Overview of Brosnan's time as Bond

[Kevin Roegele]

Well I really liked Brosnan as Bond. I would argue that he did bring something new to Bond. He brought a freshness not seen since Connery. His Bond felt like a breath of fresh air and took Bond into the 21st century with no apologies while all the previous films felt like they still had one leg stuck in the '60s.

With that said he did four Bond movies, one of which I think is among the top 2 or 3 in the franchise (Goldeneye), one that was damn good and a top 10 if not a great movie (The World is Not Enough) and two forgettable pieces of bland fare that had a few good moments but overall were mediocre (TND and DAD).

But with that said I would easily argue that over half of Moore's Bond movies were crap and that half of Connery's was bland or mediocre. Brosnan did bring in ew fans and made Bond click again and Goldeneye proved he could work without the Soviet Union (though it looks as the franchise grows he will be fighting terrorism more and more now, TWINE being his first real encounter with it but hardly the last).

And he did add a sense of regret to his Bond. His Bond was much more cynical and somewhat bitter about his past. But perhaps he wasn't regretfull as he was not sorry for his past he merely buried it in women and booze. Connery just didn't give a damn and it was all a joke to Moore (Dalton I suppose cared too much and was always firey angry) but Brosnan acknowledged the stupidity of it all or the senslessness or even futility but he accepted it and moved on.

Some people argue therefore Brosnan was too self-aware but I think that is what made his Bond work. He saw the problems with the world he lived in and his life but just buried it. I think we'll get a more emotional and grittier version of this from Craig in his upcoming run in 007's tux (provided of course he can make it a full 3 films which given the UNFAIR buzz, I have some doubts about).

Well said bud. Brosnan was always superb, but so often the material was below him. TWINE, for all it's pathetic attempts at action scenes (bar the boat chase), gave Brosnan some genuine emotional to play with throughout - guilt, betrayal and love, or something close to it. Then, somehow, you have the PS1 videogame/cartoon Die Another Day, which is such a backwards step it's untrue. Yet even when Brosnan is saying those wretched one-liners in DAD, you know he's capable of so much better.

As for Tomorrow Never Dies, sure, it's just 75% action, but it also has the emotion of 007 seeing a woman he once loved again, and feeling responsible for her demise. It has good one-liners, the best action of any of Brosnan's films, Michelle Yeoh, a good fast pace, cool gadgets, and a sober, slightly dark tone.

 

[jimmylace]

Well said bud. Brosnan was always superb, but so often the material was below him. TWINE, for all it's pathetic attempts at action scenes (bar the boat chase), gave Brosnan some genuine emotional to play with throughout - guilt, betrayal and love, or something close to it. Then, somehow, you have the PS1 videogame/cartoon Die Another Day, which is such a backwards step it's untrue. Yet even when Brosnan is saying those wretched one-liners in DAD, you know he's capable of so much better.

As for Tomorrow Never Dies, sure, it's just 75% action, but it also has the emotion of 007 seeing a woman he once loved again, and feeling responsible for her demise. It has good one-liners, the best action of any of Brosnan's films, Michelle Yeoh, a good fast pace, cool gadgets, and a sober, slightly dark tone.

I completely agree with you.

My favourite Bond happens to be Brosnan, because it his through his movies that I came to be interested in Bond, if only fleetingly.
As much as I have tried I could never really get into the others -although License to Kill and A View to a Kill are the ones that stuck for me outside of Brosnans.

The thing is, like you say, Brosnan was never given the chance to shine in his movies because the scripts were cliched.

There are only a few moments when you can see how Brosnan relished the role- shooting Marceau dead in TWINE, mourning and revenging the death of Teri Hatchers character in TND.

It was often said in interviews that Brosnan wasn't happy with the way the movies were scripted and it was he that wanted to get closer to Fleming's original incarnation.

I say the producers should have let him go out with a bang and stretch his acting chops., He deserved Casino Royale after all that he had done for the *now*franchise.

It's not that I have anything against Craig, but a bond "reboot" wasn't needed....CR could still have been done faithfully as a prequel, with later movies continuing on the previous timeline.

I hadn't grown tired of Brosnan, in fact I was just really getting into them after DAD *which I enjoyed* Die Another Day gets alot of stick, but it was always the intention of the writers to do an anniversary movie with lots of homages.

Imo the producers made a bad move treating Brosnan the way they did, they should have let him do as many more as he wanted.

They cast him aside with little regard and thus angered their audience which has led to Craig being denied the fresh-start he *may* deserve.

I think alot of the Craig bashing is simply because people didn't want a new Bond, at least not yet. The brosnan movies were crowd-pleasers, high-art or not, theres nothing wrong with that...the Bond movie universe is a separate entity. It will be interesting to see how Craig is regarded by the mass-audience and what the future of Bond holds.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Brosnan played a great Bond in my opinion. It's just unfortunately most of the Brosnan movies were either A). generic or B). sucked (with the exculsion of Goldeneye).

 

[MKO1234]

"Diamonds are forever was a very American movie" "License to Kill was a very American movie" Well how about Dr. No was a very Jamaican movie, From Russia with Love was a very Russian movie? Thunderball a very Bahaman movie? Moonraker a very outer space movie? Who cares, they are movies. They entertain me anyway. Well, to stay on the topic, I think Brosnan "meshing" all the different Bonds together was what made me like him so much in the role. He seemed to find that 'happy-medium' the character needed, not too dark, not too silly, but just the right mix. I'd say he's my favorite Bond next to Connery

 

[Everyman]

"Diamonds are forever was a very American movie" "License to Kill was a very American movie" Well how about Dr. No was a very Jamaican movie, From Russia with Love was a very Russian movie? Thunderball a very Bahaman movie? Moonraker a very outer space movie? Who cares, they are movies. They entertain me anyway.

It's not a question of setting, it's a question of atmosphere, tone, themes used, etc. Licence to Kill was American in the sense that the plot was the typical revenge against drug dealer, so common in American action movies in the 80s. DAF was also quite atypical as Bond, more like a spoof, and the fact that it was almost exclusively set in the USA didn't help much to get the tone right.

Oh, and From Russia With Love is not set in Russia, there is not even one scene in USSR (in the movie anyway).

 

[Danger Mouse]

I read an interview with Timothy Dalton, and he was asked about his reaction driving down Sunset Blvd. and seeing a billboard of Connery, Moore and Brosnan.

I apologise for the digression, but what was his reaction, by the way?

 

[Agentsands77]

P.S. Thunderball may have been the mosth yped film of its day (a '60s blockbuster before the summer blockbuster existed) but that movie was mediocre at best. A bland, boring piece of crap so I would definetly say Brosnan has topped it with GE and TWINE.

GOLDENEYE and THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH pale in comparison to THUNDERBALL, warts and all (especially TWINE, which is one of the more agonizing films to sit through that I've had the displeasure of watching).

GOLDENEYE has the unfortunate flaw of being one of the most inconsistent Bond films ever, despite having some really brilliant stuff in there. Firstly, the portrayal of Bond is terribly unbalanced - it simultaneously attempts to humanize Bond and retain the Roger Moore "wink at the camera" conception of Bond. Unfortunately, those approaches are incompatible.

Furthermore, GOLDENEYE also has a really slow first third, in which Bond doesn't do a whole lot. He's stuck for a really long time in a room with computer screens, and then he's just approaching a crime boss. Instead of driving the plot onwards and being our focal point, he's just kind of "there" for that section of the film. It doesn't really work.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH suffers from the same incompatibility of approaches that GOLDENEYE does, but to an even bigger degree - it strives to simultaneously be an almost serious drama of Shakespearean heights as well as a fun-for-the-family film full of ridiculous gadgetry and stunts. Unfortunately, neither side delivers. The drama is overblown, unbelievable, and poorly acted, and the action and quips are terrible as well.

Neither film has the style and flair of something like THUNDERBALL (they exist entirely in drab colors and settings), and isn't quite as memorable, either. GOLDENEYE does have elements that are as striking as the Brosnan era has ever been (Xenia Onatopp, for example, is an exceedingly memorable character), but it fails to live up to the overall level of pure cinema that THUNDERBALL does.

 

[Everyman]

I for once do like those times when Bond doesn't do much, when he is not the center of the plot. IN FRWL, the secondary characters had time to be developed because Bond was absent from the screen from time to time. That is something I liked in Goldeneye, and something I think which lacked in TND and DAD (well, everything lacked in DAD, and everything else there was too much of it, but still).

 

[Agentsands77]

It's not that Bond is just absent from the screen - it's that he doesn't do a whole lot, the whole film long. In FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, he takes charge early on and still starts moving the thing forward. In GOLDENEYE, not really - he always feels like one of many elements, not the focus.

 

[ROBOCOP CPU001]

ehh

Connery had proper material from the books..brosnan had no official story from flemming..

 

[Agentsands77]

ehh

Connery had proper material from the books..brosnan had no official story from flemming..

No excuse at all, IMO. There's no reason the last three Brosnan's films shouldn't have been 100 times better than they were, Fleming source material or not.

 

[Everyman]

It's not that Bond is just absent from the screen - it's that he doesn't do a whole lot, the whole film long. In FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, he takes charge early on and still starts moving the thing forward. In GOLDENEYE, not really - he always feels like one of many elements, not the focus.

I see what you mean, but I still think that if anything, the problem with Brosnan's Bond movies regarding the action and screentime was that often not enough time was spent developing the other characters. This is symptomatic in TND, when Paris Carver appears just to get killed shortly after. THat said, it might a problem every Bond after Connery had.

 

[ROBOCOP CPU001]

No excuse at all, IMO. There's no reason the last three Brosnan's films shouldn't have been 100 times better than they were, Fleming source material or not.

I was answering that you mentioned that connerys had that something, where as Brosnan didn't.

Brosnan delt with a charactor who was very old..he gave us Bond back..no easy thing to do.

 

[Irony-Man]

Brosnan proved what should have been evident form the history of the men who have played Bond. For Bond to succeed in films the person playing him has to have that indefinable quality of screen charisma. It is something that transcends personality and reaches out from the screen to connect to the audience.

Connery had it; Moore had it and so did Brosnan. Lazenby didn't. His Bond was a cipher with no discernible personality (perhaps he would have developed one if Lazenby had stayed with the role and learned to, oh I don't know... Act?). I think that Lazenby's portrayal has gained merit in the eyes of the fans simply because OHMSS is on of the best Bond films EXCEPT for its leading man. Dalton seemed so concerned with going back to the literary Bond that he buried any charisma he may have had. Dalton didn't realize that for every fan there are three Bonds: The literary Bond; the movie Bond; and their own idealized Bond that combines elements of the two. By concentrating two much on one interpretation he failed to present a Bond that engages the audience. It also didn't help that LTK is really, IMHO, one of the poorest Bond films with disjointed action, terrible music and leaden pacing.

Whatever the merits of Brosnan’s individual films, and like all movies they can only be subjectively, not objectively, debated, there is no denying that he managed to bring the character of Bond back into the public’s consciousness in a way that neither Lazenby nor Dalton had done. It will be interesting to see if Daniel Craig falls into the every other Bond curse or whether he manages to create a Bond that engages people the way the other three did.

 

[ROBOCOP CPU001]

lazenby was a good bond..

you do know, Lazenby was offerd a 7 picture bond deal.. if he stayed with the films we wouldn't be having this conversation.. His last film would have been octopussy.

 

[Kevin Roegele]

lazenby was a good bond..

you do know, Lazenby was offerd a 7 picture bond deal.. if he stayed with the films we wouldn't be having this conversation.. His last film would have been octopussy.

No, if he'd stayed for seven films he would have ended with For Your Eyes Only.

 

[pointman]

There's no doubt that Brosnan reminded everyone who Bond was/is but thats where it stops imo. He merely reintroduced Bond to a world who had either forgotton about him or who were just simply realising that, "hey, where the hell did James Bond go"? He did this with GE but everything after just got silly.
Was he a good Bond? He wasn't bad and thats what people will remember seeing as he's the Bond that is the most fresh in people's recent memory. But, he wasn't brilliant either, however, the former is what is more distinguishable and frequently accessed. Brosnan wasn't bad.

Should he have done one last movie? No. Brosnan was getting too old and his age clearly showed in DAD. Just because Moore did it, doesn't mean its right. What should hve happened was, the movies Brosnan did should hve been better. Afterall, he only did 4 movies, had he had 1 bad movie, hell had he 2 bad movies, if DAD had actually been good then him staying on for 1 last movie wouldn't have been much of an issue.
Brosnan had his time and his time objectively speaking is over. Will he be remembered? Of course. He reintroduced a character that had been away from cinema for long enough and did a reasonably good job with GE but for me, thats it. The other movies he did were just mediocre flicks with overblown action that was far removed from the elegance the first batch of Bond movies carried. These same mediocre movies imo had backslided into the ranks of movies such as xXx and that is just unacceptable. Tv shows like 24, movies like The Bourne movies were the wake up call the Bond franchise needed to reestablish its place as the ultimate spy flick.
CR looks incredible and I have faith in Craig. 16 more days and we'll all find out if classic Bond has returned.

 

[Kevin Roegele]

Thing is, you can't act Bond, effort and talent doesn't make any difference. You either have that awesome screen personna, the magnetic charm, or you don't. Moore had it, Connery had loads of it, and Brosnan has it.

 

[Agentsands77]

Thing is, you can't act Bond, effort and talent doesn't make any difference. You either have that awesome screen personna, the magnetic charm, or you don't. Moore had it, Connery had loads of it, and Brosnan has it.

Sure it does. Effort and talent makes all the difference in the world.

The reason Connery succeeded as Bond is that he was a good actor as well as charming (when he was coasting through the part, it was very apparent, but he had good material as well as good screen persona to back it up). His performances as Bond in the early Bond flicks is a great performance as well as full of charisma. People often fail to recognize that.

Roger Moore is a better actor than he's often given credit for. He overcomes not being believable at all physically purely because of the little nuances he gives his performance (the little looks, the subtleties of how he delivers his dialogue). Furthermore, he effortlessly delivers some of the worst dialogue the series has ever seen and makes them sound classy. He's not an Academy Award-deserving actor, of course, but his innate talent did make him work.

Pierce Brosnan *would* have been able to coast on his persona if he'd had the material to back him up (which he didn't) or at least handled the material in such a way to enhance it (which, again, he didn't). But with his Bond becoming more "dramatic", he was actually required to act, and that's where he flopped. Furthermore, his shortcomings showed in comparison to Connery and Moore in that he couldn't take a crappy line and turn it into gold.

Not that Brosnan was awful or anything or worthy of being utterly forgotten. He may have been terrible in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, but he was damn good in TOMORROW NEVER DIES and DIE ANOTHER DAY. But it's unfortunate that he never allowed himself to be as good as he could be (as well as that he never received quality material tailor-made for him). He just never had a distinctive Brosnan identity as far as Bond was concerned (Connery's, Moore's, and Dalton's Bonds are all very distinct - Brosnan's doesn't have that contrast to the others). Oh well.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

GOLDENEYE and THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH pale in comparison to THUNDERBALL, warts and all (especially TWINE, which is one of the more agonizing films to sit through that I've had the displeasure of watching).

GOLDENEYE has the unfortunate flaw of being one of the most inconsistent Bond films ever, despite having some really brilliant stuff in there. Firstly, the portrayal of Bond is terribly unbalanced - it simultaneously attempts to humanize Bond and retain the Roger Moore "wink at the camera" conception of Bond. Unfortunately, those approaches are incompatible.

Furthermore, GOLDENEYE also has a really slow first third, in which Bond doesn't do a whole lot. He's stuck for a really long time in a room with computer screens, and then he's just approaching a crime boss. Instead of driving the plot onwards and being our focal point, he's just kind of "there" for that section of the film. It doesn't really work.

That is so of base. Bond's deadly serious moments are suppose to be offset by the "in joke". Much like any good film of the action/adventure PG/PG-13 genre you nee to have that lite touch. Much like Star Wars, Indiana, or even North by Northwest. You can't pound people over the head with melodrama for 2 hours. It isn't fun.

Pacing wise it doesn't have near the problems of most of the series. Which feels like it bleeds together.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH suffers from the same incompatibility of approaches that GOLDENEYE does, but to an even bigger degree - it strives to simultaneously be an almost serious drama of Shakespearean heights as well as a fun-for-the-family film full of ridiculous gadgetry and stunts. Unfortunately, neither side delivers. The drama is overblown, unbelievable, and poorly acted, and the action and quips are terrible as well.

I completely disagree with this as well. My favorite two Bond films are GE and TWINE. Mainly because they walk that fine line so perfectly well, with the best Bond girls, and for me the best Bond. Bond's big personal moments as well reach heights that the other films can't touch.

Neither film has the style and flair of something like THUNDERBALL (they exist entirely in drab colors and settings), and isn't quite as memorable, either. GOLDENEYE does have elements that are as striking as the Brosnan era has ever been (Xenia Onatopp, for example, is an exceedingly memorable character), but it fails to live up to the overall level of pure cinema that THUNDERBALL does.

Thunderball isn't "pure cinema". Not one Bond film is.

Sure it does. Effort and talent makes all the difference in the world.

The reason Connery succeeded as Bond is that he was a good actor as well as charming (when he was coasting through the part, it was very apparent, but he had good material as well as good screen persona to back it up). His performances as Bond in the early Bond flicks is a great performance as well as full of charisma. People often fail to recognize that.

Roger Moore is a better actor than he's often given credit for. He overcomes not being believable at all physically purely because of the little nuances he gives his performance (the little looks, the subtleties of how he delivers his dialogue). Furthermore, he effortlessly delivers some of the worst dialogue the series has ever seen and makes them sound classy. He's not an Academy Award-deserving actor, of course, but his innate talent did make him work.

Pierce Brosnan *would* have been able to coast on his persona if he'd had the material to back him up (which he didn't) or at least handled the material in such a way to enhance it (which, again, he didn't). But with his Bond becoming more "dramatic", he was actually required to act, and that's where he flopped. Furthermore, his shortcomings showed in comparison to Connery and Moore in that he couldn't take a crappy line and turn it into gold.

Not that Brosnan was awful or anything or worthy of being utterly forgotten. He may have been terrible in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, but he was damn good in TOMORROW NEVER DIES and DIE ANOTHER DAY. But it's unfortunate that he never allowed himself to be as good as he could be (as well as that he never received quality material tailor-made for him). He just never had a distinctive Brosnan identity as far as Bond was concerned (Connery's, Moore's, and Dalton's Bonds are all very distinct - Brosnan's doesn't have that contrast to the others). Oh well.

Moore was terrible. How people seem to believe how a guy that could barely move comes close to Brosnan is beyond me. Why does he get away with his terrible material and lack of look? Because the films were made 20 years ago?

 

[Agentsands77]

That is so of base. Bond's deadly serious moments are suppose to be offset by the "in joke". Much like any good film of the action/adventure PG/PG-13 genre you nee to have that lite touch. Much like Star Wars, Indiana, or even North by Northwest. You can't pound people over the head with melodrama for 2 hours. It isn't fun.

It's one thing to add a joke, ala FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. It's another thing entirely to have Bond attempt to be uber-humanized and an uber-superhero at the same time, which is precisely what GOLDENEYE and THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH attempt to do.

There's a difference between tongue-in-cheek or light touch, which is what Indiana Jones does, and what the Brosnan films do. The Brosnan films take great amounts of silliness and try to combine theme with more humanized moments than have ever before been seen in the franchise. And it doesn't work. They're on two different extremes - you need to take the extremes down a notch to make it work.

You see, with Indiana Jones, we get a superhero who's entirely believable. Not a walking caricature, which is what Brosnan's Bond is. Indiana Jones does not appear immaculate after a fight, Indiana Jones does not speak entirely in innuendo. He's human all the time.

But honestly, I find this problem is less symptomatic of GOLDENEYE and more symptomatic of THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. It's not a huge issue for GOLDENEYE, because GOLDENEYE still manages to be entertaining and generally well-acted enough that it's not entirely jarring.

I *like* GOLDENEYE, I just don't think it's perfect. I think Brosnan feels like a non-entity in the film, I feel that its pacing is off (not more than a lot of the entries in the series, but it's still a flaw), and that it's more than a little unnecessarily drab. Still, it features a class about it that all the subsequent Brosnan films didn't really have, and has some of the best moments and action scenes in the series.

To get me to absolutely adore GOLDENEYE, you'd have had to cast Sean Bean as James Bond (the best Bond who never was, IMO), get rid of the "Bond dives after the plane" and replace the tank chase, and tighten up the script to shorten the whole section from when the Severnaya attack occurs to when Bond meets Xenia (that's the section that drags, IMO - otherwise, it moves rather quickly).

Pacing wise it doesn't have near the problems of most of the series. Which feels like it bleeds together.

I don't agree. Pacing-wise it's better than some, but it's about on par with a lot of the entries in the franchise. And let's face it, a lot of the Bond entires are pretty darn flawed.

I completely disagree with this as well. My favorite two Bond films are GE and TWINE. Mainly because they walk that fine line so perfectly well, with the best Bond girls, and for me the best Bond. Bond's big personal moments as well reach heights that the other films can't touch.

Then you and I have very little to say to eachother, because we'll entirely disagree on what qualifies as a good Bond film. I think THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH is absolutely terrible, IMO.

And while the girls of GOLDENEYE are solid, I hate both of the Bond girls in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (especially Sophie Marceau, whose performance makes me cringe with each scene).

Moore was terrible. How people seem to believe how a guy that could barely move comes close to Brosnan is beyond me. Why does he get away with his terrible material and lack of look? Because the films were made 20 years ago?

Roger Moore is an icon. And that's that. I think he runs circles around Brosnan - he's cooler and infinitely more entertaining (check out "Did I?" in MOONRAKER; it's a better Bond moment than Brosnan ever had). Believable? Not at all. But he manages to overcome that with the sense of humor with which he carries himself.

 

[pointman]

Thing is, you can't act Bond, effort and talent doesn't make any difference. You either have that awesome screen personna, the magnetic charm, or you don't. Moore had it, Connery had loads of it, and Brosnan has it.

Thats just it. A good actor can act Bond. I think it also depends on who said actor works with too. For instance, Although Connery is a power all by himself, the studio had to let Jack Lord (original felix lieter) go because they didn't want him to overshaddow Connery.
Actors are exactly what they are, actors. A good actor with the right material can easily be captivating with their performance and contrary to what you think it does require effort and talent.

 

[Bruce_Wayne29]

I think Pierce was so good in the role and was loved by so many because he took the most loved qualities of fan favourites Roger (the humor) and Sean (the coldness) and added something of his own into a very special performance. That's why he was more acepted than Dalton or Lazenby and even Craig who focused on just a specific type of performance.