It's Rolling Stone. Does anyone trust that rag for anything other than a birdcage liner?

Also, it's just one person's opinion. As with most film, it's highly-informed by the age of the reviewer and their life experiences. What's relevant to David Fear isn't necessarily relevant to anyone else. I prefer the cheesier Bond movies that leave the realism and brutality behind, but it's pretty clear from the box office numbers that just as many or more prefer Craig's version. Adjusted for inflation, the Craig movies compete with the Connery films for the top five grossing Bond flix.

Neither camp is right or wrong.

I much preferred Craig. Grew up with the Connery ones, didn't like any of the Bond movies until Dalton. They were too cheesy/campy for me.

@bratface said:

I much preferred Craig. Grew up with the Connery ones, didn't like any of the Bond movies until Dalton. They were too cheesy/campy for me.

Although I really have no opinion here nor there I have to say Craig at least physically looks the part. The dude is pretty diesel and looks like he can kick some ass. The absolutely worst in this department was either Pierce Brosnan who looked like a stiff wind could knock him over or Roger Moore who started off looking rather old for the part. For the record I grew up during the Roger Moore era.

@movie_nazi said:

@bratface said:

I much preferred Craig. Grew up with the Connery ones, didn't like any of the Bond movies until Dalton. They were too cheesy/campy for me.

Although I really have no opinion here nor there I have to say Craig at least physically looks the part. The dude is pretty diesel and looks like he can kick some ass. The absolutely worst in this department was either Pierce Brosnan who looked like a stiff wind could knock him over or Roger Moore who started off looking rather old for the part. For the record I grew up during the Roger Moore era.

I've always thought Brosnan was too prissy.

@bratface said:

@movie_nazi said:

@bratface said:

I much preferred Craig. Grew up with the Connery ones, didn't like any of the Bond movies until Dalton. They were too cheesy/campy for me.

Although I really have no opinion here nor there I have to say Craig at least physically looks the part. The dude is pretty diesel and looks like he can kick some ass. The absolutely worst in this department was either Pierce Brosnan who looked like a stiff wind could knock him over or Roger Moore who started off looking rather old for the part. For the record I grew up during the Roger Moore era.

I've always thought Brosnan was too prissy.

I see that as well but the dude had no muscle tone whatsoever.

Craig’s flesh-and-bone interpretation not only kept Casino Royale from feeling like a generic action movie coasting on pedigree; it would lay the groundwork for the next four Bond films that came after.

Ironic given that this film was basically attempting to copy the Bourne film, which thus served as the prototype of Craig's "Bond" films.

Destroyed an established franchise, with it's formulaic template firmly established but nonetheless giving fans something to look forward to in terms of how the next film would serve up it's classic tropes each time.

And it's creative failure summed up beautifully with its final entry - having to set up it's emotional pay off within the SAME film because nothing had built up to it before and having to kill off your hero because you have nowhere original to take the character bar throwing in some "shock" value.

Exactly the ending Craig's run of films deserved...

@Midi-chlorian_Count said:

Craig’s flesh-and-bone interpretation not only kept Casino Royale from feeling like a generic action movie coasting on pedigree; it would lay the groundwork for the next four Bond films that came after.

Ironic given that this film was basically attempting to copy the Bourne film, which thus served as the prototype of Craig's "Bond" films.

Destroyed an established franchise, with it's formulaic template firmly established but nonetheless giving fans something to look forward to in terms of how the next film would serve up it's classic tropes each time.

And it's creative failure summed up beautifully with its final entry - having to set up it's emotional pay off within the SAME film because nothing had built up to it before and having to kill off your hero because you have nowhere original to take the character bar throwing in some "shock" value.

Exactly the ending Craig's run of films deserved...

Jason Bourne is a HUGE BORE!

@mechajutaro said:

D.Craig wasn't terrible, nonetheless that article sets up a false binary right out of the gate.... Aside from George Lazenby, how do we even begin to say who was "the best" Bond compared to all of the others?

As venerated as Connery is, the writer who once described him as having the charisma of formica during his first couple of films wasn't exaggerating. Yeah, From Russia With Love is great; let's just not pretend that a lot of this memorableness isn't just as attributable to the presence of two phenomenally charismatic villains in the form of Donald "Red" Grant and Rosa Klebs. To say nothing of Daniela Whatshername wearing nothing but bedsheets and a ribbon around her neck in one scene. SC had great presence, and definitely grew into the role; by time the last couple of films rolled around though, he'd gotten paunchy and clearly was exhausted

Roger Moore still dishes out one liners more adroitly than any Bond before or since. Everyone who pointed out that he's probably the least "Alpha" of the Bonds is correct. Does anyone really think Connery, Dalton, or Craig would've looked in place in one of the zany yarns that Moore found himself in? Aside from perhaps For Your Eyes Only

Timothy Dalton arguably came closest to embodying Ian Fleming's original vision. Oddly enough, this return to Bond's roots was pretty fitting for the blood and guts heavy action movies of the 80s, where the franchise was now having to contend with characters like John McClain, Rambo, and Martin Riggs. By time the more light hearted 90s rolled around though, Dalt's brooding and glum take on 007 would've looked just as retrograde as Van Damme, Stallone, and to a lesser extent Arnie did during that same decade

Pierce Brosnan functions as something of a hybrid between Dalton and Moore. He's pretty deft with the quips, and is a passable enough actor to seem believable in the action sequences, nonetheless he also hews more closely to the playboy adventurer interpretation of the character set forth by Moore than he does Dalton's laser guided assassin. He was a perfect fit for a decade in which The Soviet Union was no longer worthy of being called a menace, the narcoterrorists depicted in LTK seemed to be on the wane, and entirely too many of us believed that Bill Clinton's jack-sery was cute, rather than unpresidential. But he was already outmoded by time the early 2000s, and yes 9/11, had rolled around

For all the flack Daniel Craig takes for not having much personality in his interoperation of Bond, one also wonders what Eon and any actor who took this role was supposed to do in the world we've all inhabited since The West began is nebulous and now seemingly failed War On Terror? The Jason Bourne comparisons are valid, and they also grievously ignore the influence that characters like Jack Bauer almost certainly wielded over the direction Bond took. Yeah, Craig era Bond is more or less a monosyllabic killing machine, mightily as Babs Broccoli tried to give him a depth heretofore unseen in these films. They also didn't really have a blueprint upon which to build a new and adapted-for-something-other-than-The Cold War Bond though

Iconic as Connery's portrayal was, in many respects it embodied everything that the counterculture later derided as plastic and phony within the lives of upper middle class people and their fantasies; that sure as hell wouldn't have flown in the 21st Century. For all the drubbing that Moore's work gets, he was a perfect fit for the 70s camp that this era of Bond traded in. Going back in that direction would've seemed worse than anachronistic in the 2000s. Dalton's rightly been sited as the spiritual precedent to Craig's interoperation, nonetheless he was still too flip, too playful, and nowhere near as physically pumped up to have fit into a cinematic landscape where all traces of fun had been declared verboten, and actors who took these sort of roles were now being called upon to pretty much put themselves through the Q course at Fort Bragg before filming. Brosnan's interpretation was nowhere near as mirthless or serious enough for a world that's knickers were soaking wet over the mere mention of names like Bourne or Jack Bauer

Asking "Who's the best Bond?" ignores the fact that each era of the franchise is representative of a historical context that's markedly different from the others

Bravo!

@mechajutaro said:

@Midi-chlorian_Count said:

Craig’s flesh-and-bone interpretation not only kept Casino Royale from feeling like a generic action movie coasting on pedigree; it would lay the groundwork for the next four Bond films that came after.

Ironic given that this film was basically attempting to copy the Bourne film, which thus served as the prototype of Craig's "Bond" films.

Destroyed an established franchise, with it's formulaic template firmly established but nonetheless giving fans something to look forward to in terms of how the next film would serve up it's classic tropes each time.

And it's creative failure summed up beautifully with its final entry - having to set up it's emotional pay off within the SAME film because nothing had built up to it before and having to kill off your hero because you have nowhere original to take the character bar throwing in some "shock" value.

Exactly the ending Craig's run of films deserved...

It's rather bizarre that Eon continued to try and tie everything into the events of Casino Royale, when the final scene in QOS implied that Bond had left that part of his life behind him. In a sense then, The Craig era anticipated The MCU's capacity for dragging out s-it for eons, and not having any sense of when to give it a rest, and move on to a fresh storyline

Hell, if we really want to be thorough in laying the blame for this trend in popular entertainment, let's call out The X-Files and it's iron determination to drag out it's equally vapid mytharc for 9 initial seasons too many, plus one movie that came out of left field, and a rebooted TV series

HEY!

I like the witty smarm and charm of an agent who knows a) he's got a licence to kill b) he's essentially dead anyway, so who GAF? c) balances the tension of the intelligence community, creative action, and being a playboy. It's serious and not serious all in one.

As such, to me:

• Craig/Dalton are too serious, look utterly miserable, weary, hopeless...never seemed to have any fun. There are plenty of other brooding action heroes, nothing to see here.
• Moore is too campy, not serious enough, and the 70s was just an ugly decade
• Brosnan was slick and seemed to have transitioned to his post-Bond years almost as elegantly as
• Connery, who remains iconic cool in an early 60s uncertain cold war milieu before everything changed

And, hey, my ranking could change if I actually sat down to watch through the Moore years again (though I'm not hopeful: when I was a kid in the mid-late 70s, Bond movies had seemed to descend to the level of made-for-tv movies, I don't remember anyone ever saying they were going to a movie theatre to watch a Bond movie in the time of Jaws and Rocky and Star Wars and Close Encounters, and Kramer vs. Kramer...)

@DRDMovieMusings said:

I like the witty smarm and charm of an agent who knows a) he's got a licence to kill b) he's essentially dead anyway, so who GAF? c) balances the tension of the intelligence community, creative action, and being a playboy. It's serious and not serious all in one.

As such, to me:

• Craig/Dalton are too serious, look utterly miserable, weary, hopeless...never seemed to have any fun. There are plenty of other brooding action heroes, nothing to see here.
• Moore is too campy, not serious enough, and the 70s was just an ugly decade
• Brosnan was slick and seemed to have transitioned to his post-Bond years almost as elegantly as
• Connery, who remains iconic cool in an early 60s uncertain cold war milieu before everything changed

And, hey, my ranking could change if I actually sat down to watch through the Moore years again (though I'm not hopeful: when I was a kid in the mid-late 70s, Bond movies had seemed to descend to the level of made-for-tv movies, I don't remember anyone ever saying they were going to a movie theatre to watch a Bond movie in the time of Jaws and Rocky and Star Wars and Close Encounters, and Kramer vs. Kramer...)

The Moore campy criticism is absolutely hilarious and I can assure you it doesn't get less brain numbing the more it's repeated. He was funny and had a sense of humour seriously what I so difficult about that to comprehend. And starting off every Bond film even Daniel's with an overdramatic song is already camp.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

I like the witty smarm and charm of an agent who knows a) he's got a licence to kill b) he's essentially dead anyway, so who GAF? c) balances the tension of the intelligence community, creative action, and being a playboy. It's serious and not serious all in one.

As such, to me:

• Craig/Dalton are too serious, look utterly miserable, weary, hopeless...never seemed to have any fun. There are plenty of other brooding action heroes, nothing to see here.
• Moore is too campy, not serious enough, and the 70s was just an ugly decade
• Brosnan was slick and seemed to have transitioned to his post-Bond years almost as elegantly as
• Connery, who remains iconic cool in an early 60s uncertain cold war milieu before everything changed

And, hey, my ranking could change if I actually sat down to watch through the Moore years again (though I'm not hopeful: when I was a kid in the mid-late 70s, Bond movies had seemed to descend to the level of made-for-tv movies, I don't remember anyone ever saying they were going to a movie theatre to watch a Bond movie in the time of Jaws and Rocky and Star Wars and Close Encounters, and Kramer vs. Kramer...)

The Moore campy criticism is absolutely hilarious and I can assure you it doesn't get less brain numbing the more it's repeated. He was funny and had a sense of humour seriously what is so difficult about that to comprehend? And starting off every Bond film even Daniel's with an overdramatic song is already camp.

@Adammm said:

@DRDMovieMusings said:

I like the witty smarm and charm of an agent who knows a) he's got a licence to kill b) he's essentially dead anyway, so who GAF? c) balances the tension of the intelligence community, creative action, and being a playboy. It's serious and not serious all in one.

As such, to me:

• Craig/Dalton are too serious, look utterly miserable, weary, hopeless...never seemed to have any fun. There are plenty of other brooding action heroes, nothing to see here.
• Moore is too campy, not serious enough, and the 70s was just an ugly decade
• Brosnan was slick and seemed to have transitioned to his post-Bond years almost as elegantly as
• Connery, who remains iconic cool in an early 60s uncertain cold war milieu before everything changed

And, hey, my ranking could change if I actually sat down to watch through the Moore years again (though I'm not hopeful: when I was a kid in the mid-late 70s, Bond movies had seemed to descend to the level of made-for-tv movies, I don't remember anyone ever saying they were going to a movie theatre to watch a Bond movie in the time of Jaws and Rocky and Star Wars and Close Encounters, and Kramer vs. Kramer...)

The Moore campy criticism is absolutely hilarious and I can assure you it doesn't get less brain numbing the more it's repeated. He was funny and had a sense of humour seriously what I so difficult about that to comprehend. And starting off every Bond film even Daniel's with an overdramatic song is already camp.

Okay, so, you liked Moore's Bond. Terrific. Enjoy!

Edit: On second thought, let's not pretend the same is often said of Dalton or Craig. There are reasons why it's so oft said of Moore, and NEVER said of the two I just mentioned. You think people were just out to get Moore, the guy who racked up the highest number of titles in the franchise? And, having said that, hey, maybe he was the most popular hence they couldn't keep him around long enough. Wouldn't bother me at all. As I said, it's not impossible that I'd sit through a few of his and come away thinking "wow, that was better than I thought." I'd be okay with that.

@mechajutaro said:

D.Craig wasn't terrible, nonetheless that article sets up a false binary right out of the gate.... Aside from George Lazenby, how do we even begin to say who was "the best" Bond compared to all of the others?

As venerated as Connery is, the writer who once described him as having the charisma of formica during his first couple of films wasn't exaggerating. Yeah, From Russia With Love is great; let's just not pretend that a lot of this memorableness isn't just as attributable to the presence of two phenomenally charismatic villains in the form of Donald "Red" Grant and Rosa Klebs. To say nothing of Daniela Whatshername wearing nothing but bedsheets and a ribbon around her neck in one scene. SC had great presence, and definitely grew into the role; by time the last couple of films rolled around though, he'd gotten paunchy and clearly was exhausted

Roger Moore still dishes out one liners more adroitly than any Bond before or since. Everyone who pointed out that he's probably the least "Alpha" of the Bonds is correct. Does anyone really think Connery, Dalton, or Craig would've looked in place in one of the zany yarns that Moore found himself in? Aside from perhaps For Your Eyes Only

Timothy Dalton arguably came closest to embodying Ian Fleming's original vision. Oddly enough, this return to Bond's roots was pretty fitting for the blood and guts heavy action movies of the 80s, where the franchise was now having to contend with characters like John McClain, Rambo, and Martin Riggs. By time the more light hearted 90s rolled around though, Dalt's brooding and glum take on 007 would've looked just as retrograde as Van Damme, Stallone, and to a lesser extent Arnie did during that same decade

Pierce Brosnan functions as something of a hybrid between Dalton and Moore. He's pretty deft with the quips, and is a passable enough actor to seem believable in the action sequences, nonetheless he also hews more closely to the playboy adventurer interpretation of the character set forth by Moore than he does Dalton's laser guided assassin. He was a perfect fit for a decade in which The Soviet Union was no longer worthy of being called a menace, the narcoterrorists depicted in LTK seemed to be on the wane, and entirely too many of us believed that Bill Clinton's jack-sery was cute, rather than unpresidential. But he was already outmoded by time the early 2000s, and yes 9/11, had rolled around

For all the flack Daniel Craig takes for not having much personality in his interoperation of Bond, one also wonders what Eon and any actor who took this role was supposed to do in the world we've all inhabited since The West began is nebulous and now seemingly failed War On Terror? The Jason Bourne comparisons are valid, and they also grievously ignore the influence that characters like Jack Bauer almost certainly wielded over the direction Bond took. Yeah, Craig era Bond is more or less a monosyllabic killing machine, mightily as Babs Broccoli tried to give him a depth heretofore unseen in these films. They also didn't really have a blueprint upon which to build a new and adapted-for-something-other-than-The Cold War Bond though

Iconic as Connery's portrayal was, in many respects it embodied everything that the counterculture later derided as plastic and phony within the lives of upper middle class people and their fantasies; that sure as hell wouldn't have flown in the 21st Century. For all the drubbing that Moore's work gets, he was a perfect fit for the 70s camp that this era of Bond traded in. Going back in that direction would've seemed worse than anachronistic in the 2000s. Dalton's rightly been sited as the spiritual precedent to Craig's interoperation, nonetheless he was still too flip, too playful, and nowhere near as physically pumped up to have fit into a cinematic landscape where all traces of fun had been declared verboten, and actors who took these sort of roles were now being called upon to pretty much put themselves through the Q course at Fort Bragg before filming. Brosnan's interpretation was nowhere near as mirthless or serious enough for a world that's knickers were soaking wet over the mere mention of names like Bourne or Jack Bauer

Asking "Who's the best Bond?" ignores the fact that each era of the franchise is representative of a historical context that's markedly different from the others

Connery fought and was almost bested in a fight with an elderly woman in a heavy knife shoe, Dalton lost to a petite female ninja and Craig pretended to have had sex with men to act tough in front of Silva in Skyfall so the answer to question is yes the Bonds you mentioned were in zany yarns without Rogers's help.

@mechajutaro said:

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@mechajutaro said:

D.Craig wasn't terrible, nonetheless that article sets up a false binary right out of the gate.... Aside from George Lazenby, how do we even begin to say who was "the best" Bond compared to all of the others?

As venerated as Connery is, the writer who once described him as having the charisma of formica during his first couple of films wasn't exaggerating. Yeah, From Russia With Love is great; let's just not pretend that a lot of this memorableness isn't just as attributable to the presence of two phenomenally charismatic villains in the form of Donald "Red" Grant and Rosa Klebs. To say nothing of Daniela Whatshername wearing nothing but bedsheets and a ribbon around her neck in one scene. SC had great presence, and definitely grew into the role; by time the last couple of films rolled around though, he'd gotten paunchy and clearly was exhausted

Roger Moore still dishes out one liners more adroitly than any Bond before or since. Everyone who pointed out that he's probably the least "Alpha" of the Bonds is correct. Does anyone really think Connery, Dalton, or Craig would've looked in place in one of the zany yarns that Moore found himself in? Aside from perhaps For Your Eyes Only

Timothy Dalton arguably came closest to embodying Ian Fleming's original vision. Oddly enough, this return to Bond's roots was pretty fitting for the blood and guts heavy action movies of the 80s, where the franchise was now having to contend with characters like John McClain, Rambo, and Martin Riggs. By time the more light hearted 90s rolled around though, Dalt's brooding and glum take on 007 would've looked just as retrograde as Van Damme, Stallone, and to a lesser extent Arnie did during that same decade

Pierce Brosnan functions as something of a hybrid between Dalton and Moore. He's pretty deft with the quips, and is a passable enough actor to seem believable in the action sequences, nonetheless he also hews more closely to the playboy adventurer interpretation of the character set forth by Moore than he does Dalton's laser guided assassin. He was a perfect fit for a decade in which The Soviet Union was no longer worthy of being called a menace, the narcoterrorists depicted in LTK seemed to be on the wane, and entirely too many of us believed that Bill Clinton's jack-sery was cute, rather than unpresidential. But he was already outmoded by time the early 2000s, and yes 9/11, had rolled around

For all the flack Daniel Craig takes for not having much personality in his interoperation of Bond, one also wonders what Eon and any actor who took this role was supposed to do in the world we've all inhabited since The West began is nebulous and now seemingly failed War On Terror? The Jason Bourne comparisons are valid, and they also grievously ignore the influence that characters like Jack Bauer almost certainly wielded over the direction Bond took. Yeah, Craig era Bond is more or less a monosyllabic killing machine, mightily as Babs Broccoli tried to give him a depth heretofore unseen in these films. They also didn't really have a blueprint upon which to build a new and adapted-for-something-other-than-The Cold War Bond though

Iconic as Connery's portrayal was, in many respects it embodied everything that the counterculture later derided as plastic and phony within the lives of upper middle class people and their fantasies; that sure as hell wouldn't have flown in the 21st Century. For all the drubbing that Moore's work gets, he was a perfect fit for the 70s camp that this era of Bond traded in. Going back in that direction would've seemed worse than anachronistic in the 2000s. Dalton's rightly been sited as the spiritual precedent to Craig's interoperation, nonetheless he was still too flip, too playful, and nowhere near as physically pumped up to have fit into a cinematic landscape where all traces of fun had been declared verboten, and actors who took these sort of roles were now being called upon to pretty much put themselves through the Q course at Fort Bragg before filming. Brosnan's interpretation was nowhere near as mirthless or serious enough for a world that's knickers were soaking wet over the mere mention of names like Bourne or Jack Bauer

Asking "Who's the best Bond?" ignores the fact that each era of the franchise is representative of a historical context that's markedly different from the others

Bravo!

We do agree on something from time to time, it would seem. Must confess, I was astounded to read the above, Mus!!!

When you're on point, you're on point, and I've no problem so saying. Never have.

Bravo!