veers between being quite thrilling, with a lot of Cold War intrigue, to the downright silliness of Tarzan screams, clown outfits etc. Tomorrow Never Dies has some terrific set pieces and scenes but also has some seriously cringeworthy stuff too (e.g. the cheesy beyond belief slow mo that crops up a lot during the final act when Bond and Wei Linn take down the stealth boat). Some of the dialogue is…not great.
I’ll echo the opinion someone has on the Kaufmann scene though. The best in the film and genuinely one of the best non-action scenes of any Bond, no exaggeration. The Kaufmann character is hilarious and Brosnan plays it really well too:
Bond: It won’t look like a suicide if you shoot me from over there.
Kaufmann: Mr Bond, I am a professor of forensic medicine. Believe me, I could shoot you from Stuttgart and still achieve the desired effect.