Maybe this is still true today, but it was certainly the case in the 1990s that many kids saw an Austin Powers movie before they ever saw James Bond. At least in a movie theater: Pierce Brosnan is beloved for GoldenEye, the 1995 movie and 1997 video game; he’s a great Bond in all of his four entries, but every movie after GoldenEye gets worse and worse: Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day. This remarkably weak run—which coincided exactly with the release of the Austin Powers trilogy—probably led franchise owner Barbara Broccoli to pass over Brosnan for Casino Reality, long considered a more “serious” Bond entry before Daniel Craig was ever cast.
I was upset by it then, and I’m upset by it now: Daniel Craig is not James Bond. Does anyone else have eyes? Daniel Craig has blond hair. James Bond does not have blond hair. Idris Elba is a terrible actor, but he was once considered to play Bond, and at least would’ve looked the part. That dude looks like James Bond. Short, stocky, BLOND Craig? No.
Brosnan was only 53 in 2006. He could’ve played Bond one last time in Casino Royale. But the family wasn’t having it: for whatever reason, he was nixed, and Craig was announced as Bond 20 years ago this month, and a not insignificant minority of them have been pissed ever since. I didn’t even see Casino Royale when it came out, nor any of the other Craig movies. Broccoli loved him, even though he hated the gig and said so publicly. Okay, not exactly endearing, but go ahead, man… I’ve liked him a lot more as an actor lately in Glass Onion and Queer, and I’m sure Wake Up Dead Man will be a fine entertainment, unlike Casino Royale and all the rest.
It didn’t have to be a lousy movie. I caught up with them a few years ago, and they’re unbearable. James Bond is nothing if he can’t enjoy being smug, quippy, and too cool for reality. He’s a capitalist superhero, and they’re pretty dumb movies, high-end junk for the end of the 20th century. Die Another Day is probably the worst movie in the entire franchise, hampered by awful CGI and a ridiculous opening that has Brosnan imprisoned in North Korea so long he grows castaway hair and beard. The silliness only worked against James Bond when the movie wasn’t good enough to support it, and playing against Austin Powers was especially tough. You watch Goldfinger and realize that not only are there so many characters, images, and lines there, there are stunts and actions that you can hear Mike Myers verbalizing (“Judo CHOP!”)
But Goldfinger doesn’t suffer. “No, I expect you to die” is a great line whether it’s said to James Bond or Austin Powers. Fantastical plots filled with governments and organizations with no relationship to the real world, except a vague subtext of Us Vs. Them, even when the Russians were involved. GoldenEye was set in post-Soviet Europe, preceded the first Austin Powers movie by only two years, and remains the best entry in the franchise.
Every Bond besides Craig had golden turns. Roger Moore, by far the best to ever do it, made only one bad Bond movie: A View to a Kill, his last. Sean Connery, beloved and considered sacrosanct by older fans, isn’t unimpeachable but far from overrated, and all of his movies—including Never Say Never Again—are among the best. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is widely considered the “smart” choice, or at least the one that filmmakers respond to (Steven Soderbergh says it’s the only one he can still learn from), so George Lazenby gets a pass, even though he kind of sucked in the role (probably because he didn’t like playing it, either). Even Timothy Dalton has a decent two film run at the end of the 1980s, with License to Kill notable for being the most graphically violent and profane entry in the series.
But you look at what they did to James Bond, and you see how much they loved what they did to him, how it earned them so much more respectability (and, to be fair, money; if Craig weren’t as popular with most fans, he would’ve been out by 2009), and you realize how much damage Austin Powers did. It’s not his fault, baby, but rather the Broccolis for rushing Tomorrow Never Dies into production and turning in turkeys for The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day. I could tell that The World is Not Enough was mid-tier Bond when I saw it at the age of seven in the last days of 1999, and I knew that Die Another Day SUCKED when I saw it just under three years later. The Jason Bourne movies had more flair and were better overall, but they starred Matt Damon, playing someone who wasn’t James Bond. Not interested.
Broccoli’s out of the picture now, having sold her lot to Amazon for a billion dollars. The latest news has the company “extremely interested” in casting Jacob Elordi in the part. I’m not sure. He’s a bit too tall, gangly, overextended; if it were possible to shrink him down a size, he’d be… ehh. But he’s a good actor, it could work—maybe a one-off? No world building, please. Just make good movies, and if you have to do a TV show, make it self-contained. Limited adventures, no references or tie-ins to the past, that shit does not age.
Bring back old actors in cameos (not Craig), maybe even try out former Felix Leiter Jeffrey Wright as Bond. He looks like Bond more than Elordi, and he’s a GREAT actor. Maybe just a bit too old now, but again, a one-off? Please, feed us, Bezos! You should act in one of those movies! You got a little Doctor Evil in you. That photo with the lizard? Come on man. Let’s have fun.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NickyOtisSmith