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Is there a consensus on who the best Bond is? Is it Daniel Craig?

Bond. Best Bond.


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Philly40

Member
No no consensus.

That said yes Craig is the best. He actually looks like he could be an agent. Most of the other bonds look like they would break if the enemy sneezes too hard

Not too sure about that,

I don't think Connery is particularly admirable as a person, but he had exposure to the criminal underworld that none of the other Bonds had - he exudes menace more than Daniel Craig ever could.
 
Connery Bond is misogynist thug (by which I mean misogynist even by Bond standards).

Why so many people love him I'll never know.

Also this:

vlcsnap-10514.png
 

Nafai1123

Banned
Connery Bond is misogynist thug (by which I mean misogynist even by Bond standards).

Why so many people love him I'll never know.

Also this:

vlcsnap-10514.png

I don't remember Connery being a misogynist thug. Granted it's been awhile since I watched those films, but the misogyny always seemed lighthearted at least.

Spectre Spoilers:
Craig kills a womans husband, shows up at his funeral, threatens her at said funeral, stalks her and breaks into her home that same night, and forcefully pins her against a wall and then has sex with her.
 

xandaca

Member
Connery's surely the consensus favourite, and my personal choice as well. The rest of my list is probably quite atypical, however, what with being a Lazenby fan.

Connery > Dalton > Lazenby > Craig > Moore > Brosnan
 

SeanC

Member
Couldn't have said it any better. Too bad every movie except Goldeneye was really bad.

I've kind of grown to like The World is Not Enough over the years. Just good action directing and Pierce is actually great in it. Christmas Jones brings it down a lot, though, because the actress is just that bad. To me, that movie kind of redeems Pierce a bit as Bond because I feel he's more active as the character in this one than the others (Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day I thought he was second to the female lead more often than not).
 

LoveCake

Member
My favourite Bond is Roger Moore because I grew up with him as Bond, but as the most believable to be an actual real life Bond it has to be Pierce Brosnan imo.

It is like my favourite Bond film is A View to a Kill, but the best Bond film is Goldeneye imo because it is basically a montage of all the best "Bond" bits from the previous films rolled into to one film, I think the reason that Pierce Brosnan gets a bit of a rough deal in the "best Bond stakes" is that other than Goldeneye the rest of the films were poor.
 

darkinstinct

...lacks reading comprehension.
Style: Brosnan
Acting: Connery

Craig is by far the worst Bond there ever was. Totally misses the humour element of Bond, whenever he jokes around with Q or anyone he just comes off as being a huge entitled douchebag. When he is making out with Bond girls it feels like he wrote those scenes by himself. The Craig Bonds have better action than older Bonds (well, Brosnan Bonds were awesome that way already) but they are way too inspired by contemporary pop culture.
 
The quality of the Bonds and the quality of the films they appear in are all over the place. Traditionally my answer would have been Connery as the best but upon recently rewatching the entire Eon series, I liked Timothy Dalton the best.

Connery is charismatic but often let down by cheesy scripts and by the end of his run he was redefining what it mean to not give a fuck about the movie you were in.

Lazenby only had a single role, and he was not good in it. The film he was in was good, but not because of him. He might have matured into the role later on, but unfortunately never appeared in any others. I would have been willing to give him another shot.

Moore is entertaining, I don't hate him necessarily but he took the silliest parts of Connery and made that the core part of his character. All of the camp of the final Connery films was extrapolated through to Moore and amplified over time as the series became more of a parody of itself. When Austin Powers is making fun of Bond, he's making fun of Roger Moore for the most part. The pinnacle of decadence in the series was achieved during Moore's tenure, when they go to outer fucking space and have laser gun fights. They wouldn't reach that level of absurdity until Bronsan's final entry.

Dalton was the first time the franchise realized it got too fucking silly, stopped, and took a slightly more serious approach. He counterbalanced Moore's camp, and his second outing is really god damn dark by the standards of the early series. I personally consider The Living Daylights to be the finest James Bond film ever made. I don't know why exactly but I just love it to bits. Good performance, relatively interesting plot, good supporting cast and good villains. It's not too crazy although it's not perfectly serious / gritty either. License to Kill is an interesting experiment in going dark, someone described it as an episode of Miami Vice starring James Bond and I guess that makes sense. I like it, but it's not a favorite. Still, Dalton was awesome as Bond and it's a crying shame he didn't get a chance to do a third film.

Brosnan was my fave as a kid, since he was my Bond when I was growing up in the late 90's and early 00's. I still don't hate him, but realistically I only like two of his films, Goldeneye (the obvious best) and The World is Not Enough (not great but I like bits of it). TND is a bit shit and Die Another Day was abysmal. So bad and so ridiculous it once again caused a back to basics approach in the next film. He's very likable, although not the best actor in the world.

Craig is a good actor, but I don't personally like his Bond very much. Nor do I like his movies a lot. Hated CR when it came out, and although I've softened on it upon reviewing it, I still don't love it. QoS is garbage. Skyfall is good. Spectre was so so. I'm glad they've returned to drawing upon some more classic elements, but they didn't do it well.
 
While Ian Fleming created the Bond character, I always felt that Timothy Dalton turned James Bond into a real person, even for just two movies.
 

EGM1966

Member
There s no consensus.

Connery would probably still top most polls I suspect and remains a good choice particularly as he essentially defined Bond on screen: every actor since has essentially channelled one or two elements of Connery. Craig focuses on physicality and sense of lithe danger. Moore of course focused on suave comedy and really ran with that, Brosnan tried to cover more of the bases in a kind of Connery light manner (and did decent job except all the times when script and execs ruined it).

For me though next to Connery the most complete portrayal was Dalton. He was legit terrific but sadly had to cope first with a film that veered between Moore era deftness and Connery toughness then a film that felt like a Craig precursor that was too light on charm at a time when audiences demanded warmth in the hero.

So for me it's Connery/Dalton at top with Brosnan and Craig delivering good to great turns but each often let down by script/plot. Moore stands alone as a very different beast now, a comedy pastiche I enjoyed (Moore's a lovely fella after all with great light comic wit) but not "full" Bond (although Live and Let Die showed he could do it).

Poor old Lazenby is hard to judge. He's in a great Bond, he had biggest dramatic scene but there's some daft stuff too and you never feel he's settled into it. He could have been a good Bond: he had many elements I'd say but one film's not enough to judge.
 
For me its
Connery
Dalton
Brosnan<>Moore (on par and very similar)
Craig
Lazenby



I would have had Craig higher if he'd bowed out at skyfall, but spectre i didn't like the portayal, even though i liked (not loved) the movie.
When craig took over he was a wierd mix of the cold rugged violence of Dalton and suave charm of Connery, but then in Spectre he phoned it in, no he didn't even phone it in, he called his assistant to put on an accent and phone it in! His portrayal was an odd amalgamation of Brosnan, Moore and Dalton, it was cheesy it was tacky and randomly excessively violent - the final act and ending of the movie made me think i was watching a moore film, half expected him to shoot the bad guy and say his flight was cancelled or some shit one liner. In that one movie he dropped massively in my estimations and then there was the public bashing of the character and brand, i feel he needs to go
 
I'm leaning towards Brosnan because I grew up with him, and I think he really looks the part, but I wish he had more than one good movie.
 
You can not beat Sean Connery in From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. No one ever will.

I don't like Daniel Craig as Bond. Dude looks like an ogre.

I like Moore, Dalton and Brosnan fine.
 

Moronwind

Banned
Daniel Craig, if we limit ourselves to Casino Royale. I don't remember much about Quantum of Solace, but he was pretty boring in the later installments.
One of the things that made Bond work so well in Casino was just how brutal he was and how that contrasted with his suave exterior. In Sam Mendes' movies that was completely done away with, in the name of returning to the roots I guess, either way his character felt paper thin by comparison.
Another thing that helps is that Casino Royale is written in such a way that James Bond actually feels like a major character in the story with a proper emotional arc. I recently watched You Only Die Twice, and in that movie he's little more than a gun who shoots bad guys.
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
I still think Pierce Brosnan is the best regardless of the shitty films.

His performance in the Bond video game Everything or Nothing is ace.
 

Nere

Member
In my opinion Pierce Brosnan. The man has a certain class only seen on Sean Connery too. Might get blamed for that but Daniel Craig is too short can't take him seriously in a James Bond movie and feel he is missing something compared to other Bonds.
 

HarryKS

Member
Connery Bond is misogynist thug (by which I mean misogynist even by Bond standards).

Why so many people love him I'll never know.

Also this:

vlcsnap-10514.png


I don't know what world you live in but that's a warped perception of things if you think that's what misogyny means.
 
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