The Brosnan era was in full flight. The movies were massive box office successes. Brosnan was embraced by fans. The so-called “Billion Dollar Bond” was firmly in place and ready by the time the 40th anniversary of the globally famous franchise arrived. Nothing could go wrong… could it? It is time to do it. It is time to tackle Die Another Day.
Die Another Day – Behind The Scenes
Shortly after the previous installment, The World Is Not Enough, was released the world changed forever. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 had far-reaching repercussions on geopolitics, on the commentary around it, and on how the US and the West both viewed themselves and how they were viewed by the rest of the world.
The impact was also felt in the world of movies. An expensively assembled trailer for Spider-Man that featured the Twin Towers was pulled. Countless other productions digitally altered the sadly different New York skyline. James Cameron parked plans for a follow-up to True Lies because he didn’t feel it was possible to treat terrorists comically.
In this febrile atmosphere, the producers had to pull together a story for another James Bond adventure that was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the franchise.
Very early in the production, there was a desire to continue to explore the character of 007 more deeply, as they began to in The World Is Not Enough. After the success of that movie, producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson asked the director Michael Apted to return to direct. Apted accepted.
However, with the 40th anniversary to be celebrated in this instalment, there was also a desire to embrace other elements of the franchise and pay homage to the history, including the Connery and Moore eras.
While Apted was felt to be very strong in the dialogue and character work, a need for more humor and action was starting to develop in the minds of Eon. This is when mistakes started to be made. The producers rescinded the offer to Apted, as they wanted Tony Scott or John Woo.
Both declined. Scott suggested Quentin Tarantino to the producers. Brosnan was keen, but the producers were not.
Brosnan also suggested John McTiernan, Ang Lee, and Martin Scorsese. Brosnan had an in-depth conversation on a long-haul flight with Scorsese about directing the movie. The producers, as usual, leaned more toward lower-profile directors who wouldn’t overshadow the production. They looked at Brett Ratner, Stephen Hopkins, and Stuart Baird before settling on Lee Tamahori.
Tamahori’s feature directorial debut, Once Were Warriors (1994), was a widespread critical and commercial success. It was considered one of the greatest New Zealand films ever made. After moving to Hollywood, he made Mulholland Falls and the well-regarded wilderness thriller film The Edge, followed by Along Came A Spider. Eon seemed to have continued its track record of finding interesting directors on their way up.
Meanwhile, moving at pace, a story was coming together at the same time. Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade turned to an original Fleming novel for inspiration. Moonraker was the second book in the series and is very different from the eventual Roger Moore-led movie.
That book features a villain who was found almost dead in a war zone, changed his face, wormed his way into British society, and was then revealed to be a huge threat, working against the West from within. It was such an inspiration that in early drafts, the character of Miranda Frost was called Gala Brand, the heroine of the novel.
With an increasingly belligerent North Korea, labeled by the US as part of the “Axis Of Evil” post 9/11, making news headlines, they developed an idea based on this flashpoint. They also took inspiration from the ending of the novel You Only Live Twice, and the start of The Man With The Golden Gun, between which Bond has been captured by the enemy.
Brosnan had a four-movie contract, and this was the final movie of the deal, with the expectation that there would be extensions. Alongside him, Oscar winner Halle Berry was cast as NSA agent Jinx, perhaps the highest-profile actress to take on the female lead in a Bond movie to date.
Early versions of the script also featured a return of Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin (Tomorrow Never Dies), assisting Bond in Hong Kong in a cameo. These plans fell through and the character was rewritten as Chen, the undercover hotel manager.
To give an idea of the speed of production, principal photography started on 14th January 2002, with a November 2002 release date. The first scenes filmed were the Q laboratory, the virtual reality shooting sequence, and meeting M in the abandoned underground station. These were all filmed on B stage at Pinewood.
As this was the 40th anniversary, the aim was to litter the movie with nods and callbacks to other entries in the series. You can see this more than anywhere in the Q lab scene, featuring the Acro Jet and crocodile sub from Octopussy, the Thunderball jetpack, and Rosa Klebb’s poisoned-tipped shoe blades.
Location shooting started in Cadiz, Spain doubling for Cuba. The footage for the pre-title sequence, surfing into North Korea, had already been filmed in December 2021 before the start of principal photography by Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama, and Darrick Doerner at the world-famous surf break known as “Jaws” in Peʻahi, Maui. Pick-up shots were completed in Cornwall, England, and the coast and beach shots were filmed to insert into the sequence while in Cadiz.
While in Cadiz they filmed Jinx’s introduction, emerging from the sea in a bikini modeled after Ursula Andress’ iconic Dr. No costume. As this was filmed in January, the water was cold and Berry was required to enter the water and emerge repeatedly.
The second unit was set up in Aldershot, with a British Army tank driving range at Eelmoore doubling for the North Korean demilitarised zone.
Bond and the villain facing off at Blades was also taken from the book, although a game of cards from the book was to become a more dynamic sword fight. The world-famous Reform Club in London stood in for Blades, along with a set constructed at Pinewood.
Meanwhile, the second unit was at work in Jökulsárlón, Iceland where four Aston Martins and four Jaguars were all specially converted to four-wheel drive. A temporary dam was constructed at the mouth of the narrow inlet to keep the salty ocean water out and allow the lagoon to freeze thick enough to let the sequence be filmed. All eight cars were wrecked in the process of shooting the showdown.
Ex-RAF Manston, now an airport in Kent, near where the character of Bond grew up in his aunt’s care, was used for the scenes involving the Antonov cargo plane. The hangar interior of the US Air Base in South Korea, shown crowded with Chinook helicopters, was filmed at RAF Odiham in the UK, as were the helicopter interior shots during the Switchblade sequence.
The Switchblade was based on a real device called PHASST (Programmable High Altitude Single Soldier Transport). Kinetic Aerospace Inc.’s lead designer, Jack McCornack, said the way it was portrayed in the movie is the way it works in real life:
“It’s brief, but realistic. The good guys get in unobserved, thanks to a fast cruise, good glide performance, and minimal radar signature. It’s a wonderful promotion for the PHASST.”
The climactic sequence with the Icarus satellite being used was originally to be aimed at New York, but this was changed to the demilitarized zone as post-9/11 nobody had any appetite to watch parts of NYC get obliterated. Nobody told Roland Emmerich this. With the switch to the target being the Korean demilitarized zone, a new issue arose.
The sequence showed an American giving orders to South Korean soldiers in defense of their homeland. This caused controversy and eventually led to South Koreans boycotting 145 theatres when Die Another Day was released on 31 December 2002.
Another scene that caused controversy in Korea was the lovemaking scene near a statue of the Buddha, which was held to be disrespectful.
Despite competing against Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, the movie opened at number one worldwide and went on to be the highest-grossing Bond movie to date. The critical reaction seemed divisive. The positive reviews called back to You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me, talking up the big spectacle. The negative ones felt it was sillier than Brosnan’s previous entries and served him and his interpretation of Bond poorly.
Do You Expect Us To Talk?
Stark: Well, well, well. We finally made it here. The movie that many consider the low-point of a whole franchise – Die Another Day.
Wrenage: Today Die Another Day perhaps benefits from the evolution of ridiculous action movies. The Fast and the Furious and Transformers franchises assault senses with movie after movie being released in brief hiccups of time. The silliness envelope has been pushed so far that Die Another Day now seems quaint. What is an invisible car in comparison to cars jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper and fighting submarines?
Stark: I had never thought of it like that. Is it the Fast VI – Fast X of the Bond franchise? Perhaps.
Wrenage: Does that make Die Another Day good? Not really, but some fun exists within it.
Stark: My first impression on rewatching it is just how schizophrenic the whole damn thing is. It is like most of them were trying really, really hard to carry on the style of Brosnan, with a less fantastical portrayal but still surrounded by big set-pieces.
Then, out of nowhere, Roger Moore flies into scene in his hover gondola, in a clown suit, with a double-taking pigeon on his shoulder, shouting “Wakka-Wakka!”.
This is particularly noticeable at almost exactly the half-way point. It has an interesting opening with Bond betrayed, captured, and tortured. It carries on pretty strongly with Bond going off the reservation and basically conducting his own investigation. It’s all surprisingly strong and tight, on my revisit. It even survives a Madonna cameo.
You can pinpoint the exact moment the wheels start to fall off… just ten minutes later. You know exactly what point…
Then it just switches. The relatively tight, taut investigation and uncovering of the first half gives way, jarringly, to space lasers, ice palaces, and CGI kite-surfing. It is like somebody smashed together two completely different movies.
Wrenage: Yep, once the movie goes to Iceland, it morphs into a totally different beast. Another memory surfaces as we discuss this. Die Another Day was the first Bond movie I didn’t see in the theater since Moonraker. As I stated in the last review, I greatly disliked The World Is Not Enough the first time I saw it, so much so that it soured me from seeing the follow-up.
I actually might have been about done with Bond at that point. The only reason I saw Die Another Day was because dad blind-bought the DVD. Interestingly enough, for whatever weird reason, my dad really liked Die Another Day. Who can understand the mystery of subjective taste? And far be if from me to question the man who introduced me to The Wild Bunch and West Side Story.
Ranking And Rating
Let’s get to the ratings and rankings. Wrenage and Stark will give their opinions on the Bondian elements found in Die Another Day and come up with a score and ranking to place them appropriately in their league table of all things Bond.
Bond
Stark: Once again, Brosnan doesn’t really put a foot wrong. Even in a wig and beard, he manages to convince. It is a shame, though, that they didn’t really explore a Bond who was perhaps more deeply damaged by the betrayal and imprisonment. A missed opportunity, sacrificed on the altar of yucks.
Wrenage: Brosnan continues to be fine as Bond. About the only thing worthy of mocking is he continues to try to outrun Tom Cruise when given a chance to sprint onscreen. Otherwise, Brosnan is effective in all facets. He is cool, deadly, and up to the task of acting when required. He even gets to participate in an extended physical fight that required more choreography than he was likely used to and acquitted himself well. The sword fight is one of the highlights of the film as it ramps up from a simple fencing match to a destruction of the building’s interior.
Stark: Revisiting these movies has made me feel he was particularly poorly served in some later scripts and would have definitely been able to carry another two or three movies.
Wrenage: A couple of Bond moments I like is when Brosnan punches out the gene therapy patient so he can be the man’s wheelchair operator and gain access to the island. Then Bond simply rolls the guy into a wall to create a distraction. That is good Bond thinking.
Stark: His thinking on the fly, improvisation, and total lack of shits to give does come across in the whole Cuba sequence quite nicely.
Wrenage: Brosnan also does as good as he can delivering some groaner lines. At this juncture, Purvis and Wade were fairly terrible at their innuendos. They weren’t cheeky. They were juvenile. You might hear such things in the lunchroom of your local school, but they shouldn’t come from the lips of Bond.
Stark: You are right. There is an art to a Bond quip. Think “Shocking… positively shocking.” from Goldfinger. Even in some schoolboy humor, there is a light touch of sophistication. Some of that fell away during the Roger Moore years and I guess that is what they started to use as inspiration here.
Wrenage: Purvis and Wade started low with Bond, trended up, and then went low again, in my opinion. They seemed to start overthinking things eventually. I even remember them lamenting how Donald Trump made it impossible to write a Bond movie. I imagine Bond writers like Maibaum and Mankiewicz laughing heartily as such goofiness.
Bond Girls
Wrenage: When you put Halle Berry up against performers like Brosnan, Rosamond Pike, Toby Stephens, and even Rick Yune, the truth becomes apparent: Halle Berry is not good in this role. She wavers between trying to be tough and cool and is not believable in either. The cracks in her performance show quite clearly in Die Another Day.
Stark: She does look spectacular in that bikini! Honestly, I was surprised they managed to get her as she was on a big rise after Monster’s Ball. Others in the running for the role were apparently Salma Hayek, Saffron Burrows, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
Wrenage: Honestly, Berry is no better than Denise Richards’s much-maligned turn in The World Is Not Enough. The problem isn’t so much Berry and Richards as it is miscasting. Berry made waves with her Monster’s Ball role, so she got the part of Jinx via flavor-of-the-month casting. Saffron Burrows might have been an interesting choice. She really disappeared under the radar after Deep Blue Sea, didn’t she?
Remember when scuttlebutt existed about Jinx getting a spin-off movie? Good thing that didn’t happen. It would have been Catwoman all over again.
Stark: If I had a dollar for every Bond girl spin-off movie that has been floated as an idea over the years…
Wrenage: If all we had was Berry, Die Another Day would really suffer in this category. Fortunately, Rosamond Pike comes in to give the Bond-Girl element a slight boost. Pike is a bonafide actress, so it is interesting to see her work compared to Berry. Berry tries to get by with all flash. Pike genuinely tries to disappear into the role.
Stark: Originally the character of Gala Brand from the Moonraker novel, too. There would have been a lot to work with there if they had not gone with the traitor angle.
Wrenage: Judi Dench doesn’t have much to do in this film, which is fine with me. I still firmly believe M should only exist to give Bond a mission and then pretty much exit from the film.
Stark: You do get an element of the tired old Mission: Imposssible trope with her and Bond in this. These guys (Bond and Hunt) have saved the world so many damn times. You would think they get the benefit of the doubt from their bosses every so often?
Wrenage: I reckon we must also speak of Madonna here. She shows up for no reason at all. She must have insisted on a bit part for doing the song. My dream for a Bond tune is to reunite Dave Mustaine and James Hetfield with Alanis Morrisette on vocals. Don’t laugh! I can dream what I want!
Stark: That cameo made my teeth itch in the theater and it still does today when I see it. Shame as the rest of the Blades sequence is tremendous fun.
Wrenage: You know what, I think I can honestly say I have aged better than Madonna at this point!
Villains
Stark: I remember the casting was confusing in the lead-up to this movie. Will Yun Lee was announced as the villain, and then Toby Stephens. Who… what….? Well, they sure answered that, didn’t they!
Wrenage: Toby Stephens truly came out of nowhere for this. I remember the announcement as “he was the guy who played young Clint Eastwood in Space Cowboys” (which is actually a pretty fun movie).
Despite being an unknown, Stephens is a solid villain. He knows exactly what kind of a movie he is in, and jumps right into the goofiness with both feet. He is campy, dangerous, and even dramatic once in a while when playing against his character’s father. Unfortunately, the drama is completely unnecessary. Die Another Day is taking us into that era where every villain has to have an emotional core.
No, they don’t. They can just be villains.
Stark: Nobody can accuse Gustav Graves of being “deep” – he’s a paper thin, sneering baddie that just needs a moustache to twirl. And you know what? That’s kinda OK!
Wrenage: Stephens also has a Joker quality to his performance. He could play old Joker in Dark Knight Returns. You’re welcome, Hollywood. I particularly liked the way Stephens embraced his exo-suit and just went with it. That must have been a holdover from the lost Timothy Dalton Bond movie. I believe he was supposed to fight a cyborg in that one.
Stark: A “lethal security robot” according to Mark Elditz’s Lost Bond research.
Wrenage: Then there is Rick Yune as Diamond Face. I freely admit I don’t understand Diamond Face. Visually-striking, sure, but why didn’t he simply pick the diamonds out of his face? Screenwriters have to be aware that if he left diamonds in his flesh, the skin would grow over them eventually, right? Yet, they did it anyway. Purvis and Wade, man…
Stark: And Jaws couldn’t find a normal dentist?
Plot
Wrenage: We get another space-based weapon in Die Another Day. This plotline is kind of all over the place. A North Korean dude is selling weapons, and then he almost dies and alters his appearance with gene therapy and then opens a fake diamond mine in Iceland with conflict diamonds to build a space laser to burn a path through the minefield between North and South Korea. In between time, he nurtures a passion for fencing and driving rocket cars on ice. Okay…
Stark: Well… when you put it like that… Hey, you forgot he’s an insomniac.
Wrenage: I like certain elements of the plot in and of themselves. For example, the gene therapy island was interesting. It hearkens back to Blofeld making doubles of himself. Plus, it was kind of fun to see the nods to previous Bond movies. Yet, this attempt to pay homage to all eras for the 40th anniversary made the film a bit over-extended.
Stark: Over-extended? They threw the kitchen sink at it!
Wrenage: Of all the easter eggs, my favorite is when Bond picks up the bird-watching book that Fleming used for the character’s name. I suppose that is a fourth wall breaker, though, isn’t it? All of the other easter eggs are actually things from other movies.
Action Sequences
Stark: You can never accuse Die Another Day of having too little action. The trouble is, in places, with the action it has got. When it is good, it is very good. When it is bad, it is like a Pepsi Max advert.
Wrenage: Some good action shows up in Die Another Day for sure. The hovercraft chase is well done. The swordfight is great fun. I even like the fight on the crashing plane during the finale. That was fairly epic for the time. I can even live with the spy car vs. spy car stuff on the ice…if it had stayed on the frozen lake. Continuing the car chase into the ice palace was a bridge too far that pushed things into groaner territory.
Stark: Plus, the ice palace is melting. It’s like they storyboarded that sequence by throwing darts at a list of perils and included everything they hit!
Wrenage: The sequence with the rocket car is maybe the greatest offense. It is frustrating because it is completely unnecessary. You could cut it from the film and work around it, no problem. It looks like they wanted to include the sequence because it demonstrates the laser-beam property of Icarus, but that reveal could have been saved for the climax to surprise viewers with the satellite’s true nature.
Furthermore, within the rocket car sequence, that shot of the car going over the edge and rebounding against the wall is simply horrific. I don’t know how they let that shot into the movie.
Stark: This brings me to the biggest issue I still have with this movie to this day. It is unforgivable in a Bond movie that they went down this route. Let me put it like this…
…you know borderline geriatric Roger Moore didn’t hold on to the top of a plane in Octopussy, or really leap from a racehorse into a car in A View To A Kill… but somebody did. Somebody actually skied off that mountain or got keel-hauled behind a boat. You can take the fantastic in a Bond movie because you know somebody, albeit a stuntman, actually did it. A CGI stunt sequence in a Bond movie? Sorry. It is whatever that thing is that is worse than blasphemy! The movie never really recovers.
Wrenage: That’s true. This is the first time they went full CGI character with Bond probably. Even when Bond was a Ken doll in various shots in movies like For Your Eyes Only and The World Is Not Enough, it was superior to the cartoon Bond shown here. In this regard, most of the miniature effects in Die Another Day are pretty good, as well.
Stark: Luckily they have gone back to the bias towards physical.
Pre-Title Sequence
Wrenage: I like this opening. It has Bond on a mission. It has action. The hovercrafts are unique elements that haven’t been used before. It even has a good gag. When Moon unzips his punching bag and his anger therapist falls out…that is pretty good. Making the victim his anger therapist is a bit on the nose, sure, but the idea itself is fun.
Stark: I kinda dig it, with reservations. I am not sure what purpose the sports cars serve other than showing some hypocrisy of the hardline Communists. Also think the surfing scene is simply an example of somebody asking “Well, what haven’t we had Bond do yet? – Let’s do that!”
Wrenage: One nice touch on the surfing sequence is how they introduce multiple surfers throughout the sequence. First one, then two, then three. Other than that, it seems like the gimmick openings kind of exhausted themselves with the bungee cord in Goldeneye. Die Another Day’s opening reminds me of the one in Tomorrow Never Dies in how it builds up to a full-on action fest.
Stark: Still not sure surfing is a great infiltration method.
Wrenage: I’m surprised Purvis and Wade didn’t have Bond hit someone with a surfboard and say, “Surf’s down, dude!”
Theme Song And Score
Wrenage: Despite Madonna’s distracting presence in the film, her song is one of the more interesting entries in the franchise. It is fairly experimental for a Bond film. I am surprised they went with it. At first listen, it was janky to my ear, but it grew on me quite a bit over time.
Stark: I am a fan of the song, except the strange insertion of Sigmund Freud into the lyrics. I like that they did something a little different to simply getting a big recording star in a studio and making them do a Shirley Bassey impression. I think it works really well with the title sequence.
It was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Song and the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording, but also for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song of 2002. So complete duality there.
As for the rest of the score, David Arnold continues to do good work. The only downside is that it uses a lot of EDM-type cues as it was 2002. There was even a Paul Oakenfold remix of the theme tune. Dance music was massive then. We were all still going clubbing. However, like the disco beats of The Spy Who Loved Me score, it means it will date badly over time.
X-Factor
Wrenage: Aside from the Easter Eggs, there is not a lot of X-factor. Moneypenny and Bond finally kiss, but it is a virtual-reality simulation. Cleese also finishes his short-lived stint as Q. I am fine with that. Cleese was too big of a persona for the role.
Stark: I do like the scene with all the old stuff in the background from previous movies. Shame it is forever tarred with the invisible car nonsense.
Wrenage: One other thing of note for Bond nerds is that I believe this is the first time Bond is shown in the act of physical congress with a Bond Girl (aside from Never Say, Never Again, which doesn’t count). The normal thing to do was show the initial stage of seduction and cut to pillow talk. Here, Bond and Berry flounder about a bit, and she stuffs fruit into his mouth.
All of that is a mistake, in my opinion. There are certain Bondisms you want to retain because it is part of the charm. Plus, no one is interested in such things when watching Bond. The love scenes are endured as we patiently wait for the next cool thing Bond does either in dialogue or action.
Stark: It also pushed that PG-13 rating to the limit, I imagine! There is also a general feeling of things being weirdly studio bound in Die Another Day. Like Bond escaping the Navy ship in Hong Kong and going to the hotel. It never feels like a real location. Similarly the ice palace interiors.
And, as I said at the start, it remains a wildly schizophrenic movie.
Wrenage: Yes, I also noted things like that. Another example is when Bond and the surfers storm the beach. They are clearly blue-screened there, as well.
Scoring Breakdown
| Stark | Wrenage | |
| Bond | 6 | 7 |
| Bond Girl | 5 | 4 |
| Villain | 5 | 7 |
| Plot | 5 | 5 |
| Action Sequences | 5 | 6 |
| Pre-Title Sequence | 5 | 7 |
| Theme Song | 6 | 7 |
| X-Factor | 4 | 5 |
| TOTAL | 36 | 48 |
Stark: Once again, you really can’t fault Brosnan… it’s just a lot of the other stuff going on around him that lets down Die Another Day. I feel like if it had stuck with the tone it sets in the first half of the movie then we could have had something special. But it doesn’t, so we didn’t. But the scores are dragged down by it. Brosnan if fine, but doesn’t hit his Bondian heights. Action sequences are too green-screen. That also really impacts that X-Factor. It’s a hard Bond movie to love, it really is.
Wrenage: Yikes! I am surprised I scored Die Another Day so high compared to you. I guess it is because when you score the individual elements, some good stuff exists. But when you put it all together onscreen, then things become a bit murky. Nevertheless, that is the beauty of the system. Despite my disproportionate score, the film still averages out to be slightly above The Man With The Golden Gun and Diamonds Are Forever. I can basically live with that.
Stark: Everything is above Diamonds Are Forever, but The Man WIth The Golden Gun? That still has Lee’s Scaramanga! Ultimately Die Another Day somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts, and then does two or three really stupid things that trip the whole movie up. It is kind of self-inflicted.
Overall Rankings
The second tier remains running hot, and Die Another Day being towards the bottom does nothing to force that issue.
First Tier:
From Russia With Love (61.5)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (61)
The Spy Who Loved Me (59.5)
Dr. No (56.5)
Licence To Kill (56)
Second Tier:
Goldfinger (54.5)
Thunderball (53.1)
Live and Let Die (53)
Tomorrow Never Dies (52)
You Only Live Twice (51.5)
For Your Eyes Only (51.5)
Third Tier:
Octopussy (51)
The Living Daylights (50.5)
Moonraker (48.5)
A View To A Kill (48)
Fourth Tier:
GoldenEye (47)
The World Is Not Enough (43)
Die Another Day (42)
The Man With The Golden Gun (38.5)
Diamonds Are Forever (34.5)
Stark: The Living Daylights and GoldenEye remain freakishly low for me. We have been pretty in tune throughout this whole journey. Why do I get the feeling we might be about to diverge a lot when the Daniel Craig era begins?
Wrenage: I will have things to say about some Daniel Craig films for sure. One of us may end up crying. But, ultimately, it is for the greater good…
That’s A Wrap
Stark: So ends the Ballad of Brosnan. It feels like he really was poorly served at the end of his reign. On the two-year cycle, he could have easily got another two movies in. Maybe more as he was in good shape. The story of the way he was let go from the role does feel especially cruel, and it feels like Die Another Day was to blame. Very much not his fault.
Wrenage: Brosnan is a strange beast to me. I am fine with him, even wonderfully pleased with certain performances of his as Bond (except GoldenEye), yet I feel like every other Bond actor ultimately eclipsed him at various points, even Lazenby due to the killer ending of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That makes Brosnan my de-facto least-favorite Bond. That isn’t an insult, though. It’s the difference between an A and an A- when it comes to letter grades. At least we can agree on the best villain Brosnan faced as Bond…
NEXT TIME… Everything, and we do mean everything, changes for Casino Royale.
Meanwhile, check out the rest of our Bond On series as we take a walk through all the Bond movies in order: Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, The Man With The Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, a two-way Battle Of The Bonds for Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, A View To A Kill, The Living Daylights, Licence To Kill, GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. Last time around we tackled The World Is Not Enough.