Merry Blog-mas

Well it's that time of year.  Exams are over.  No responsibilities until January (kinda...shout out to the STC swimmers).  It's Christmas vacation.  Which means one thing: Christmas movies.  What up Home Alone (1&2) and Elf.  But I think I have a unique set of movies I consider Christmas movies: the 007 movies.  I think it goes back to the combination of Spike TV and training trip.  See once upon a time, before Spike got obsessed with getting as close to porn on standard cable as possible they used to have their annual 007 days of Christmas.  This meant from early morning to late at night it was non-stop James Bond.  Couple this with training trip where in between practices were spent as horizontal as possible and Christmas led me to watch a lot of MI6's most suave agent busting up SPECTRE plots and wooing the dames.  Slowly Spike began to phase out this gift to America, so what did I do?  Just got the box sets for Christmas.  I now own every Bond save the most recent (which wasn't impressive, more on that in just a minute).  So my last blog of the year (barring a huge sports/TV story), will be dedicated to a completely off the cuff, gut reaction ranking of the Bonds.

I'm going to cause a stir with this one but my dead last is Daniel Craig.  Part of that is sample size, Casino Royale was pretty good, especially since it was going back to Bond's first mission as a Double-0 agent.  Quantum of Solace was pretty much not a Bond movie.  It was like a Tom Cruise action flick, not Bond.  Craig is raw and gritty in both movies.  Works for Bond on his first mission, because of course he would be clumsy.  But there is no evolution between the two films, he's not making Bond into the suave, sophisticated wit he is in the other films.  And there is also a total lack of cool gadgets, which is a shame because with technology these days that should be easy (or it could make it hard since nothing seems far-fetched or clever any more).  Anywho, I am very disappointed with Craig as Bond, especially after his performance in Layer Cake.

My next worst is going to have to be the man most would put at the bottom, Timothy Dalton.  Dalton played a very angry Bond.  He almost comes off as an anti-hero at times.  It kind of works though, because Bond would get jaded after years of service (especially after what they did to poor Felix!).  But the same complaints about Craig are true for Dalton except to a lesser degree.  He looks more the part, he's a little smoother, he's got a sharper tongue, and cooler gadgets.  It's pretty close since Craig is a better overall actor, but Dalton does slightly better in the role.

The next level up is pretty close as well.  Part of this is because they have relatively the same sample size.  That being said I'm going to give Pierce Brosnan the edge over George Lazenby.  Both have one shining role Goldeneye and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  Goldeneye is pretty much the last true Bond films as far as I'm concerned.  It is the last film to use the same textures, plot devices, and characters as the previous ones.  Watch Goldeneye then any of the Connery Bond films and you will see what I mean.  Brosnan got unlucky that his last three films were plagued by subpar (even for Bond standards) supporting actors, and horrendously shark jumpy plot lines (genetic transformation? Really?).  I can't fault him for those movies because he just looks so damn Bond.  You never see him sweat.  He always has a good one liner handy.  And Q gives him great toys.  If Brosnan had signed on when he originally was cast people would look at him differently (we also wouldn't know who Timothy Dalton is, thanks a lot Remmington Steele). 

Lazenby also does great work in his one lone Bond appearance.  OHMSS is a fantastic Bond film.  It involves SPECTRE and James actually falling in love.  There are great action sequences and a great plot for world domination by our old favorite Ernst Stavro Blofeld centered around brainwashing lovely ladies.  It's also the only Bond to break the fourth wall by directly addressing the fact that Lazenby is not Connery.

The last group is the pantheon: Sean Connery and Roger Moore.  It really could be a toss up since they did most of the iconic films (even if they are ridiculous ahem Moonraker).  Moore was a little wittier, but Connery was much more of the sleeping dragon: a smooth operator who could be violent, powerful and not sorry for any of it when the job needed it.  I'm going to give Connery the edge because his first four Bond movies are probably in the top six if not the top four: Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball (my personal favorite).  He also starred in Kanye West's favorite Diamonds Are Forever (featuring proud Virginian and sausage maestro Jimmy Dean).  Moore has some iconic movies: Live and Let Die (Thanks Paul McCartney!), The Man With the Golden Gun, A View to A Kill (with Christopher Walken as a steroid fuel East German genetics project gone wrong), and both films featuring everyone's favorite Jaws: The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.  But Connery is Bond.  He was the first, he set the standard.  Each Bond had it easier and harder after the Scot.  They had it easier because technology could make Bond cooler and the film making process easier (special effects especially).  But they had it harder because Connery did so much with less.  In most of his films they couldn't even film outside at night because of lighting problems.  Yet (almost) everything is believable.

Connery set a high bar and the only one to approach consistently was Roger Moore.  Moore is by no means equal to Connery, but he is close.  What he lacked as an action star he made up for with his tongue.  Moore was much wittier than Connery, even if he wasn't quite a Swiss Army knife like Connery.  His talents as an actor were used quite well by the writers and as a result he will sit just beneath Connery in the Bond pantheon.