My
favorite genre of movies would have to be spy thrillers and basically
any movie featuring espionage as the main focus is going to get my butt
in the seat whether it be The Bourne Ultimatum, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Hunt For Red October, Taken, or The Manchurian Candidate. None
of the preceding movies would I consider Science Fiction, though, and
any character from those movies would not qualify for this list. This
fact is especially sad for Bryan Mills from Taken because he was awesome in the first movie but let’s agree to forget the sequel. However, I have found one spy who I think easily qualifies for this list, the icon James Bond.James Bond is just one of those characters that click with the audience. He is witty, debonair, and deadly. While the character has been played by a number of actors, the character and his traits have pretty much stayed the same. Plus, many different aspects of the character and his movies have become legendary and have been copied and parodied multiple times. Everybody knows the theme music which has become one of those songs along with Star Wars and Indiana Jones that gets the “duh-da-da” treatment.
So what makes Bond sci-fi where other spy movies are just spy movies? Well to start, James Bond films have seemed to usually feature villians with absurd sci-fi premises. Who can forget Moonraker’s Drax building a huge space station with “perfect humans” and a plan to kill everybody on Earth using nerve gas? What about Alec Trevelyan, more recently in GoldenEye, attempting to steal billions from the Bank of England just before using a high-jacked Russian satellite to destroy Great Britain with an EMP? Another aspect of James Bond which makes him a great sci-fi character would be all the gadgets he uses to get the job done. Throughout the film series, the character has used gadgetry as mundane as a radio transmitter all the way up to a car which can transform into a submarine.
I have liked all the men who have played James Bond through the years and I feel each actor has brought his own unique interpretation to the character while, at the same time, respecting his history and the men who have preceded him. However, I do have my favorites which would have to be a tie between Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig. Each actor (Dalton and Craig) has played Bond with a subtle charm and a brutal (literally, watch their fight scenes) determination.
Best portrayals: You Only Live Twice (Connery), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Obviously, Lazenby), The Spy Who Loved Me (Moore), License to Kill (Dalton), GoldenEye (Brosnan), Casino Royale (Craig)
Favorite moment(s): The dialogue on the train in Casino Royale between Bond and Vesper Lynd.
Bond chases a car with a tank through the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia.
No comments:
Post a Comment