JohnnyDelRay said:
Connery, of course. He's really the one to outline who Bond really is supposed to be. And that's why I put Craig at the bottom, because he's strayed the furthest.
Meant to be...based on what? Certainly not the novels, of which Dalton and Craig are proportedly the closest.
Squilookle said:
But in all the movies that followed he just seems to bash and punch his way to the finish. Hell, Spectre even has him uncovering a clue by punching a tunnel through a wall You wouldn't see any of the other Bond actors being so meat-headed.
He uncovered that clue by watching a rat and gauging the angle of the floor, and gauging that there was a room behind the plaster. How else is he going to get through it?
Squilookle said:
The new Bonds are so ashamed of everything that set the Bond films apart they transform him into just another average action grunt.
By my interpretation, I find the old Bonds far more generic. Probably the reason why I rate Craig, Bronsan, and Dalton highly is that they feel like actual human beings. Skilled, suave, and highly trained human beings, but people nonetheless. The Connery and Moore Bonds...what are their flaws, exactly? I haven't seen every Connery and Moore film, but come to think of it, I'm not sure if I can really say anything about their backstory that's presented in the films themselves, or any distinct weaknesses. Dalton, Bronsan, and Craig all have moments of vulnerability or at least, moments where they lose their cool. Connery and Moore ascribe more to the idea of power fantasy.
Which can have its charm - Goldfinger does take #4 spot on my Bond films list for a reason. But the Bonds of the Connery/Moore era are in the realm of what we consider pulp. The same pulp that Indiana Jones is a love letter to. I've found Bond to be at his best when it's shown changing times (post-Cold War in GoldenEye, post-9/11 in Casino Royale, information age in Skyfall and Spectre, etc.)
I guess to me, "generic" is "good guys vs' bad guys," or "guy gets the girl." Not that Bond DOESN'T get the girl nowadays, but I'm more likely to remember villains like Trevelyan (revenge), Silva (revenge), and leChiffe (economical greed), than those who want to take over the world because...reasons. When I look at how Mission: Impossible also made a transition from Cold War (the TV series), to post-Cold War (MI1) to the information age (Rogue Nation), and how it feels all the stronger for it, it's hard not to look on the old Bond films as products of a different time. Fun products to be sure, but I'm pretty sure that the Cold War didn't include satellites swallowing up US and Soviet astronauts by a villain who lived in a volcano. 0_0
Squilookle said:
That's pretty much how I see the lineup as well. I will always enjoy a Moore film (even Moonraker- come at me haters)
Moonraker was only good for that secret level in GoldenEye.
Squilookle said:
Craig is a new continuity, with a Rookie (but also an old fogey overdue for retirement apparently for some reason??) Bond in a post 9/11 world.
Or at least it was until Connery's rigged up DB-5 warped into Skyfall and just messed everything up. Now who knows what the hell is going on? Bond grew up under the same roof as his arch nemesis? Give me a freaking break....
Where's it stated that the DB-5 is the same car as the one in the original continuity? Maybe I missed something, but by my reading of Skyfall, the DB-5 is part of the overall themes of the film - a changing world, and how someone like Bond can operate in the age of cyber-terrorism (again, ideas that Spectre also ran with). The Aston Martin is part shoutout, part symbolic - it's the car that will take M to the place where she'll die, Judi Dench being the last link to the original continuity (in as much that she's the same actress). As I've explained elsewhere, Casino Royale is the start of the Craig era, but it's Skyfall that 'solidifies' the era in regards to its motifs, themes, etc.