WARNING! Unpopular opinion alert in progress!
Roger Moore is my favorite James Bond of all time, and is therefore THE BEST 007 in history; if history was written by me. Sadly, the world lost him today, but he did live a transcendent life that lasted all the way to age 89.
I know that there’s at least one other human being who agrees with me on Moore being #1, and it’s A.O. Scott of the New York Times, who penned this thesis in The Paper of Record.
In the piece, entitled Roger Moore was the best Bond Because he was the Gen X Bond, Scott writes:
My James Bond is not macho compensation for lost imperial power, like Mr. Connery, or an anxious avatar of globalization, like Mr. Craig. He is a cartoon superhero in evening wear, a man whose mission is to embody — and, therefore, to transcend — a secondhand, second-rate age, to be cool and clever in a world determined to be as lame and dumb as possible.
Nobody did that better than Roger Moore.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/867216736524922880
As one in the DeMilitarized Zone between Generation X and Millenial (choosing Gen X when required every time), I fully understand that Sean Connery is the original, but I wholly reject the idea that he’s the best.
Moore is tops in my book because he best embodied the following truth. The James Bond franchise is no different from any other action film series in this way-
You must, before viewing, accept these two premises:
1.) you know who’s going to win, but you want to find out how
2.) a lot of what you’re about to see will make absolutely no sense, and be so utterly far-fetched that you must tone down the seriousness of this endeavor.
If you don’t accept those two premises, then you’re probably not getting into this sort of thing.
That’s why Roger Moore was The Spy that Entertained Us, more than any of the other Bonds. Moore, and the films he starred in, found the perfect balance between serious and silly, dramatic storyline and live action cartoon.
Nobody (not Connery, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Craig) did it half as good as Roger Moore.
Some of the most Bondian moments of the Bond series, the scenes that Bondies everywhere relish the most, happened in the Roger Moore films.
Here’s a short list, featuring some of the better examples.
Moonraker, 1979
THE WORST, most MIND-NUMBING cliche of the Bond franchise, and the entire action movie genre in general, was perfectly parodied in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997).
Scott: Wait, aren’t you even gonna watch them? They could get away.
Dr. Evil: No-no-no, I’m going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I’m just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
Scott: I have a gun in my room. You give me 5 seconds, I’ll get it. I’ll come back down here, BOOM! I’ll blow their brains out!
Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don’t get it, do ya? You don’t.
Yes, the “I have to kill them in an overly elaborate way that requires my being somewhere else at the exact same time” bit only made legitimate sense once, and it was in Moonraker.
It’s the scene where Drax gets his people to place Bond and Dr. Holly Goodhead underneath the space shuttle afterburner at launch time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U00tRdMKTqI
For Your Eyes Only 1981
Early on in the film, when snorkeling with Melina, this movie’s Bond girl, she inexplicably decides to leave an oxygen canister on the sea floor. It really made no sense at all…until about an hour and change later in the movie, when the villain tries to kill the duo by dragging them underwater via his boat. The canister awaits so Voila!
Octopussy 1983
Until Chris Cornell (another great artist we lost this week, *sigh*) performed the theme song for 2005’s Casino Royale, this was the only Bond theme (non-instrumental) in which the film name was omitted from the lyrics. Even today, some talking heads refuse to say the word “Octopussy” on television.
It’s much more than the title or the theme song (below) that set this edition apart from the herd.
As Scott wrote in the NYT:
the sublime, ridiculous thrill of seeing “The Spy Who Loved Me,” “Moonraker,” “For Your Eyes Only” and “Octopussy” on the big screen. Those movies were heavenly trash, with plots you didn’t really need to follow and sexual innuendo that struck my young eyes and ears as deliciously risqué.
Octopussy was every bit he described in that second sentence, maybe more so than all the other movies just mentioned above combined. It was the least serious Bond film of all, and the one that could definitely not have been done by anyone but Roger Moore.
Live and Let Die 1973
Of all the Bond films, this one had perhaps the greatest theme song (although Garbage “The World is Not Enough” is right up there) and the most colorful attempt to assassinate 007 (the alligator feeding time entrapment scene). This movie rivals 1985’s A View to Kill as the most American of Bond films, the latter of which had a villain, Max Zorn (played by Christopher Walken), who could have only been opposed by Roger Moore.
To get a real sense of just how not seriously Moore took himself in all of this, remember this bit of trivia below:
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/867221334916464640
Yes, Moore had a role parodying the greatest Bond villain of all in “Spice World,” a movie that also essentially ripped off the legendary 007 opening credits created by Maurice Binder.
Roger Moore’s decision to appear in the Spice Girls’ take on Hard Day’s Night conveys just how grounded he really was. That sense of humility, in spite of being such a huge global star, is why he was the best James Bond of all.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes to WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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