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Originally Posted by guthmund
I'm glad that Bond is safe for a while longer. I've always liked Brosnan, but I think he came into the Bond game a bit too late. It's a shame he was stuck with mediocre writing, bad directing and came on right after the Timothy Dalton fiasco/crap.
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It's worse than that. Brosnan had been signed to be the successor to Moore in the role, but the producers of his tv show,
Remington Steele took adavantage of the publicity to renew his contract (the series had been cancelled) and made a small number of bad, low rated tv movies with the character.
Meanwhile Dalton was cast as Brosnan's replacement, and basicallly stepped into production of
The Living Daylights at the last second. It hadn't been written with his style--darker, harder-edged--in mind, so it was a bit off for some people. His second movie was much better, written to take advantage of his portrayal, which is easily the closest to the book Bond, and the least dependant upon gadgets of any of the later Bonds.
Kevin McClory had been suing EON in an increasingly irrational claim to ownership of the Bond character, and production had to be shut down for four years while things were worked out in court. Wilson and Broccoli stood by Dalton, but he decided his time had passed, and when the courts had finally dealt with McClory, EON resigned Brosnan, this time free and clear.
Had it not been for the Remington Steele producers, we could have had at least two earlier Brosnan Bonds, and had it not been for McClory, we'd have had at least two more Dalton Bonds in the mid 90's, and possibly more.
I, for one, would love to have seen two more Dalton Bond's, to see what would have been done with scritps deliberately tailored to his style and his finally having grown into the role. Two just wasn't enough.
Now, of course the real question here is who will be the new Bond babes? It goes without question that the hottest Bond babe of all time is Daniela Bianchi (FRWL, the best Bond of all time), and it would be fruitless to try to top her.
On Lazenby:
On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one of the best Bond movies, but Lazenby was a dud. The script was clever, a good adaptation of the book, and some of the best use of Bond surviving on wits, guts, and intelligence rather than pulling a gadget out of his pocket. It works despite Lazenby's wooden performance.