Debunking fake 007 Brosnan myths

Hello everyone. I know I did a similar article sometime before on Universal Exports and the UAMC, but I felt in the need to debunk some facts I regularly see on forums and social media regarding Pierce Brosnan's performance as James Bond. I don't own the truth, neither do them, but here's my take on some exaggeratedly wrong assumptions.

He is by far the weakest actor who has played Bond.

Of course not. Being effortlessly cool and debonair is not a synonym of weakness, and Brosnan could sit on a baccarat table on the world's most expensive casino one day before beating the crap out of an assailant on the Manticore watch using a towel as a weapon. He threw a villain to a printing press, staining the sheets of paper with his blood. He killed a woman he arguably loved in cold blood. He jumped to an hovercraft in movement and mercilessly shoot a burst of a Mac 11 submachine gun to the driver. He was acting like a highly trained 00 agent licenced to kill. In what universe does that classify as "weak"? If I had to name times where Bond was weak against an enemy, I would say (sorry) Moore hitting Jaws' steel teeth in both The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, or Dalton at the Barrelhead Bar being knocked out by a random brawler in Licence To Kill, only to be saved by Pam who logically reminded him that "if it wasn't for her his a** would have been nailed to the wall". Mind you, I do love Moore and Dalton, I don't think they were bad Bonds overall, I'm just pointing out two scenes where I felt Bond was easily ridiculed. You can add being abandoned by the young German teenagers he asked for a lift in Octopussy to reach the US base before the bomb goes off. But Brosnan? No way. He was human, he was sympathetic, but definitively NOT weak. 

He brought nothing new to the role.

Wrong again. I agree he's best known for combining the best attributes of the actors who preceded him, but he did bring new things to the role. He was vulnerable and human in a natural way: a way that Dalton perhaps overdramatized and Lazenby did at a glance. This Bond reflects, has doubts, makes mistakes, feels influenced by the women he comes across. He brought to the screen that reflexive side of Ian Fleming's Bond read in Goldfinger when he remembers with some poignancy having to kill the capungo in Mexico. All these things were taken into consideration in the Daniel Craig movies. And even if it may hurt to admit it, those took a lot of the characterization and situations lived by Brosnan's Bond.

GoldenEye was only successful because Bond was absent for a long time.

Naturally, when an iconic character like Bond is absent for a long time (No Time To Die being a current example) the anticipation grows. Yet, that can be a Sword of Damocles for the series: no matter how long people have expected for it, if the film is bad, the failure will hurt the double. If the film is successful, the success will be considerably bigger. That was the case of GoldenEye, a movie released in a decade Bond wasn't meant to survive and the success was so big that it took everyone by surprise. Bond was still a gold mine, and MGM/UA's gold mine in a time when the studio wasn't at its best. This is simple: no-one goes to see a movie that is bad. If a bunch of teenagers went to watch GoldenEye on the opening day or weekend and disliked it, would their friends and acquaintances go to see it? Unless they want to spend the money to satisfy their curiosity, I think the answer is a pretty solid "No". Therefore, something of the film attracted people and -adjusted to 2011's inflation- it was more successful than all the Bond films of the 1980s: three with Moore, two with Dalton, all released every two years. So, the anticipation was not all. It had its influence, but if the film had a tame reception MGM would have been doubtful and think twice before green-lighting Tomorrow Never Dies. That didn't happen: the success of GoldenEye was so rotund that the next Bond film became the biggest priority of Kirk Kerkorian, the new maganer of the studio, who had EON under pressure to bring the film no later than Christmas 1997.

He overacts.

Okay, a little. The scene where he threatens Renard in the Nuclear Facility in The World Is Not Enough ("That bomb will never leave this room!") and the brawlish "yeah!" before the sword fight from Die Another Day feel way overacted to me. However, I don't see him overacting at all in any scene of his other movies. The grief and regret felt by Bondwhen he finds Paris Carver dead on his room or the killing of Elektra King are two moments that feel completely genuine to me. I double it: none of the other five actors could have done it that well. Mixing the exact point of sadness, regret, humanity and a pinch of fury. Sean? He would have shot Elektra and not give a damn. George? No idea, we've seen too little to imagine him in those shoes. Certainly not Moore. He wouldn't have pulled the trigger. Dalton and Craig would have been way too stone-faced for what the scene required. But Brosnan gave us what we needed. In all of his movies. I can believe he's surprised to find out his friend has betrayed him or that Elektra was the rotten apple. I do believe he's relaxed when he drives a BMW through Cuba on a sunny day. I also believe he feels abandoned by Queen and Country after his ordeal in North Korea.

He didn't impose changes in the script of his movies.

False. I have read plenty of interviews since 1997 or so where he asked for more involvement and interaction of Bond with his universe. He wanted a woman that meant something for him and not a fling, he got Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies. Then he wanted to add dramatism to the relationship between Bond and M and the girls, he got that in The World Is Not Enough and he had a strong influence in the choice of Michael Apted as a director, hoping the 1999 film wasn't another action blockbuster with lots of fireworks. Brosnan also expected Bond to go through a real challenge that questioned his raison d'etre and in Die Another Day the character is betrayed and abandoned, having to clean his name on his own for nearly the half of the film. In comparison, Daniel Craig's voice has much more weight on Barbara Broccoli's shoulders because that's "her" Bond, so she tries to please him in almost everything. That didn't happen with Brosnan. They listened to him and made some changes to please him here and there, but they never left the structure of what a Bond film should be and how it should end (villain killed, base exploding, woman in bed).

He can't play a rough character.

Fallacious! The Long Good Friday, The Fourth Protocol, Butterfly On A Wheel, Survivor are four films where he proves that he can play a completely violent and evil character. An IRA hitman who barely speaks and stabs his targets. A KGB officer who could be the villain of any Bond movie (notice how he cuts the throat of the witness who mistakenly seen him exchanging sensitive material with an accomplice). A kidnapper who can make a married couple go through hell making them think their daughter has been captured - not really a violent guy, but a man who can push them to the limits. A professional hitman threatening the life of Milla Jovovich and attempting a terrorist attack. These are great proofs of his onscreen evilness, and something he could have offered to his Bond had the producers pushed the character to be much darker in a Craig or Dalton way. But they didn't. They wanted Bond to be a 90s action hero and they were more focused in entertainment than violence.

He was a parodic Bond.

Not at all. He has a big sense of humour, but he's far from being parodic. In fact, the Daniel Craig era realized that Bond couldn't be fully embraced without some laughs and the so (wrongfully) maligned "Brozza one-liners" came back for Skyfall and SPECTRE, two films which are more relaxed in tone than Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace even with their great dose of drama and violence. What was "parodic" on the Brosnan films? The fantastic Goldfinger had the villain sucked out of the plane of a window and in Diamonds Are Forever Blofeld showed his drag queen side. And that was Sean Connery. In The Living Daylights, you can see the butts of two Afghan peasants in the middle of an epic battle and Bond touching the breast of a female statue while abseiling down from a building. And that was Timothy Dalton! So those who have no sins can cast the first stone.

His women were mere decorative elements.

On the contrary, I'd go as far as saying that from the Brosnan era onwards the women stopped being decorative. Natalya was an integral part of the film, he needed her to twarth the villain's plan and she needed him to escape from the clutches of trained people like Xenia and Ourumov. Xenia Onatopp gave us the first proper sex scene of the entire series, plus she's very much an evil female Bond - which girl asked for "the same" when Bond ordered his exotic Vodka Martini "shaken, not stirred"? Why it is so explicit that they share the same passions? Don't forget about Paris Carver, a woman Bond dated "as a civillian" and that ends up dead due to his singular profession. He cares about her, he doesn't wants her involved even if at first it was his job to "pump her up for information". Don't forget Elektra King, a woman who tries to fool him, play with his feelings, and ends up dead by Bond's gun. A woman who is a combination between Tracy Di Vicenzo and Vesper Lynd but with a prominent and conscious evil side that forces 007 to leave his feelings and mercy aside to stop a threat. Maybe the Die Another Day women were a bit over the top and basic, yet Miranda Frost was an MI6 mole and no-one suspected anything from her, not even Bond until she has him on the sight of her Walther P99.

Die Another Day was so bad that Brosnan was fired and the franchise was rebooted.

Wrong. Taking more than $432 million, it was the most successful film of the Pierce Brosnan era, even more than the acclaimed GoldenEye. Adjusted to 2011's inflation (see this article), Die Another Day was a bigger hit than GoldenEye, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The World Is Not Enough, For Your Eyes Only, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Man With The Golden Gun, Dr. No, Octopussy, The Living Daylights, A View To A Kill and Licence To Kill. I counted 11 films! Yes, Brosnan was fired. I'm not denying it. He was the first Bond actor not asked to return (although there are rumours that Roger Moore was "suggested" to retire in 1985). But that wasn't an effect of a failure. Die Another Day got mixed reviews but the film was such a bigger hit that EON and MGM wanted to go that way for Bond 21. Rumours in 2003 had tipped Michael Madsen to reprise the role of NSA leader Falco and Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were planning a Jinx spin-off with Halle Berry. Not something that would happen with a "bad" film. Just notice that the planned Quantum of Solace 3 disc DVD set was cancelled even after Marc Forster had recorded his audio commentary. When a film doesn't have a popular reception, it's hardly revived on any form outside a Bond Collection box set. The change of mind came somewhere in 2004 when EON got the rights to do an official version of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale and saw that the winds of Hollywood were changing. The trend was rebooting popular franchises and don the protagonists with an emotionally complex side, as it was the case of Batman in the hands of Christopher Nolan, starting with Batman Begins in 2005. Under that scenario, they felt the reboot of Bond with Casino Royale would force them to hire a new actor to make sense, and they did. But don't get it wrong: 2003 wasn't 1990. No-one was doubting that Bond will at some point return, nor the series was recovering from bad box office numbers.

If you want to read more on this subject and a bigger in-depth look on the virtues and importance of Pierce Brosnan's James Bond portrayal, I strongly recommend you to read my book The Bond of The Millennium, you can get it on the Amazon store on Paperback and Kindle formats.