Barry Niven wrote:QoS: "I'm motivated by my duty."
But seriously, when Craggy was first announced as "James Bond" for CR, I was initially on the "let's give him a chance & just wait and see" side to avoid being associated with the negative and defeatist vibes that the "haters" were accused of by Babs' Marketing Machine playing up its "underdog" angle. Plus the overkill of excess from the last 3/4ths of Pierce Brosnan's polarizing run, topped off by the rampant smug (especially from Halle Berry's "Jinx") of DAD left me burnt-out and vulnerable enough to mistake CR as a "better" Bond movie, aided by the four-year gap to whet my appetite for anything new to come.
And to my horror and chagrin now, I bought it. Like the apologists for CR, I was trying to rationalize Craggy's casting and portrayal as "not that bad" because he was a "different kind of James Bond" which was somehow "necessary" for these changing times. Instead of really just acknowledging that it was a bad move, I was trying to empathize with the party-line's explanations about it being a "wonderful" new direction for the series, and not wanting to be an idiot for not "understanding" it.
Then QoS arrived in all of its incoherent, self-important, migraine-inducing shambles, revealing that that CR's "superiority" was not only a fluke, but a FRAUD. That was confirmed by the CR rewatch with my blinders OFF to make me accept The Truth that Daniel Craig was not and never will be James Bond 007. And believing that didn't make me a narrow-minded "hater", but a proud dissenter, through which I was able to see SkyFault for the pretentious bull$#!+ it really was without buying into the phony media hype that called it (and Craggy) the "Best Bond EVA!"
But mostly, I just HATE that f#/+ing line. "I' MO-tUH-vay-TuhD bye Mye DU-TEE". That's just crying out for that glorious scene from the original Poseidon Adventure when Gene Hackman's rebel preacher rails at the stupid Purser for duping most of the Ballroom Survivors to stay put and "wait for help to arrive" instead of saving themselves with Team Hackman's daring climb up to safety, which would probably go something like this:
Craggy-Bond (mumbling): "I'm motivated by my duty."
Hackman: "For what? To be a pouty poser sitting on his butt?"
Craggy-Bond (pouting): "That's not true!"
Hackman: "It IS true, you POMPOUS ASS!"
IIRC, shortly afterwards another explosion causes the Ballroom to flood, killing everyone who stayed behind with that stupid Purser while most of Team Hackman escapes and are indeed rescued, though sadly not Hackman himself. But at least HE was Right. And so am I regarding Craggy not being Bond, and THAT's the most important thing, isn't it?
I think different automatically equaled better to a great number of people. I completely understand most if the criticism of the past series, yet I bristle at the hyperbole surrounding the new one.
Daniel is not Ian Fleming's 007, he is not Cubby's, Saltzman's nor Dana's 007. All he is to me is Barbara Broccoli's "James Bond" which is in name only, justified by the percentage of the movie rights she can legally lay claim to. Her father and more importantly the man who created the icon would be unable to recognise their creation today.
However that would be fine with me if the pretence behind Barbara's Bond were not this is the definitive Bond as Ian and her father designed him to be.
That and the fact so much money was spent to creat a narrative and positive spin it nearly make me ill at the thought. I remember the thinly valid friends of EON making appearances on the Bond boards trying to sway opinions, the whole we can judge if until we see it, then if we did see it and happen to judge it unfavourably we were not supposed to say a word because don't know what it is like to act or write or direct.
In hindsight if EON were upfront about their intentions from the start (as well as leaving room for us dissenters to have a valid objection) I doubt very much if I'd been bothered by Ms Broccoli's half arsed attempt.
