James Bond vs Silliness

Roger Moore as Ian Fleming's James Bond in 1979's Moonraker. Bond got pretty out there during the Moore years.

The James Bond movie franchise is older than I am.

October 5, 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of the release of Dr. No, the first in a series of 23 Bond films. April 13 of this year will mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of the novel Casino Royale by British author Ian Fleming. The book was the first in a series of James Bond novels on which the movies were originally based.

Over all those the years, 007 has faced down a wide array of innumerable different threats from an almost equally uncountable number of megalomaniac villains and their highly skilled assassins. Of all those threats, assassins and villains, few of Bond's movie enemies have been as persistent, determined and pervasive as the one nemesis that Bond, throughout his extremely successful cinematic career, has never been able to fully vanquish. What I'm referring to is the greatest nemesis borne out of 007's blockbuster movie franchise; one that has outlasted all others in a series of movies that has seen as many radical stylistic shifts as it has years. It is the one enemy that, no matter what the era, no matter who the actor portraying Bond is, relentlessly returns to challenge James Bond time and again.

The enemy is silliness.

In the now five and a bit decades of James Bond's celluloid career, many aspects of the super spy's adventures have been discussed, debated and analyzed. Much has been said about Bond, his gadgets, his cars, his women, his lifestyle, his missions and his villains. Yet relatively little has been said about the vary degrees of unrelenting silliness the big screen Bond has been forced to contend with over the years.

Anyone who has followed the history of the Bond franchise from the early days of Sean Connery's James Bond through to the current reign of Daniel Craig's 007 knows what I'm talking about. In almost every era, there is at least one moment in at least one movie when Bond's over the top escapist action set pieces take the basic premise of the Bond's larger than life world of escapism just a notch or two too far.

There have been scenes that have seen 007 engaged in a chase involving a ludicrously land adapted gondola, spectacular car stunts scored with comedy music, tanks smashing their way through city streets,  speed boats crashing through wedding cakes, Bond attempting to drive a car after it has been cut in half...and...well, the list of Bond silliness is too long to fit into this post. Suffice it to say that there are an alarmingly large number of occasions when the action scenes in a Bond movie transcend the thriller genre, or even the camp thriller genre for that matter, and start to look like something you might see in a Road Runner cartoon.

There are many people who see these slapstick comedy moments as an (if not the) element that defines the James Bond movies. While for others, myself included, even the faintest implication of any potential ensuing slapstick in any given Bond movie makes them cringe with dread.  The two widely varying perceptions of the movies speak to the point that Mr.Bond's exploits have been so all over the map in his half a century of blockbusters that the character has been plagued by an identity crisis almost since his inception.

Ian Fleming's James Bond 007

Bond's creator in his younger days

To understand Bond's ongoing shifting identity, it helps go go back to the character's roots. James Bond was first created by British intelligence officer turned journalist turned author, Ian Fleming, in the aforementioned 1953 novel, Casino Royale.

During World War II, Fleming served with British naval intelligence. Some of his experiences from that time loosely inspired many of Bond's literary adventures. Fleming wrote 12 Bond novels and a number of short stories before his untimely death at the age of 56 in 1964, mere months before James Bond truly became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon.

Fleming's Bond books were, for the most part, well crafted pulp thrillers. In spite of some far fetched premises, Fleming certainly knew how to engage readers. The initial sales of the books in the UK alone were a testament to the appeal of Fleming's writing.

"He was good-looking in a dark rather cruel way
and a scar showed whitely down his left cheek"
- from The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming

The literary Bond bears only a passing resemblance to the cinematic Bond. Fleming's Bond, by comparison to his multiple motion picture incarnations, was a dark, tough and humourless character. Whenever he had to kill in the performance of his duties, he did not take it lightly. He certainly never cracked pithy one-liners about his kills or anything else in his line of work, for that matter. The literary 007 was often quick to temper and had a mean-looking scar across his right cheek. Like his celluloid doppelganger, he was still very much a suave, sophisticated and cultured man of the world. However, his suave sophistication was never pushed to the point of satirical exaggeration, as was often the case in many of the films. While fond of the finer things in life, Fleming's Bond was also a hard as nails SOB when the job called for it. His world of espionage was a colder and grimmer one than that of the movies. The Bond of the books was closer to antihero than hero. In the words of his creator, Bond was not a hero at all but rather "a blunt instrument".

Fleming's Bond also did not have the seemingly endless array of skill sets that the various movie Bonds have had at their disposal. For instance, the literary Bond spoke English, French and German. The movie Bonds, on the other hand, could (as the many of the films suggest) speak every single language in the world fluently.

Marksmanship was the Fleming Bond's only real specialty.  The literary 007 was a really good shot and often his assignments involved assassination; hence the term"License to Kill".  He was not an amazing stunt driver or acrobat or master of any and all types of fighting skills. This is a Bond who ould have never been able to just simply hop into the cockpit of any plane, helicopter or jet and suddenly somehow have not only the ability of fly the aircraft but the ability to do so with impressive skill. He also had little or no gadgets like those so closely linked with the movies.

To be fair, some of the Bond films' more outlandish ideas were supplied by the books. Oddjob, Goldfinger's lethal steel-rimmed bowler hat wielding henchman, the underwater commando battles of Thunderball and the high octane ski chases first seen in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, for example, were all originally the products of Ian Fleming's fertile imagination. The original novel of Doctor No even contains a scene where Bond battles a giant squid (and, frankly, I am amazed that the movies have not yet gotten around to lifting that one). To his credit, Fleming was able to ground even such borderline fantastical elements in a very real sense of intrigue and suspense through the use of his concise, almost journalistic prose.

Attempting to put such arch Bond elements on the big screen with a straight face back in the early 60's would certainly have been a challenge; one that may well have required creating a new type of stylized movie making. Such a movie would have to walk a fine line between thrills and camp humour in order to coax a contemporary mainstream movie-going audience raised on traditional Hollywood genres like westerns and musical comedies into that world. Without doing so, audiences of the day may not have been able to take, say, a villain with steel hands named Dr. No who lives in an atomic powered underground complex on his own island all that seriously.

From Dr. No With Love

Ian Fleming and Sean Connery on the set of Dr.No

Nonetheless, the early Bond films still tried to stay fairly close to their source material. The Bond books were, most especially in the UK, huge bestsellers, after all. Much like the Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games movies based on the best sellers of today, nobody wanted to alienate an established fanbase created by the books. However, Bond movie producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman along with director Terence (no relation) Young  did decide on a slightly less serious take on the character for the first big screen Bond. They set that process in motion by casting the then unknown Sean Connery,  an actor whose baseline charm tends to play towards a lighter tone, as James Bond.

Any light tones of humour remain extremely subtle in Dr.No, the first James Bond movie, released in 1962 . The understated humour can only be seen fleetingly in Bond's cinematic introduction. There is a wry sense of almost invisible self mockery as Connery, in the now iconic tuxedo, sitting at the baccarat table of an exclusive London casino, utters the words that would become part of the pop culture lexicon for the next 50 years: "Bond. James Bond". As we cut to Bond and see the man for the first time, a subtle creeping smirk begins to cross Connery's face, as a now highly un-PC cigarette dangles casually out to the side of his mouth. Bond's signature big band jazz theme, a new and unheard of piece of music at the time, plays on quietly in the background.




Yet, at the same time, Dr. No also features some scenes that are as close to Fleming as has ever been seen on the big screen.




Those two scenes set the tone for Dr. No, as well as the second film of the series, From Russia With Love. Basically a heist film centered around a Russian decoding machine, From Russia With Love is one of the rare Bond films that can comfortably be referred to as a thriller. The bedroom scenes have a classic film noire look to them and then there is the Hitchcock inspired action sequence where Bond is chased across a field by helicopters.

By Goldfinger, though, the earliest shift towards films that are a little less serious begins rear its silly head. Despite what the Bond DVD documentaries like to tell you, the first two 007 movies, not unlike Fleming's books, fared much better internationally than they did in the U.S. Dr. No and From Russia With Love did fairly well but were certainly not blockbuster hits in the USA.  Goldfinger was  the franchise's big play to make a much bigger dent in the lucrative American box office.

To that end, the Bond producers and Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton were willing to push the humour envelope further than that of the first two films. The movie opens with Connery's Bond emerging from a lake with a decoy bird strapped to the top of his head.  A little later on, Bond removes his still wet black commando outfit to reveal that he was wearing a perfectly dry tuxedo,complete with a white dinner jacket, underneath his stealth gear the whole time.



That scene pretty much says it all right there. Those opening moments of Goldfinger, and the rest of the film that followed, established a new image of James Bond in the popular consciousness that would endure for decades to come. Bond had now moved yet another modicum away not only from Fleming's literary creation but also away from the earlier, more stylistically subdued worlds of Dr. No and From Russia With Love.

 Goldfinger saw Bond's first baby steps into the world of all out camp.

Bondmania

It was clear what audiences Bond was picking up now

The new lighter approach to Bond paid off big time. Goldfinger launched the global phenomenon that became known as Bondmania. It went way beyond just movies.

In addition to Goldfinger's huge box office numbers, 1964-5 saw an outburst of 007 toys, aftershave, clothes, games, gadgets, you name it.  It was a merchandising marketing bonanza matched only by that of Beatlemania which gripped the world around the same time. Among other things, Goldfinger, for the first time, gave the franchise a major foothold with an entirely new and lucrative audience: kids.

The other byproduct of Goldfiner and the subsequent Bond craze was that it cemented into the popular landscape an impression of James Bond as an inventive yet frivolous diversion that was never to be taken too seriously.

The next film, Thunderball, blurred the line between thriller and camp further still. In the opening of the 4th 007 movie, Bond escapes from the bad guys by utilizing his most preposterous gadget to date, a jet pack. It's an image of Bond so strongly connected to the character that, Sean Connery, when appearing on the David Letterman show 30 odd years later, was lowered onto the stage strapped into, you guessed it, a jet pack.

Thunderball was a hit that even outdid Goldfinger. By today's box office standards, we're talking about Goldfinger and Thunderball box office numbers that would be on a level with Star Wars, Titanic, Toy Story, Avatar, ET and Lord of the Rings.

Returning Dr. No and From Russia With Love director Young manages, for the most part, to successfully navigate the borders of camp humour and genuine thrills. However, with its jet pack escape, evil look-a-like imposters, highjacked nukes and underwater commando battles, Thunderball does firmly broaden the extravagant nature of Bond's increasingly outlandish and gimmicky world.  

I remember this one.

In the next film, You Only Live Twice (1967), Bond's world would, for the first time, cross the line into from camp and light humour into outright silliness.

By the 5th 007 movie, Bond producers Broccoli and Saltzman were entering into an era where they felt they had to top themselves with each successive movie in order to retain their ongoing titles as reigning box office champs.

You Only Live Twice sure does go there too. The movie features many of what are now seen as the quintessential Bond elements: an evil genius with a secret technological complex (inside a hollowed out inactive volcano, in this case, no less) filled with guys in jumpsuits driving golf carts around. From his secret lair, said evil genius (Ernst Stavro Blofeld, a recurring Bond nemesis) launches a master plan for world domination. The movie has even got the now classic climatic ninja commando raid set amidst a seemingly endless array of gunfire and explosions. You Only Live Twice is also the movie where Bond for the first (but not the last) time transgress its own genre.

"A Drop in the Ocean"

Early on in You Only Live Twice, there is a scene where Bond and his Japanese spy companion are being chased through Toyko by a car full of bad guys. The Japanese agent radios to her superiors to "arrange usual reception".  A helicopter soon appears in the sky. The helicopter hovers over the bad guys' car and lowers a giant magnet on a cable. The magnet then attaches itself to the roof of the car. The helicopter flies off carrying the magnet with the car stuck to it below. The slapstick coup-De-gras is delivered when the bad guys, in a gag worthy of The Three Stooges,  futilely attempt to turn the steering wheel of their floating car as they look out the windows in panic. The car is soon carried over a river. The magnet is then released and the car plummets into the water below. The entire sequence is straight out of the Wile E. Coyote playbook.



It is at that moment that the Bond movies made that first irreversible move towards total all out silliness. The trend would continue with exponential velocity in the movies to come. It would take the Bond franchise decades to undo the process.

The preceding Bond movies kept increasingly broadening the scope of their extravagant action set pieces. However, once those movies set a tone, they tended stay true to that tone. This scene, even within the context of the over the top Bond action, sticks out like a sore thumb. It is a scene that belongs in a movie like an over the top madcap comedy romp like It's a Mad Mad Mad World and certainly not in James Bond's world.

The first time I saw You Only Live Twice, I remember that scene left me asking myself, "What kind of a movie am I watching now?".  It also had me wondering if the Bond producers and first time Bond director Lewis Gilbert had given any thought at all to that question.

These types of shifts in Bond tone would continue in the films to come  and, ultimately, the James Bond movies would would be cursed to live out a stylistically schizophrenic existence for many years.

Bond in a kilt? That's the least of it.

The next film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, actually took a brief small step back away from total silliness. I guess the Bond producers and longtime Bond editor turned director Peter Hunt felt that they just couldn't top rockets, volcanoes, ninja commandos and cars plunging into water from great heights, nor should they even try. Sadly, the new approach didn't quite pan out.

In addition to introducing George Lazenby, Connery's ill conceived and ill received replacement, the film strayed significantly from the Bond formula. For one thing (SPOILER ALERT) James Bond got married. For another, his wife had the distinction of being the only Bond girl to be killed off at the end of the movie. The end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service still remains the most downer ending of any Bond movie and is also, ironically, one of the most dramatic scenes in the whole franchise. It is perhaps for this reason that the film, over time, became a cult fave among fans. In 1969, though, the smaller scale and less silly approach, along with Connery's absence made the movie, by Bond box office standards, a total bomb. With the future of a stunningly lucrative franchise on the line, it was time to pull out all the stops.





Moore Silly Business

Sean Connery in Diamond Are Forever: d'oh boy.

Desperate to get the franchise back on its feet again, the Bond producers backed up a truck load of money into Sean Connery's driveway. Landing a record breaking payday that he donated entirely to charity, Connery agreed to play Bond one more time. The movie was Diamonds Are Forever and it would be, hands down, the silliest Bond to date.

Many people associate  Roger Moore, who took over the role after Connery's delayed departure, with the ushering in of a new much lighter approach to 007. Not so. That shift firmly took root while Connery still carried the Bond mantle. With Diamonds Are Forever, the Bond producers and returning Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton took the first little steps towards outright comedy taken in You Only Live Twice to a whole new level of silliness.

For lack of a better definition, it's hard to categorize Diamonds Are Forever as anything but a comedy. The movie features Bond driving a car tipped over on two wheels during a Las Vegas chase scene that also features many police cars crashing into each other like something out of an episode of The Dukes of Hazard,  Bond racing a wacky "moon buggy" across the desert, a bunch of incredibly dated wink-wink "look, the these two henchmen are actually gay" jokes, Dick Tracy-like gangster caricatures and a scene in which Bond says to a sunbathing woman "There something I'd like you to get off your chest" and then proceeds to pull off her bikini top and choke her with it in order to extract information.

Hold on, hold on. I need to catch my breath from all the laughter.

It is the few and far between serious fight scenes and not the outright slapstick comedy, that stand out like a sore thumb in Diamond Are Forever. The 6th Bond movie bears more in common with other 60's era spy comedy movies like In Like Flint and Dean Martin's quintessentially Mad Men era Matt Helm comedies than it does with any previous Bond movies. You know you've got a problem when a series of movies starts imitating its own parodies.

All that aside, Diamonds Are Forever was the highest grossing movie of 1971. You know that kind of thing is only going to encourage them.

After Diamonds Are Forever, Roger Moore, former British TV star of such shows as The Saint and The Persuaders, took over the role of Bond, James Bond. The Moore era would produce what are certainly the silliest and most erratic Bond movies of the bunch.

Moore debuted as Bond in Live and Let Die in 1973, a movie that also went on to be the number one at the box office in its year.

It's hard to know what to make of Live and Let Die. The movie is stylistically chaotic, to put it mildly. There is a speed boat chase where boats careen over land  then crash into a wedding and smash right through the cake. There is another chase scene involving a Double Decker bus in which Bond runs the bus through a tunnel that the bus' height cannot clear. The bus is cut in half as Bond continues to race down the road.

Yes, James Bond has now devolved into the Keystone Cops.

At one point, Bond is pursued by a Louisiana Sheriff named J.W. Pepper, a clownish caricature broadly played by character actor Clifton Webb. Webb's Pepper character appears to have walked directly off the set of just about any 70's era Burt Reynolds movie.

The movies are now very far away from Fleming's Bond. The darkness of the character has been long left in the dust. The movies now share only the title, a random plot element or two and some character names in common with the increasingly obscure and forgotten British pulp thrillers. Bond is now even miles removed from Goldfinger. It is quite clear, now more than ever, that a major part of Bond's target audience is kids; highly nondiscriminatory kids.

The early 70's was a time when  spy thriller movies were right out. In the post-Vietnam Watergate era, the only thing even close to serious Hollywood spy movies at the time were low key films like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View, in which espionage was depicted in a decidedly non-romanticized light.

So whatever, right? Things change: most especially things like majorly lucrative blockbuster franchise movies like James Bond. Fair enough. And, well, yes, Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die might be okay comedy movies, if they were actually in any way funny.

I have never found any of this era of Bond remotely humourous. That just makes the whole process all the more painful. I should point out that are Bond fans out there who strongly disagree with me on this count and are quite fond of movies from the era of Moore Bond silliness. Many of them no doubt first came to these movies at young age. Nonetheless, even as a kid, I never saw the humour in many cars smashing into each other over and over again, whether it be in a Bond movie, the Blues Brothers or even in Disney's The Love Bug.



Additionally, the seemingly non-stop barrage of one-liners and quips are forced. It does not help that Moore tends to play Bond as a comedian, and not a very subtle one at that. In the rare moments that call for Moore's Bond to be tough, I simply can not believe him. It's like watching Don Knotts trying to be Chuck Norris.

Live and Let Die, unlike most of Diamonds Are Forever, still attempts to take some of the Bond thrills and spills seriously. When it comes to the serious action scenes in Live and Let Die, it's hard to get engaged in any tension or excitement when you've just spent twenty minutes watching boats smashing into cars accompanied by a stereotypical redneck sheriff engaging in exclamations that even Foghorn Leghorn would consider a bit much.

Don't get me wrong. I've got nothing against a campy larger than life Bond adventure when it's well done. Goldfinger, Thunderball and even You Only Live Twice (minus the car dropping scene, of course) make for thrilling and entertaining escapism. For the most part these movies respect the boundaries between camp and total silliness. Not everything has to have the darker more serious tone of Ian Fleming (though it's nice when they hit that too).

There are fine lines between thrills, camp, farce, parody and slapstick. Live and Let Die runs roughshot over all of them. Not only can the Bond series often not settle on a consistent tone from movie to movie but, in the Moore era most especially, it's like they can't even decide on a consistent tone within the same movie. The sum total is a big mess that is frustrating to watch.  To call Live and Let Die even self parody dignifies the movie with a sense of purpose that it just does not appear to have.

In the next Moore Bond, The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), is even worse than Live and Let Die. The Bond producers and returning director Guy Hamilton now push the comedy past its breaking point. One of the great tragedies of Live and Let Die are the spectacular stunts, including a world record breaking speed boat jump, that were simply lost in the movie's stylistic shuffle.

Not to be outdone, the second Moore Bond movie features one of the greatest car stunts ever presented in the silliest light possible.

During a chase, Bond has to jump an AMC Hornet (the cars were all about product placement by this point) across a broken bridge. The bridge has been smashed in two is such a way that the two sides of the bridge that remain on either side of the river are slightly curved. Bond, accompanied by Sheriff Pepper from Live and Let Die (who is somehow on vacation in Thailand -let's not even get into it), makes the jump anyway. During the jump, the car spectacularly spins completely around in the air before landing on the other side of the bridge. This is before the age of CGI so that means that somebody actually did that incredible stunt for real. Bond ramps up the "comedy" as he makes a clearly post dubbed "Have you ever heard of Evel Knieval?" quip just before the jump. Then, for reasons that escape me to this day, somebody decided that very best possible way to showcase this amazing record breaking stunt was by scoring it with a slide whistle.

If there was any doubt that the Moore Bonds had degenerated into live action cartoons, there could be none after viewing that scene.




Such WTF moments are rampant throughout Moore's 007 tenure. Moonraker contains a chase where Bond pilots a motorized gondola  out of the canals of Venice and, as it turns out to have wheels, races it through streets full of tourists. The scene is complete with a drunk guy watching the gondola as he does a take and then stares quizzically at the bottle of wine he's been drinking from.

In Octopussy (1983),  Bond is chased through the jungle and escapes by swinging from a from a vine. As he swings, somebody got the hilarious idea to dub in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan yell. What is this? The Carol Burnett Show?

In A View to a Kill (1985), Bond snow boards away from heavily armed Russian soldiers as California Girls by The Beach Boys plays. Later, a car Bond is driving is cut in half during a chase and then Bond -get this- drives the half car anyway.

Wait, wait. Once again, I need to catch my breath from all the laughter.

The only two Moore era Bonds that sorta kinda break the silliness pattern are The Spy Who Loved (1977) Me and For Your Eyes Only(1981).

The Man With The Golden Gun, as it turns out, was the lowest grossing Bond movie to date, including On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The Bond franchise, now run solely by producer Broccoli brought back You Only Live Twice director Lewis Gilbert. Gilbert, to his credit, attempted to steer the series back to at least the standards of his previous Bond movie. The Spy Who Loved Me is still quite over the top and much more campy than even You Only Live Twice.  What it does accomplish, though, is that for the first time in almost a decade, it is a James Bond movie that at least maintains a consistent tone within itself.

The opening ski chase, like the pre-title sequence from Goldfinger, sets the tone for the rest of the movie. The chase has only the smallest amounts of restrained humour that does not detract from the excitement. The final gag of  the chase comes when Bond's Union Jack parachute that opens after he literally skis off the side of a mountain. Even so big a joke comes off as an understated deadpan Steven Wright one-liner  when measured against the standards set by Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun.

For Your Eyes Only attempted to get Bond back to basics after the literally out there space battle spectacles of 1979's Moonraker. It takes a more serious tone....more or less. It's climatic mountain climbing scene is most one of the most intensely low key action sequences ever filmed, Bond or otherwise.

Moore comes the closest he ever gets to Fleming's Bond in a scene where he kills a particularly vicious henchman. As the henchman's car is is precipitously perched on the side of a cliff, Bond kicks the car off the side of the cliff and sends the man crashing to his death. It is, without a doubt, Moore's best acting as James Bond and the first time we have seen so cold and dark a Bond since the "You've had your six" scene in Dr. No. That moment, though, is almost completely undone as the writers could not resist giving Moore's Bond one of his standard quippy one liners after killing the man. In context, it makes Bond look not like a cold professional assassin, but rather, like kind of a dick, really.




The basic problem with For Your Eyes Only is that Bond producer Broccoli and stunt coordinator turned first time director John Glen, still seem to reluctant to abandon silliness completely. The movie contains sequences like the ski chase scene that sends Bond careening across the tables of the terrace of a ski hill restaurant, complete with comic takes from onlookers. 

The penchant for consistently going back to the silly thrives throughout the next and last two Moore Bond movies, Octopussy and A View to a Kill. Octopussy, in particular, has some scenes that are almost genuinely thrilling. Yet the movie still annoyingly keeps shifting back to gags like the previously discussed Tarzan yell.

As late as A View to a Kill, Moore's last Bond outing, Broccoli and now regular Bond director Glen were still routinely pursuing the silly.  Doing so at a time when more serious action movies like The Terminator, Rambo and the first two Indiana Jones movies were doing boffo box office business is a perplexing choice at best.

"The Worst James Bond Ever"

Timothy Dalton as 007: the closest thing to Fleming's Bond that the big screen has ever seen

By the time new Bond Timothy Dalton took the reigns in 1987, the Bond production team had finally got the memo on that non-silly action movies were back in a big way. The resulting movie was The Living Daylights, the first of only two Bonds that would feature the classically trained Dalton as 007.

In The Living Daylights, Dalton's portrayal of Bond comes closer than any other actor, before or since, has to faithfully portraying Fleming's Bond on screen. Like the Bond of the novels, Dalton's Bond is cold, brooding, tough and quick to temper. There is a scene in the film just after a successful enemy raid on a British intelligence base where Dalton's Bond is dressed down by M, his superior. Bond merely sits there, quietly fuming. Just looking at Dalton's intense stare during the scene, it's as if one can almost hear the Fleming style prose precisely describing Bond's contained rage.

Unfortunately,  it seems that Broccoli, now partnered with production assistant turned producer Michael G. Wilson, and ongoing Bond director Glen were still quite reluctant to change the character all that radically. As a result, Dalton seems to have made an amazingly strong acting choice whitin a creative vacuum. While toned down from much of the Moore silliness, the character of James Bond does not appear to have been written with a return to the character's literally roots in mind. It's kind of bizarre, really, to see a Fleming style 007 darkly underplaying an assortment of  typically tongue in cheek James Bond movie one liners.

Nevertheless, The Living Daylights was the most gritty and realistic looking film the series had seen to date. A Bond film had not taken itself quite so seriously since From Russia With Love. Yet, again, though, the Bond producers still could not resist the urge to work just a smidgen of  ol' slapstick silliness here and there. Watching Dalton's genre-busting Bond as he escapes from the bad guys by sliding down the side of a snow covered hill riding a cello case is an almost surreal experience.




Such a lack of coordination between Dalton's acting choices and the writing and direction of the film did not serve the actor well. Combine that with a public impression of Bond defined by 12 years of Roger Moore cartoons and, well, Dalton's performance was misunderstood at best. Even today, Timothy Datlton's 007 is often still unfairly maligned.

To quote the 12 year old sitting behind me at the movie theatre on opening weekend, many felt that Dalton was the "worst James Bond ever!".

In License to Kill (1989), the actor's second and final appearance in the role, Dalton was clearly directed to lighten things up. That direction is ironic in light of the fact that License to Kill's war on drugs story line is one Bond's more "real world" adventures. Nonetheless, the new direction diluted Dalton's take on Bond and only served to confirm Dalton's poor reputation with both critics and audiences.

Between 1989 and 1995, the Bond movies took their longest hiatus since the series began. Contrary to popular belief, this was not because of Dalton's alleged "killing" of the franchise at the box office. Each of Dalton's two Bond movies, in fact, out-grossed Roger Moore's final appearance as Bond in A View to a Kill.  Rather, it was legal wranglings over the ownership of the rights to the character between the studio and the producers that held up the production of a new Bond installment for six long years. Dalton was reportedly offered the role again when the legal wranglings were settled and franchise was finally set to return to movie theaters. Perhaps reluctant to go another round with the critics and the public, Dalton declined.

That Darn Tank!

Brosnan looking almost Flemingeque.

Once the Bond movies were back on track, the coveted role of James Bond ended up going to the guy that had almost got the role instead of Timothy Dalton back in 1987.

007 would now be brought back to life by the former star of TV's Remington Steele, Pierce Brosnan. 1995's Goldeneye revived Bond in a big way. It was such a big hit that it single-handedly saved  MGM, the studio now responsible for Bond, from bankruptcy.

 Brosnan's take on Bond was equally popular. He was one of the few actors in the role able to believably balance humour along with a hint of the dark grimness of the character. The new Bond of the 90's came off as a compromise between Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton.

While Goldeneye is certainly a not a perfect Bond film, it did at least take itself a more seriously than many of the earlier Bonds.  Well, it almost did, anyway. About mid-way through the film, Goldeneye's promise of eschewing all of Bond's previous silliness was seriously compromised. 

There is a chase scene in Goldeneye where Bond commandeers a tank. Yes, darn it, a tank. Suddenly, a previously respectable Bond revival with a decent actor in the lead reverts back unrepentantly to the dreaded slapstick silliness of the past. Bond crushes and smashes cars while steering his tank through the streets and landmarks of downtown St.Petersberg. The tank chase in Goldeneye is an action set piece that's just too big and too wacky to be forgivable.

Well, it was a nice new direction while it lasted.

Perhaps more disconcerting is that the franchise was now working with a new production team  headed by former co-producer Michael J. Wilson and Albert Broccoli's daughter Barbara (the senior Broccoli died in 1996 and was credited as a "consulting producer" on Goldeneye) and more A-list directors, like Goldeneye's Martin Campbell.




Fortunately, the tank chase would, as it turns out, be the last gasp of Roger Moore era silliness in the franchise (fingers crossed ).  The Brosnan Bonds would continue to be similarly erratic, though never quite as dumb. For every time the films did something dark and bold with Bond like the year and a half Bond spends in a North Korean prison in Die Another Die (2002), there would also be a counter balancing bit of silliness like Bond's preposterous invisible car in that same movie.  Still, while pursing ever more ramped up action and spectacle, the Bond movies would mostly downplay the outright silliness that had dogged the series for so long.

The Sky is Falling 

Daniel Craig as a James Bond I never thought I'd see.

Things got even more promising with the 2006 Bond reboot, Casino Royale. For the first time in the series' 44 year history, Bond producers Wilson and Broccoli wiped the 007 slate clean and started anew.

The hard edged Daniel Craig was cast as Bond in the first faithful adaptation of a Fleming Bond novel since On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Casino Royale, with the exception of two ramped up action set pieces early in the film, is very close to Ian Fleming's debut Bond novel. The infamous torture scene that many critics saw as an edgy new direction for Bond was, in fact, taken almost verbatim from the then 53 year old novel.



I remember reading that torture scene in Casino Royale for the first time and thinking , "Well, we'll never in a million years see that in a Bond movie".  Thankfully, I was wrong.

The character of James Bond in Casino Royale, however, is not exclusively Fleming's. There are certainly elements of the literary Bond in Craig's intense take on the character but, on the whole, the actor, the screenwriters and returning Goldeneye director Campbell are very much doing their own thing as well.

The reboot, in short, gave us a new, grittier, tougher Bond. He is driven, angry, intense and just a little bit crazy (you'd have to be, wouldn't you?). Bond is now grounded in the real world. He is not one of these speaks-every-language, knows-everything and can-do-anything type Bonds that had become de riguer in the series. James Bond now has flaws, many of them. This Bond bleeds, both literally and figuratively. Casino Royale is a tour de force blockbuster franchise reboot that takes Bond in just the right direction.

The only real problem with Casino Royale's fresh new direction is that no one seemed to know where to go next. The next movie, Quantum of Solace (2008) sets a similar tone to Casino Royale but does not have as much of a coherent direction to it. Among other problems with the film, it's like the producers and director Marc Forster had no idea where to go with the character now and, ultimately, with the series as a whole. It's quite an odd development when you consider that the movie is, uniquely to the series, a direct sequel to the previous Bond movie.

All other faults aside, Quantum of Solace's biggest slip happens towards the end of the movie. There is an aerial chase scene that, to be fair, is a well crafted action set piece. The real problem is that the chase begins with Bond jumping into the cockpit of an abandoned airplane and that he immediately seems to know how to fly it.

My silly sense is tingling.



The plane chase sequence was, of course, not at all silly in and of itself but establishing that Craig's Bond is able to  jump into a plane and suddenly be able to fly it felt like an ominous step in the wrong direction. As I mentioned earlier, Fleming's Bond, unlike the movie Bond, had limits to his extraordinary abilities. In the movies it was pretty much a given that Bond could simply do just about anything. In Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), for instance, Brosnan's Bond gets into the cockpit of a jet and flies off to partake in a spectacular dogfight. No one thinks twice about the fact that bond  can just do shit like that. So, by having Bond jump into a cockpit and fly a plane without a second thought in Quantum of Solace, the series was quietly taking a small, practically imperceptible slip down a slippery slop to the potential return Bond sillines.

The current Craig Bond movie Skyfall (2012), just released on Blu-ray, DVD and various streaming and video downloading services, while an overall solidly good Bond movie, also contains many of those same type of troubling elements.

I will try not to give too much away here but I'm gonna call SPOILER ALERT just in case.

Skyfall, directed by Oscar winning American Beauty director Sam Mendes, gives us the most in-depth look at Bond's character that we have ever seen, rivaling even that of Ian Fleming's novels.

Skyfall, at the same time, though, ultimately does represent a decisive backing off from the harder edged darker Bond of the previous Craig Bond movies.  It's got some pretty over the top action set pieces, most especially in the pre-title sequence. It's no boats crashing into cars a la Live and Let Die but, next to the two previous Bonds, the opening train chase borders on the preposterous.




Though that pre-titles sequence does end on a very dark note. And therein lies the strength of Skyfall.
Unlike many other Bonds, Skyfall is able to switch those shifts in tone on and off quite easily.

Even so, though, the movie has more Bond quips and one-liners than we've heard since Brosnan left the role. It is a testament to Daniel Craig's talents as an actor that he is able to make such light material work within the context of the darker more complex Bond that he developed in the previous films.

In Skyfall, Q, the finicky gadget supplier, is back, as are the gadgets themselves,  the flirtatious Miss Moneypenny is back and even Sean Connery's Aston Martin DB 5 from Goldfinger has somehow managed to find its way into the world of Daniel Craig's James Bond. Yes, many of the earmarks of the more traditional and lighter Bond movies are slowly finding their way back into the series.

The real kicker comes during a chase scene in the London Underground when Bond runs after a train after its doors are closed. Ordered to get on the train no matter what, Bond runs after it and jumps on to the back of the train just before it exits the station. A bystander watches this stunt and turns to his wife and says, "Well, I guess he really wants to go home".

Silliness red flag. Big time.

The line disturbingly harks back to the Roger Moore era. It confirms that whenever it comes to a Bond completely devoid of silliness, the 007 franchise simply cannot stick to its guns.

It appears that Mendes' intention in Skyfall is to deconstruct and then reconstruct the very essence of the Bond genre. The question is: what is it being reconstructed into?

As part of the process, it feels like there is a surreptitious attempt in Skyfall to insert the rebooted Daniel Craig 007 back into the continuity of the Connery through Brosnan Bond movies that Casino Royale supposedly abandoned (and, yes, if you watch the 1962-2002 Bond movies, the series is quite clear, in many different instances, that we are supposed to believe that these five different actors over a 40 year period are, in fact, the same guy).

With the siren's call of even greater box office dividends from a more "family friendly" Bond calling, the final moments of Skyfall seems to be quite clearly telling the audience, "Okay we're done with all the hard edged reboot stuff, from now on its Bond business as usual".

In the final scene, the new M, played now by Ralph Fiennes, asks if Bond is ready to return to duty. After a dramatic pause, Bond, with a great purpose that only Daniel Craig could pull off replies, "With pleasure, sir. With pleasure."

Well, such a direction may not necessarily be a problem if the series is able to strike the same delicate chord as Skyfall did in the movies to come. Given the history of the Bond movies, though, we all know that is not very likely.

Craig's Bond is grittier and then suddenly a little lighter in Skyfall

Bond's Branding Issues

The 007 identity crisis, will, just like it says at the end of every Bond movie, return.

The problem of defining who Bond is and what he means to audiences was summed up for me a couple of years ago when I was getting together with some friends to watch Goldfinger on video.

"I love watching Bond movies and making fun of them", said one of my friends.

"Oh, there's no need to do that. They make fun of themselves", replied another.

"What are you guys talking about? They're action movies", chimed in a third.

It hit me then that for such a long lasting and successful brand, James Bond sure has a lot of branding issues.








James Bond, even over six decades, has still not yet completely vanquished his greatest and most powerful arch enemy of them all, silliness.

10 Sean Connery Roles That Never Were

Sir Thomas Sean Connery looks back at that which might have been.

Anybody who has ever parused into the depths of IMDB.com or the plethora of internet trivia pages, knows there are a lot of famous roles that were not originally going to be played by the actors that made them famous. There are a lot of stars in cinema history that at one time or another have been offered famous, popular or iconic roles and, for one reason or another, turned them down.

It's fun (or in some cases horrifying) to think about these movie-might-have-been's: Ronald Reagan as Rick Blaine in Casablanca, WC Fields as The Wizard in the The Wizard of Oz, Nicolas Cage as Superman, Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones, Dustin Hoffman as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, Dom de la Luise and Harvey Korman in Airplane!, Christopher Walken as Han Solo, Marlon Brando in The Exorcist...the list goes on and on. It's not uncommon for a role and the film it belongs to to transmography radically several times over during the process known in the industry as "development hell".

In many cases, the original casting choices are ones that could have significantly changed the role, the movie or both. Poke around in the depths of alternating casting lore long enough and there is one name that reappears more than  any other: Sean Connery.

Once you take a good look at the amount of times it has happened, it is not uncommon for big movie stars to pass on roles that become legendary in the hands of other actors. However, in Connery's case, it sometimes feels like the original James Bond Academy Award Winning Sexiest Man Alive has turned down just about every role he was ever offered.. Few movie stars can match Connery's seemingly pathological commitment to passing over famous, iconic, financially successful, career defining and just plain juicy roles. The guy a legend in that department.

Here are 10 examples for Sir Thomas Sean Connery's incredible knack for the phrase: "Hmmm....no, guys, I think I'll pass this time, thanks."

Tarzan 

in 

Tarzan, The Magnificent

Tarzan and the Plastic Jungle of the Bandanna People

In 1959, the Tarzan movie franchise, which had been dumbing down Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle pulp adventure hero since the early 30's, got something of a reboot. The same series of ape man movies had been a viable Hollywood franchise since 1932. 27 years on, a new producer, Sy Wientraub, had taken control of the series. He felt it was time to shake the Lord of the Jungle up a  bit. The resulting movie, Tarzan's Greatest Adventure is one the best Tarzan movie ever made (with kudos also going to the 1999 Disney version and the 1984 film, Greystoke).  For the first time in cinema history, the character's childlike "me Tarzan, you Jane" broken pidgin English was dropped in favour of making Tarzan as articulate and intelligent as he was in the pages of Burroughs' original novels.

Muscle man turned B-movie actor Gordon Scott was cast as Tarzan. The evil treasure hunting bad guy was effectively played by Anthony Quayle. In the part of one of Quayle's henchman was a young up and coming Scottish actor by the name of Sean Connery. Producer Weintraub was so impressed with the young Connery that he reportedly offered him the role of Tarzan in the next movie in the the series, Tarzan The Magnificent. Connery is quoted as responding to Weintraub's offer with, "two fellows took an option on me for some spy picture and are exercising it. But I'll be in yours next.".  On account of that "spy picture" thing, Connery's Tarzan was never to be. By the time Tarzan Goes to India (next film in the series after Tarzan The Magnificent) got off the ground, so had a series of movies featuring a spy named Bond, James Bond. James Bond was a massive hit and it arguably remains Connery's most famous role to this day.

Not all trivia sites are in agreement on the Tarzan role, however. Some say Connery was was offered a role in Tarzan Goes to India but not the title role.  Given Connery's Mr.Universe physique, undeniable charm and sex appeal at that time, Tarzan seems a much more likely role for a hot young actor than that of just another baddie. Either way, it is a moot point. Connery was out of Weintraub's price range by that time anyway. There probably wasn't enough money in all of Hollywood to convince Connery to don that loin cloth by that stage in his career.

At the height of Bondmania in the mid-60's, Tarzan's Greatest Adventure was re-released into theatres. The film's second run was an obvious attempt to cash in on Connery's presence in the movie . The movie poster for the re-release featured a new (SPOILER ALERT) slug line: "Tarzan Kills James Bond!".

Connery in the Tarzan role he did actually play, along with fellow bad guy Anthony Quayle

King of the Moon 

in 

The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen

After co-directing one of the greatest comedies ever made, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974), ex-Pythoner and budding auteur, Terry Gilliam, went on to create a series of increasingly audacious cult movies. Time Bandits (1981) was followed by the highly praised Brazil (1985). Gilliam then followed that up with his biggest and most sprawling production to date, The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen (1988).

Sean Connery had previously worked with Terry Gilliam in the aforementioned Time Bandits. In that film, a sheltered British kid and a bunch of dwarfs quirkily

The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen is an epic fantasy adventure set in the 18th century...on acid...or to be more historically accurate but still as cliched...on opium. Among about a million and one other visually stunning stream of consciousness adventures, the eponymous Baron sails to the moon. Once there he encounters, naturally, the King of the Moon.

Apparently stipulating that he only play Kings in any future Gilliam movie, Connery was cast as the lunar monarch. Gilliam has a reputation for retooling and rewriting his scripts that puts the like George Lucas and Orson Welles to shame. The Munchhausen script at the time that Connery signed on and the one that ended up being the shooting script were two very different animals. Somewhere in there, the King of the Moon, a substantial role in the first draft, ended up being reduced to little more than cameo role in the final draft. Connery reportedly felt that the part had become too small and so he dropped out of the project.

Gilliam's path at that point was clear: recast the part with the only actor who is as close to Sean Connery as you can get:  Robin Williams.

Robin Williams or Sean Connery? Who can tell?

The Player 

in 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Speaking of Terry Gilliam, the screenplay for Gilliam's most famous film, Brazil ,was co-written by British playwright Tom Stoppard. Stoppard wrote (or co-wrote) a number of screenplays including Shakespeare in Love and an uncredited rewrite of all of the dialogue in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

As a playwright, however, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead remains Stoppard's best known work. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is actually a play within a play. It follows the "off stage" story of two minor characters from William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Rosencrantz and Guidenstern Are Dead premiered on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966. However, it was not until 1990 that Stoppard finally got to make the film version of one of the most wonderfully absurdist meta pieces of theatre ever. Stoppard both adapted his play to the screen and directed the film. Rosencrantz was played by Gary Oldman and Tim Roth was cast as Guildenstern. The role of the Player King is smaller than that of the two leads, yet thematically intrinsic to the play. For that part Stoppard cast, you guessed it, Sean Connery.

I have played the part of the Player King on stage in both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Hamlet. For the life of me, I can not fathom why any actor would want to turn down so juicy a part. Nonetheless, Connery did just that.

There are conflicting explanations as to why  Mr.Connery did so. I remember reading the press on the movie when it came out. The story that I read then was that Connery was forced to drop out for health reasons. The actor had throat surgery in 1989, reportedly to remove benign nodules from his vocal chords. His voice, the story said, had not yet sufficiently recovered from the surgery to take on such a role.

Current Internet commentators, on the other hand, seem convinced that Connery dumped the part in favour of the much better paying and higher profile gig as the Scottish-brogued Russian submarine Captain in The Hunt For Red October. Throat surgery seems a more likely explanation to me. Watch Connery's films and you'll notice that his now trademark and often imitated vocal raspyness only starts turning up in his performances from 1990 or so onward.

The role of the Player King
finally went to the second greatest
Connery doppelganger after Robin Williams,
Richard Dreyfus.  

Thomas Crown 

in 

The Thomas Crown Affair

In 1968, box office superstar Steve McQueen, was cast against type in director Norman Jewison's The Thomas Crown Affair.  McQueen's character, the titular role, is a millionaire businessman (yep, just a mere millionaire, it was the 44 years ago, after all).

This particular member of the 1968 1%  also robbed banks, just for the fun of it. The role of the suave, sophisticated debonair playboy millionaire was a bit of  departure for McQueen. His most famous roles up to that point tended to be cops, cowboys, foot soldiers, street hustlers and other more down to earth every man type characters. Nobody saw McQueen as a "suit". The star had a great deal of trouble convincing the studio to let him play one too.

Some of the resistance to McQueen playing the role of Thomas Crown came from screenwriter Alan Trustman.

Why? Well, in a 2011 interview with the New York Daily News, Trustman explains, " I wrote it for Sean Connery.....when they cast Steve McQueen, I objected violently and claimed that he could not deliver the dialogue."

Connery had already turned them down by that point so Trustman and the studio execs finally relented. The screenwriter did an extensive rewrite of the role, tailoring it to McQueen's personality.

Connery has since said that he regretted not taking the part.  Personally, I'm not convinced that it would have worked. Thomas Crown dresses well, has expensive tastes and seduces the woman who is investigating him. A variation on James Bond, in other words.

Perhaps the best known scene in The Thomas Crown Affair is the one in which McQueen and co-star Faye Dunaway, not so subtly flirt with each other while playing chess. Let's just say that there' plenty of Bishop stroking and leave it at that.  I shudder to think what kind of a grinning smirkfest a 1968 Sean Connery would have turned that scene into. Trustman also seemed to have a strong sense of what Connery's Thomas Crown might have been like. " It would have been very different and I'm not sure it would have been better.", he said.

Interestingly, when Die Hard and Predator director John McTiernan remade the movie in 1999, he too cast the James Bond of the day, Pierce Brosnan, in the title role. The Thomas Crown Affair had come full circle. Said Trustman of the remake, "Brosnan played it as if he were Sean Connery.".

James Bond 

in 

On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 

Live and Let Die 

and 

Moonraker

Early marketing campaigns attempted to capitalize on the idea of a Connery-less Bond movie

Sean Connery had a complex, love-hate relationship with James Bond. Sure, it brought him  international super-stardom, yet in the success of the popular role lurked that which can be both an actor's blessing and curse: typecasting. Connery would not successfully break the Bond mold until years after he left the series. Even so, it took till to the late 80's and early 90's before Mr. Connery really ditched the 007 association once and for all.

It's hard to believe that, as early as 1977, Connery was considering playing Bond again. The projects in question were non-official rogue 007 films spawned by a complicated legal loophole that opened the door to the question of who really owned the rights to the story of the fifth Bond movie, Thunderball .  Such legal machinations would finally result in Connery reprising the role of Bond in Never Say Never Again in 1983 (it and the 1967 spoof, Casino Royale, remain the only two "unofficial"James Bond movies).

Even before that, though, Connery had his fair share of flirtations with 007 movies that would not come to pass.  After Thunderball, the producers of the Bond franchise wanted to follow up that massive hit with On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Based, of course, on the Ian Fleming Bond novel of the same name, that's the movie where James Bond famously (SPOILER ALERT) gets married and his wife famously (SPOILER ALERT) gets killed. There was just one problem with the plan. The film features a hidden bad guy fortress in the Swiss alps which, of course, endows the story with both a ski and bob sled chase. In order to meet the studio's desired release date for the next Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service would have had to shoot in summer. That made shooting ski chases in the Swiss alps a little problematic. So instead the producers moved ahead with You Only Live Twice, the Fleming book in which Bond (SPOILER ALERT) supposedly famously dies. Midway through shooting You Only Twice in Japan, Connery decided that he was leaving the franchise. So On Her Majesty Secret Service, a fan favourite of the series, which contained one of the most powerful scenes in all of Bond-dom, the death of 007's wife, would, alas, be done without Connery.

Even after all that, Connery was not still quite done with the role yet. After the box office disappointment of the Connery-less On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the thorough critical trouncing of new 007 George Lazenby, the producers and the studio were quite eager to see Connery back in Bond action. They finally struck a deal with Connery to return to the role just one more time.  He was paid the then astronomical fee of one million dollars. Connery donated all of it to charity.

In the late 60's with the Apollo 11 moon landing and the public's general fascination with space, Ian Fleming's Moonraker (the closest the literary Bond ever got to outer space) was considered as the next film. Gerry Anderson, famous for his super successful puppet action adventure shows Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, was hired to get to work on a space oriented Bond story. For reasons that remain uncertain, Moonraker was ditched in favour of Diamonds Are Forever in which, of course, Connery would star. A satellite in the service of the evil Blofeld and stunningly silly desert moon buggy chase  are all that remained of the space angle (and of Anderson's contributions? Who knows?). The franchise would return to Moonraker in 1979, in the wake of the success of Star Wars and the new Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster craze of the time.

Diamonds are Forever went on to become the number one grossing movie of 1971. That  is particularly impressive box office success when you take into account that the movie was released in December.  Now the studio was more eager then ever for another Connery Bond. Overtures were made. Overtures to the reported tune of 5.4 million bucks. It was an unheard of offer back in the day but the studio really really really wanted Connery in that next James Bond movie. The next film slated for the series was Live and Let Die. As pop culture history tells us , despite the incredible offer, Sean Connery did not appear in Live and Let Die. The producers and the studio, no doubt reluctantly, settled for Roger Moore, the former star of the British TV series, The Saint, as James Bond.

Probably for the best. As Roger Moore took on the Bond mantle, the series would go on to defy itself  in its  rise to all the new levels of super silly-billy-ness.

Imagine what the German release poster for
Moonraker with Connery as Bond would have looked like...

Nigel Powers 

in 

Austin Powers in Goldmember

In early 2001, it was being widely reported in the entertainment news media that Sean Connery and his Goldfinger co-star Honor Blackman (you know, the P-word named woman) had just signed on the play the parents of Mike Myer's mega popular super spy parody character, Austin Powers. The news didn't come as that much of a surprise. Ever since the first film in the Austin Powers series, everybody was kinda expecting something like this, sooner or later.

In said first film, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, it was clear that Meyers was doing a James Bond parody. In fact, it was a little too clear, if you ask me.  Myers' 60's Bond parody concept was very predominant in the media and popular consciousness. It's all anybody was focusing on. There was little or no mention of all the other lesser known 60's spy films and pop culture that Myers was satirizing even more than he was poking fun at Bond. Myers was, in fact, also going after many of Bond's imitators and the super spy pop culture fad of the 1960s in general. That first Powers movie had everything from character names lifted directly from Dean Martin's Matt Helm spy comedy movies to references to the Flinstones' "J.Bondrock" parody. Alas, almost all such references flew right by most critics and commentators.

For better or worse, the Bond references were the most obvious ones to spot. The climatic Austin Powers scenes in the first film feature some shot for shot recreations of similar scenes the climatic battle in the James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice.  Dr.Evil looks almost exactly the same as Donald Pleasance in the role Ernst Starvro Blofeld, the Bond arch villain character (though Dr.Evil was named after the arch nemesis of Captain Action, a popular action figure line at the time).  Then, of courses, there's Powers' comically hairy chest that is most certainly a nod to every time Mr.Connery took off his shirt in a Bond movie.

Never Say Never Again: about as close as we'll ever see of an aging Connery in a spy role.

When Myers decided to introduce the silly super spy Powers' dad, Connery was a natural choice. Sir Sean had even already blazed the trail for the role when he played the dad of a character he partly influenced, in Stephen Spielberg's Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

The early 2001 news reports of Connery in the role never came to fruition. There is scarce information on why exactly Connery never joined the cast. My best guess is that by 2002, Connery was starting to take the prospect of life after retirement a lot more seriously and was getting a lot more picky (even by his standards!) about the roles he wanted to play.

The role of Nigel Powers, Austin's dad, instead went to Michael Caine. At first glance, Caine may seem like a lesser second choice for the part in that there is no real thematic connection to Powers or to the spy movie genre. However, Austin Powers' iconic glasses are exactly the same type of glasses that Caine wore when he played British spy Harry Palmer in another series of 60's spy movies (produced by the same guys that produced Bond). In fact, the Palmer character was part of the inspiration for Austin Powers.

See what I mean? Another reference everybody missed.

Sybok 

in 

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

It's gotta be every fanboy's dream crossover: Captain Kirk vs Zed, The Exterminator (you'll get that one later, trust me)...okay...well maybe just this fanboy's.

In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, William Shatner signed on not just to once again play the Captain of the USS Enterprise but to also direct the fifth film in the then seemingly unstoppable Star Trek movie franchise. In a move that was highly contentious amongst Trek fans, Star Trek V introduced the character of a renegade Vulcan named Sybok. As the story unfolds, Sybok also turns out to be Spock's long lost, never even spoken of  before brother (but let's not dwell on that which cannot be undone).

Shatner's first choice for the role of Sybok was Sean Connery. Shatner (who is -believe it or not- the same age as Connery) believed that Connery could bring just the right amount of gravitas, humour and power to the role, not to mention a lot of international name brand recognition. So much so that the movie probably would have been released in some countries under the banner "Sean Connery in Star Trek V".

The choice was not just Shatner's pipe dream, either. Negotiations with Connery had begun, but before the deal could be finalized, this guy named George Lucas came along and offered Connery the role of the father of some archaeologist from the 1930's. I dunno. Sounds kinda dull, Sean. You sure want to give up Star Trek for that?

Connery and Shatner in the same movie. My mind boggles at the possibilities. All the film would have needed then was Charlton Heston as the powerful alien entity who pretends to be God (you know, it really is kind of a bizarre plot for a Trek movie). Then Star Trek V would have realized the dream team movie cast of my childhood.

No matter, though. Sadly, even with Connery's presence, charisma and popularity, nothing could of have saved that major misfire of a Star Trek movie, either creatively or at the box office.

Okay, this one, more people will get.

John Hammond

 in 

Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton , the renowned novelist, screenwriter, director and M.D., was good friends with Sean Connery.  The two first met when Crichton directed Connery in his 1979 film, The Great Train Robbery. They hit it off and remained friends for years. Connery once said of Chrichton, "He’s got a very big influence on my life.".

Though, apparently almost no influence at all when it comes to roles Sean accepted. Aside from The Great Train Robbery, Connery only ever appeared in one Crichton related project, the 1993 film adaptation of Crichton's novel, Rising Sun (which was neither directed nor adapted for the screen by Crichton).

There could have been one other notable exception: Jurassic Park. For the role of John Hammond, the Scottish billionaire who masterminded the idea of an amusement park populated by cloned dinosaurs, Crichton suggested that director Steven Spielberg cast his old pal, Sean Connery.

Like everything else listed in this post, it was not be. According to an interview with Chricton I remember seeing on Charlie Rose back in the day, their friendship did not run quite that deep. Connery wanted more money than the studio was willing to cough up, according to Crichton.
The studio execs probably felt that the success or failure of  Jurassic Park did not rely on Mr. Connery's presence in the film. They were already shelling out the big bucks for the real stars of the movie, the dinosaurs (and the ground breaking visual effects that would bring them to life on the screen).

Sir Richard Attenborough got the part of Hammond. Attenborough played the part as a naive benevolent happy-go-lucky grandfatherly figure who, although well intentioned, was horribly misguided. The characterization is almost a total opposite of Chrichton's Hammond in the original novel. There, Hammond knows exactly what he's doing and is well aware of the potential dangers (and massive profits) of his undertaking. He darkly uses the term "collateral damage" when people start getting eaten by the giant reptilian Frankenstein monsters Hammond helped create.

Connery tends to play most of his characters as people who, while often facing great conflicts, are essentially happy. It is doubtful that any sense of darkness to the character would have played into Connery's acting choices nor would they have been tolerated by the studio execs who seriously gunning for a big summer blockbuster.

Almost cast as Dr. Grant, the role that ultimately went to Sam Neil, was Harrison Ford. Yeesh, with Connery and Ford under Spielberg's direction, the whole affair might have felt a little too Indiana Jones and the Last Jurassic Crusade.

Morpheus 

in 

The Matrix

Um...no...I'm not doing the doppelganger bit again.

As I start looking down this list of roles that Mr. Connery turned down, one overwhelming thought comes to mind: "What the hell was this guy thinking?".  The list that contains some of the most interesting, iconic, juicy and lucrative roles of the last 50 or so years.

Well, here's one more for you, Sir Sean; you could have easily doubled his 1990's asking price price of 10 million dollars a picture by starring in The Matrix.

Connery has stated in a couple of different interviews that we was approached to star in The Matrix. Many believe that he was offered the role of Morpheus,  the cooler-than-thou leather clad mentor in The Matrix. In addition to making an absolute ton of money, The Matrix redefined the SF action movie genre for the next 10 years and beyond. Better yet, Connery, as far as critical reaction goes, would have the added advantage of being the guy in the movie that wasn't Keanu Reeves.

Yes, according to most sources, Connery was initially offered the part that went Laurence Fishbourne (and single handedly rejuvenated his career). However, here is some speculation out there in Internet land that Connery was, in fact, offered the role of the Key Keeper in the sequel, Matrix Reloaded.

If that's true, it makes even less sense than turning down Morpheus. That decision is at least conceivably understandable. The first Matrix film is so intensely a visual and visceral experience that God knows how the thing ever would have come across in mere written word script form. Turning down the sequel to one of the biggest hits of the decade is much more perplexing. The movie was out there. It was successful. More than likely, they could have afforded Sir Sean. The part of the Key Keeper is relatively small in terms of a time commitment yet at the same time potentially very profitable. Given all that, I'm more inclined to believe that Connery turned down the seemingly risky Morpheus role in the original rather than the sure thing role of the Key Keeper in the sequel.

Morpheus would have worked for Connery too. The action tough guy mentor role is one that he had mastered at that stage in his career, having already played the part in such films as The Untouchables and Highlander.


However, turning down The Matrix is a mere drop in the bucket next to...

Gandalf 

in 

The Lord of the Rings

Connery is on record as saying, "I didn't understand it" in refrence to the roles he passed on in both The Matrix and in The Lord of the Rings (just check out the extras on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen DVD ). In another interview Connery sold the Lord of the Rings non-comprehension explanation even harder. "I had never read Tolkien, and I didn't understand the script when they sent it to me. Bobbits? Hobbits?", he said.

You might have wanted to take a second look at Tolkien and those Bobbits Mr. Connery. Based on the cut of the gross deal that Sir Ian Mckellan got for playing the role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Connery would have stood to make an estimated $253 million from the role. Good thing the guy was already a multi-millionaire when he passed on that one.

Not understanding the script is one reason for passing on the one of the biggest film trilogies of all time  Another, and slightly more understandable, reason why Sir Sean turned down director Peter Jackson's offer was the prospect of the grueling 18 month shooting schedule that would take place on the other side of the world. Connery was in his late 60's at the time and all that wouldn't have exactly been easy for him..

Now, legendary horror movie actor Christopher Lee was ten years older than Connery and yet that didn't stop him from taking the part of the evil Saruman in the same project. Let's face it, though, Saruman isn't as big a role and, with all due respect, Mr. Lee was probably a lot more in need of 253 million bucks than Connery was.

J.R.R. Tolkien's creation of the wizard Gandalf is one of the most recognizable characters in all of fantasy fiction (that was true even before the movies). The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is the only film ever in the SF/Fantasy/Horror genre to win an Oscar for Best Picture. Yep, Sean, you seriously missed the boat on this baby.

Mr. Connery, however, may have been leery of  "weird" SF and Fantasly scripts sent his way since, say, the mid 70's. Also on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen DVD extras, Connery says that he did The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen because, "I'm the guy who did Zardoz, after all." That may be a very telling comment in light of his rejections of both The Matrix and Lord of the Rings.

For the uninitiated, Zardoz is a 1975 science fiction film directed by John Boorman (Excalibur, Deliverance) starring Sean Connery. It is a very trippy 70's sci-fi parable that pretends to more dense and cryptic than in fact it actually is.  In other words, it's pretentious.

As if that weren't enough, Connery plays a guy named Zed, The Exterminator (see, I told you that reference would make sense later) who spends almost the entire film in a bright red diaper that looks like it may very well have been the inspiration for Borat's infamous one piece male swimsuit. Or, as Mike Myers referred to Sean's  unique Zardoz wardrobe at Connery's induction into the American Film Institutes's Hall of Fame, a "nutsack". It's kinda like he got to play Tarzan 16 years after he was first offered the part.

When you take Zardoz into account, it's no wonder that, whenever Connery saw an offbeat "cerebral" SF or Fantasy script like The Matrix and Lord of the Rings, he ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

Don't get me wrong, Zardoz is a fascinating curiosity in both the genre and in Connery's career. Nonetheless, go watch it and see if you can't blame the guy.

The role that many feel Sean Connery should have turned down.

These are but a few examples of  the Connery Roles That Never Were. The list goes on: Daddy Warbucks in Annie, Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music and, most recently, reprising the role of  Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, to name a few.

Sir Thomas Sean Connery is now quite adamantly retired from movies. The likes of George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg have famously attempted to lure him out of his luxury New York City apartment and back on to the big screen, but to no avail. Except for a couple of voice gigs, no one has succeeded in that endeavor.

I guess Sean Connery has decided to take his notorious reputation for turning down roles to its ultimate logical conclusion.

No, this one's just for fun.