You Only Live Twice (1967)

[plan9superfan]

Craig is to James Bond what Christian Bale is to Batman: the a***ole that barges in out of the blue and declares all the other mogvies non-existant, including the GOOD ones.

SEAN CONNERY AND MICHAEL KEATON 4-EVER!

[trekgeezer]

Hey plan9, can you spell j-u-v-e-n-i-l-e?

Connery was the first and actually the third to play Bond and in the beginning he gave Bond a very dangerous edge. The later ones during his tenure started the whole trend of being about the gadgets.

Lazenby, is somewhat under rated. I think he did a very servicable job.

Roger Moore was the producers first choice, but he was busy doing The Saint on TV. When he did take over the franchise, I think it eventually got sillier and sillier with each film.

I think Timothy Dalton did a very good job and is highly under rated in the part. He brought the edge back to Bond.

Pierce Brosnan also gave the character that dangerous edge, which Roger Moore just could not make believable.

I don't know about the Craig character, he certainly doesn't  look suave enough to be Bond.

Don't forget Sean in his unofficial outing as 007 in Never Say Never Again. You know that remake of Thunderball.

[daveblackeye15]

Connery if my favorite.

I liked Lazenby.

Roger Moore, is my least favorite.

Timothy Dalton made a great Bond. He had an edge and was given chances to show emotion, a rather uncommon sight for Bond.

Bronsman was good looking and he was suave. Another good Bond.

I'm willing to give the next guy a chance.

[Fearless Freep]

The only Bond I didn't like was when Roger Moore got old.  He did not age as well as Connery and the later movies with Moore being all wrinked fiirting with an equally geriatric  MoneyPenny was just creepy

[dean]

In terms of what th e books had [a racist, hard, bastard of a Bond] Dalton probably came closest. though in my minds eye, Connery is great and Dalton comes close.  The others do an ok job, so I'm not too fussed really [I mean it's a Bond movie!!!  It's not like someone will ever get an Oscar playing James Bond...these days especially.]

Haven't seen Layer Cake, but like most things, I'm watching it before I make any judgement other than 'he doesn't look like he'll do a bad job.'

[AndyC]

The Dalton movies actually tried to recapture some of the Connery Bond after the campy Roger Moore films. Unfortunately, the scripts sucked. First, too much basis in reality -- arms dealers, drug lords. Second, lame villains. Honestly, was Joe Don Baker really supposed to seem dangerous, or even competent, in The Living Daylights?

Brosnan had everything Bond should have, and could have been as good as Connery, but his movies had the same problems. Russian mobsters, media moguls, North Koreans? Where was the Billionaire with delusions of godhood, or SPECTRE? Too many generic tough guys and not enough stylish henchmen. Action that could be in any action movie.

Die Another Day was the closest to what a Bond movie should be, although I didn't like the idea of someone successfully imprisoning Bond, even if he did win in the end. I'm wary of this new Bond, but I'm hoping that they continue in the direction they were going with the last movie -- to get back what sets Bond apart from the other action heroes.

[trekgeezer]

The Brosnan era suffered from the end of the Cold War and not having the Russians as bad guys anymore. Dalton was in during the height of the Drug War, so of course he had to fight a drug lord.

Dalton, Brosnan, and Connery were all believable as the cold blooded killer that is James Bond.

[AndyC]

The Russians weren't really the bad guys in Bond films anyway. They often played a part, but I thought too much was made of the end of the Cold War and it's effect on Bond. Bond never needed Russians. He had Goldfinger, Stromberg, Drax, Blofeld, and a bunch of other rich kooks who weren't affiliated with any country.

As for the war on drugs, that was exactly my point. Everybody was fighting drug lords. Bond has got to stand apart from the other action movies. The villains can't be ordinary.

That was be one of the things I didn't like about Live and Let Die. Although it had a lot in its favour, the villain was basically a drug dealer and nothing more. He had a fancy underground lair, but it seemed added on for no purpose but to make the movie more Bond-like. Really, Live and Let Die was almost an attempt to stick Bond in a blaxploitation film. A good movie for many reasons (boat chase, redneck sheriff, Baron Samedi), but lacking as a Bond film.

Bond movies need a rich lunatic bent on nothing short of world domination (not lots of money, and certainly not higher network ratings). And the villain needs a henchman who is more than some scary tough guy. Give him a hat that slices through things, metal teeth, a steel claw, something cool.

[dean]

I guess it's harder and harder to 'set Bond apart' from action hero stereotypes, since the Bond films really did set a major trend of action cliches and stereotypes [such as hot babes, cool gadgets and lots of flying bullets]

And from what I remember in the books, most of the bad guys were always somehow affiliated with 'the other side' with lots of cloak and dagger stuff, and most of the really cool bad guys like Blofeld were members of either SMERSH or SPECTRE [can't remember about Goldfinger though I must admit]

Casino Royale was the first of the Bond books, and therefore has him without the gadgets, he had just got his '00' prefix and was generally inexperienced, but still obviously talented.  If they don't mess around with the source too much [that is, the book], it can make for quite an interesting film, since it has Bond back to his Baccarat playing best, and it's more focused [for the most part] on the espionage side of things rather than the action side [there really isn't, and shouldn't be, too much action in this one]

It would make for a nice new direction for the Bond series: by Die Another Day, Bond had lost his mystique along the way, with so much mindless action and pointless plots, and quite frankly it was getting tiresome.  Changing the format is the best choice the producers could have made [I mean, the last two films were really really formulaic I thought]

So all in all I'm looking foward to it.

[plan9superfan]

I'm soory, I am NOT looking forward to the Nolanizing of the Bond saga.

I say, if you wanna ignore all the WANNABE Bonds, fine. But don't ignore Sean Connery.

You can't just barge in and ignore the entire saga just because you think you are better than them (and you AREN'T).

[Neville]

Connery was substituted like 30 years ago. Get over it.

[trekgeezer]

I'm afraid there will be action. Craig got his two front teeth broken in one of the fight scenes and had to have the teeth crowned before they could continue filming.

[The Burgomaster]

There is really only one solution at this point:  Ben Affleck.

[Neville]

The Bond franchise jumped the shark when they made that rubber guy explode at the end of "Live and let die".  

[raj]

To me, the JtS moment was near the end of Moonraker, where they had the marines shoot it out with the bad guys in space.  OK, where do you go from there?  I lost interest a couple of movies after that, there wasn't as much character development, it was all neat gadgets and explosions. Too "Die Hard" for me.