An Overdue Overview
Every fan has a favorite Bond actor, usually the first one he or she first spied glaring back at the audience through the gun barrel. Some were better than others, but the fact that they all seemed to click with some segment of the audience says something about the flexibility of the role. There is room for alternate interpretations.
So far none of the actors has borne a striking similarity to a young Hoagy Carmichael, the musician whose image was stuck in the mind’s eye of Ian Fleming as he created Bond. I am old enough to have watched Carmichael act on the TV series Laramie in 1960 and watched him hawk record collections on two-minute commercials in the 1970’s, and think I understood even at the time, what Fleming was fishing for.
I remember seeing Irish actor Derrick O’Connor battling Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 2 many years later, and understood at the time that his was the sort of face Fleming probably had in mind - decent-looking chap, but not at all striking, not especially memorable. Asked to describe him in the film I’d have said, “the thug with the Hitler haircut.” If you look up pictures of O’Connor on IMDb you’ll see him sporting a variety of hairstyles, each of which presents him in a completely different light. He was the sort of anonymously appealing bloke who could have been Bond.
After watching Daniel Craig in Layer Cake, I noticed his name cropping up on lists of possible Bonds, but personally considered him too boyish for the part, not realizing that an origin story was in the works. The last vestige of boyishness was quickly shed soon after Casino Royale.
When I saw the actor’s face on the poster for his third Bond film, Skyfall, I thought for all the world he was beginning to resemble Ben Gazzara. Craig was already venturing into his mid-forties, an age which can have a mysterious gravitational influence on a man’s face. Oddly enough, Daniel Craig was also starting to resemble Derrick O’Connor, just a bit. In retrospect, I have to think Craig was a fine choice to play James Bond.
The series had swung into action with the iconic Bond of Sean Connery, a determined young actor who had cut his teeth on such meaty roles as Shakespeare’s Harry Hotspur and Macbeth, and Tolstoy’s Count Vronsky before signing on as 007. Appearing in five Bond films over the five-year period that saw a swelling tide of Bondmania was probably a guaranteed recipe for burnout.
The seasoned veteran was replaced by a complete novice who happened to resemble his predecessor (at a distance), making George Lazenby the first Temp Bond. He is fondly remembered for nailing the final scene of his one Bond film, and might have gone on to acquit himself well in other entries, but like other members of his generation, Lazenby decided to pursue groovier interests.
Lured back by a massive payday for the first of what would turn into three encores, Sean Connery’s return to the role in Diamonds Are Forever hinted at a restoration to former glory. Unfortunately, the book had been one of Fleming’s weakest, and suddenly morphing his story about diamond smugglers into a low-rent retread of You Only Live Twice was a sure sign of series-fatigue.
The resulting garish, slapdash film gleefully chucks any remaining semblance of series continuity out the window, offering in return little besides Connery’s charm and a string of amusing stunts. Amazingly, that was enough to earn the film a temporary spot in Guinness World Records for the fastest sprint to $30 Million at the North American box office.
Roger Moore modestly admitted that he was no one’s first choice for most of the plum roles he played. His Beau Maverick filled the boots of departing James Garner’s Bret, he became The Saint after Patrick McGoohan turned down the opportunity, and though Moore played James Bond for over a decade, scripts were often slipped to Connery first in the vain hope that he would be tempted to return.
Moore’s first outing, Live and Let Die, had the advantage of being based on one of Fleming’s earliest thrillers, bypassing continuity issues. Stressing comedy and improbable set pieces, the film tiptoes through a racial minefield and tones down the more sadistic aspects of the book. It’s Bond as jolly family entertainment, if occasionally cheap-looking, an uneven film propped up by a solid score.
Roger Moore had dropped twenty pounds for his freshman effort, in which, despite being three years older than Connery, he resembles an up-and-coming male ingenue. Stiff and unconvincing in fight scenes, Moore’s Bond is an assemblage of dulcet tones, good manners, and a perfectly-tailored suit, which all worked together well enough to get by.
1983 saw a rare conjunction. All three actors who had thus far played Jame Bond appeared onscreen in various iterations of the character. Because of copyright restrictions Lazenby could only be identified as a “JB” for a cameo appearance in The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. : The Fifteen Years Later Affair, but everybody knew.
Moore’s version received a box-office boost by arriving in May. For better or worse Octopussy, based on nothing in particular, threw in everything but the kitchen sink, followed by the kitchen sink. Connery’s headliner, a forced remake of Thunderball, arrived in autumn and may have won the majority of laurels handed out that year if not the receipts. Considering the fact that the character had been written as a man in his mid-thirties, all three contestants were past their sell-by date. Connery wisely played his turn as a retirement film.
Moore unwisely prolonged his tenure long enough to encompass A View to a Kill, a madcap ripoff of Goldfinger, before yielding the field to Timothy Dalton for The Living Daylights.
The only British actor who could match Connery’s glowering brow, Dalton had been eyed as a possible replacement for Connery since the late 1960’s, when he was in his early 20’s. Reportedly, he had also been approached to take over for Moore in 1983’s Octopussy, but with Connery launching a competitive film set to open the same year, Eon flinched and stuck with their proven star.
Finally cast in the part at age 40, Dalton was given a thrilling introduction which, unfortunately, remained a career highlight, although he bristles with tightly-controlled energy throughout both outings as Bond.
The Living Daylights tantalized audiences with echos of From Russia With Love, before veering off into 1980’s geopolitics. Dalton’s second outing, Licence to Kill mined unused bits of the novel Live and Let Die along with the short story “Risico,” as if to sprinkle some genuine Fleming flavoring over the proceedings. At the time the film struck some critics as little more than a violent, unpleasant big-screen incarnation of television’s Miami Vice, and charted a marked decline in revenue.
Pierce Brosnan had been tapped to replace Moore after A View to a Kill but was forced to bow out when his television contract was extended for a fifth season of Remington Steele. The show’s first four seasons had seemed to be one long audition reel promoting Brosnan as the next 007. After Timothy Dalton was cast in the role, Brosnan continued to play a Bond-lookalike in Diet Coke commercials while he bided his time. Six years younger than Dalton, he could afford to wait.
When Brosnan attended the premiere of his first Bond film, Goldeneye, he was only 42, but had spent the past eight years standing in line. While casting a man who had made a career out of impersonating James Bond sounded like a blueprint for Lazenby 2.0, the resulting film was superb, a lavish, crisply-directed spectacle headed by good actors all around. Goldeneye set a standard of excellence no subsequent Bond film would attain until Casino Royale.
The filmmakers had given Brosnan’s Bond a lady-boss and a directive to dial down the male chauvinism a notch, but otherwise to keep making money by doing more of what had worked before. The money did keep rolling in, even when creative energy seemed to dip to an all-time low.
By 2005 there was finally a legitimate reason for a new Bond movie and a major reset for the series. Eon had at last snared the rights to Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, and named Daniel Craig its new star.
In retrospect the rebooted series seems to consist of a string of origin stories. The loss of his first great love, Vesper Lynd, becomes the open wound that turns a fledgling MI6 assassin into the Bond we all know.
After a stirring debut Craig’s Bond becomes mired in a meandering effort to manufacture a worthy substitute for the criminal syndicate SPECTRE, a move later rendered meaningless when Eon Productions also cornered the rights to the OG organization and the villain from Thunderball.
Moviegoers next delved into Bond’s boyhood trauma in Skyfall, before going on a tour of the mysterious connection between Bond and Blofeld in SPECTRE (lest that newest intellectual property go to waste). As if to hang a question mark over the future of the series, Bond thunders away in his DB5 beside a lover who seemed to be more than just the catch of the day.
When a fifth entry was announced, screenwriters who seemed determined to leave no stone unturned, latched onto the long-dormant plot of Fleming’s You Only Live Twice. This was somehow wedded not only to the heartbreaking ending of Casino Royale but to the apparent betrayal of Bond by his most recent love interest. All dangling plot strands were lovingly knitted into a tragic libretto, set to John Barry’s recurring theme of doomed love from O.H.M.S.S.
For diehard fans of both Fleming’s Bond and the movie version, the operatic ending was either slightly over the top or just about perfect. However, casual viewers may have been left feeling as if they had been sprayed with a firehose of ideas.
The film checks an impressive array of boxes from Fleming’s novel, including a suicide mission to destroy Dr. Shatterhand’s garden of death, a daughter who will grow up separated from her father, the apparent demise of 007, and a stirring tribute to Britain’s fallen hero.
Even considering a few blatant remakes, the upwards of two dozen films produced thus far surely account for nearly every notable thought Ian Fleming ever committed to paper. Yet, there will be more Bond movies. There have to be. The Bond phenomenon long ago achieved fusion status and now generates more power than it requires to sustain itself.
Judging from the latest entry, the Bond series will start over with a clean slate. Whatever that means.