I also wondered why Barry Nelson wasn’t on the list, if Niven made it? I wouldn’t vote for either of them, though.
Connery is my sentimental favorite, but I think Dalton is the truest to the books: grim and serious, with an occasional flash of humor. Connery, while excellent, was a tad too frivolous, too often, to be book-true, and the same goes for Brosnan. Craig is a bit too humour-LESS for my taste. The less said about Moore, the better.
So, I’d vote for Dalton as the “best” and Connery as my “favorite.”
However: I’m not sure ANY of these stylistic choices were up to the actors. Each time the producers found a new actor, they introduced subtle changes into the style of the movies. So you could argue that they were all just doing what they were told. Doesn’t change the outcome, though…TRM
**The great **-- Sean Connery. Absolutely perfect in the role. And he was in the two best Bond films – From Russia With Love and Goldfinger
The mediocre
Pierce Brosnan. Tolerable.
Roger Moore. Never better than OK, and often terrible.
The Terrible
Daniel Craig. No personality, lousy movies. Quantum of Solace rates with Moonraker as the worst Bond film – a lot of noisy, confusing chase scenes that were actively annoying to watch. And Casino Royal wasn’t much better.
Suspend Judgment
David Niven. Technically, you need to include Woody Allen, too. But **Casino Royale **was a mess, though as a comedy, it at least had some funny bits.
Don’t make me pull out another insult based on your username!
Face it: Casino Royale was a great movie. It deliberately experimented with the character and created a huge three-act plot which contained complex character arcs. It cmpletely rebuilt the character and had some fo the best action scenes and best drama scenes and best tension scenes in the entire series.
Then again, I was first introduced to James Bond in the books. I have the mental picture that he is a brutal, amoral person with a bunch of inner demons. Not a nice man, not a wit… but the sort of person you want on your side when it all turns to shit.
Craig won me over in the cold-open for Casino Royale, and you can see the character developing from “Barry-the-Baptist” towards the Bond of Goldfinger.
It didn’t make any goddamn sense and it left me with no feeling other than, “I waited 3 hours for that?” Also, the poker bits were done really, really badly.
Interesting point about Barry Nelson’s Bond – he’s the first Bond that has wit.
In the first Fleming books, Bond is cold and humorless (as Scruff notes). The 1954 Climax! adaptation changed Bond from the books, not only in making him American !! – and turned Felix Leiter into a Brit!), but also giving him witty lines. (“Are you the man who was shot?” “No, I’m the chap they missed!”). It was only after this appeared on TV that Fleming started loosening his character up. I don’t know if it’s cause and effect, or simply parallel character evolution, but Fleming certainly was aware of the character’s TV potential (he tried to come up with a TV character, “Commander Jamaica”, and wrote stories about him. When it didn’t sell as a TV show, he turned the stories into James Bond short stories)
I owe the observation to my friend (and onetime Doper) KevinLeeC
Interesting point, re: Bond loosening up in the later books. I haven’t noticed that, but will have to go back and see. To me, he is always the cold brute. (Except in the movies.)
Danial Craig, no doubt about it. The Connery Bond films were alright for what they were, but Casino Royale is the first Bond film that’s a genuinely good movie, and not just “good for a Bond film.”
I have a theory that Fleming actually wrote Casino Royale as a parody. Unfortunately, it was too subtle for the masses. So he tossed in his hat, humanized Bond a tad, and made bank by writing the other novels more or less straight.
I’ve read Fleming several times, and disagree with you both. I see him more as the average British guy with a bureaucratic job that sometimes involves killing folks. I’d have picked Michael Caine for the role, but I think he plays a fellow lower on the social class register than Bond.
And of the main contenders: Roger Moore, the smoothest, most intellectual.
Like Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief.
I never thought much of the Connery Bond. More of a hired gun. You can’t really call him suave. He couldn’t even make the trick gear seem like his idea, he was the beneficiary of sharper agent back at headquarters.
