By the 80s he was looking too old to be James Bond...too bad Timothy Dalton didnt do "For Your Eyes Only" the storyline for that film suited him better than Roger Moore who seemed out of place in that movie. That film reminds me in a lot of ways to License to Kill-the serious aspect of both films.
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Well i'm a massive Roger Moore fan so i disagree! I'm glad he made more and yeah, he might have been too old but i like to watch him in these films.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwxZrTV6JDY
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I think he should have retired the one before this one.The Spy Who Loved Me was good how can it go so bad in the space of one movie.
shareI agree with the OP, Moore was the Bond of the 1970s and should have retired after Moonraker. He looked far too old in the 80s.
shareYeah I still like FYEO and Octopussy, but between the time Moonraker & For Your Eyes Only came out it looked like Moore put on a few pounds and he certainly looked older in the face.
shareBeing a heterosexual guy, Roger's appearence never crossed my mind. He was Bond and I enjoyed all of his films. I prefer AVTAK over TMWTGG. and he was 11 years older.
Roger Moore was a comic book Bond and extremely charming, hios films were all a little larger than life. I much prefer his films to both Dalton and Brosnan.
I think Roger Moore's age wouldn't have been that huge of a problem had the filmmakers played up the fact or notion that Bond was getting older (a la what they did w/ Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan). Unfortunately, in his later Bond films (particularly Octopussy and A View to a Kill), we're for the most part, still lead to believe that he's exactly the same guy (they really should've scaled back on his womanizing so it wouldn't come across as unintentionally creepy and lecherous) that he was in Live and Let Die back in 1973.
shareIf you pay attention to their conversation at the beginning of "Octopussy", Bond and Moneypenny actual cop to getting older. They reneged this when Dalton came in, but Moore Bond WAS supposed to be getting older at the time.
shareIf he did. There would not be this moore record that every bond trys to beat. But always fails because people today are so damn shallow.
shareOne of my favorite Bonds is For Your Eyes Only, so I'm glad he kept going.
shareI totally agree with Connery's reply. Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only are definitely Moore's 2 best Bond entries. I love Moonraker, but I'd have to give FYEO a slight edge. It had some of the most beautiful locations and definitely one of the most gorgeous leading bond ladies (Carole Bouquet). He definitely should've hung it up after FYEO though. I've always thought Octopussy completely sucked, it bores me to tears, not to mention India was about one of the most ugly locations ever. A View To A Kill was slightly better, but it wasn't all that great either. Most people think The Spy Who Loved Me was Moore's best, and while I enjoy that one a lot, I still have to say FYEO is my top Moore entry. :o)
shareI also have to agree, Moore should have retired the 007 license after For Your Eyes Only-his best film. Even in For Your Eyes Only, He started to show wear and tear. So his doing Octopussy is debatable, but certainly most fans, critics, and even Moore himself will tell you that he should have not done A View To A Kill-his personal least favorite.
shareYeah, Moore should have called it a day after FYEO. He was looking a little bit too old for the role by then but I liked how he made a proper spy thriller. It was basically the middle finger to all his critics, who became somewhat justified by his next two films.
sharePeople think The Spy Who Loved Me was Moore's best?
I would go with Live and Let Die and For Your Eyes Only.
The Spy Who Loved Me was Ok. A good Bond girl, but I was bored at times with it.
For Your Eyes Only-I agree was his best.
Live and Let Die-was not bad. Good villians. I thought Sgt. Pepper and the overfilmed speedboat chase hurt it.
My thoughts exactly.
Perhaps he should have retired after For Your Eyes Only, but certainly not before!
I agree fully. Dalton would had been perfect in For Your eyes Only. But Moore was still quite good in the role.
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Roger Moore looked good up until Octopussy, he should've after that because in A View to a Kill he looked old.
shareSorry to infuriate all Moore fans but I sort of wished he was never cast. He's a good actor. But the humour at the end got just stupid. His best seems from 1977-81. What I would have liked was.
Connery with the last being You only Live Twice.
Lazenby from OHMSS straight through to Moonraker.
Dalton, For Your Eyes Only to Licence to Kill.
So basically 1962-67 Connery, Lazenby from 1968-79, Dalton 1981-1987
It is my hope that the scripts during the 70's would have been less silly, and made Diamonds are Forever into a straight up revenge flick. With Bond finding out that SPECTRE was financing its operations through diamond smuggling. And instead of
Las Vegas, have him travelling from Europe to South Africa to dismantle the smuggling ring, and take out Blofeld for murdering Tracy as well. No space weapons. Just exotic locations. And a dramatic climax.
The Man with the Golden Gun could have just been a cat and mouse chase around the world with Scaramanga being paid by SPECTRE (Or even the Russians) to murder Bond. With Bond having close shaves, and a battle of wits against Christopher Lee.
Moore was too polished and too smooth to be Bond. Connery/Lazenby/Dalton have dark sides to them that make them more effective playing Bond. It also seemed weird when he tried to be like Connery slapping women around, or treating his female allies and assistants with such disdain. Which is why I think he improved so much in The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, and For Your Eyes Only.
Moore gave his best performance in The Man with the Golden Gun. He had an edge in that film that was missing in subsequent ones. If he played Bond like that all through his stint then I think he would have been a revered Bond. The problems started with The Spy Who Loved Me: they wrote that film to fit Moore's personality rather than requiring him to act.
share"Lazenby from OHMSS straight through to Moonraker."
You lost any right to talk about Bond actors with this statement.
I'm going to have to disagree in that, while I prefer a more serious and more menacing Bond (still like Connery best), I think Moore's take on Bond, light and comedic thought it often was, was probably key to the franchise's survival. Things that endure have to play with their formula a little as they go along, or people see it as too stale and repetitive. Moore had to take Bond in a different direction than Connery had to keep audiences interested. He did, and it worked. I think the humor also was timely. People need to remember that the '70s was the "auteur era" of film making, and the decade brought us bleaker, grimmer, more somber fare than was usual before or since, replete with anti-hero protagonists, tragic endings, cynicism, etc. -- all during the era of the gas crisis, Vietnam and social unrest, the Watergate scandal, stagflation, etc. I think Moore's more lighthearted Bond was a much needed and much appreciated escapist alternative to all that.
And I also think he should have retired after "For Your Eyes Only." It brought Bond back down to earth in the most grounded and realistic film of the franchise since "From Russia with Love." "Octopussy" was mediocre (if you want to see a quite realistic movie with almost exactly the same plot, check out "The Fourth Protocol" or better still, read the novel it's based on), and I disliked "A View to a Kill" altogether, not just because Moore was really much too old by then, which he was.
No he shouldn't, because For Your Eyes Only was his best Bond performance. That should have been his last one, and it nearly was until he decided to stay on for Octopussy.
shareMoore being in Octopussy made business sense (since he was already established as 007 despite clearly being past his expiration date by this time) because Sean Connery was making a competing Bond film in 1983 in Never Say Never Again.
shareI think Moore's hand was forced when Connery decided to do Never Say Never Again, it became a competition between those two or perhaps he caved into a huge payday by the makers of Octopussy to compete with Connery's comeback as Bond. Octopussy could have suffered at the box office without him coming back.
shareI just came here to ask if Moonraker in hindsight, should've been Roger Moore's last Bond film. Even though many people consider FYEO to be Moore's best Bond film along w/ The Spy Who Loved Me, you have to admit that it was around this time, that his age (he was already over 50 when MR was released) was really, really starting to show (and be a distraction).
Plus, Moonraker represented the furthest that the series could've gone in terms of "sequel escalation" (i.e. literally sending Bond in outer-space). From a thematic standpoint, where else could Roger Moore's 007 gone in it came to fighting villains? In MR he goes up against a man who wants to eradicate the earth in favor of his own super-race!?
Also, this happened to be Bernard Lee's final appearance as M (he along w/ Lois Maxwell were the only people to be in every Bond movie since Dr. No). So in a way, MR could've been the last "classic" Bond movie. Then, For Your Eyes Only could've began introducing the new Bond actor (presumably Timothy Dalton) at his wife's grave (in reference to OHMSS) in order to tie himself into his predecessors' histories.
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Good point, including M's last Bond picture would have been a nice finale for Roger Moore. The grave scene was a nice tie-in to O.H.M.S.S. and it would have been more effective to see Dalton in it, who looked more like Lazenby than did Moore.
share"Moonraker" was supposed to be Moore's last Bond. Moore was contracted for four Bond movies and he fulfilled those obligations. But here's the thing: the Bond family that made the movies LOVED making Bond movies with Roger Moore. So instead of looking for a new actor, they just kept bringing him back on a film-by-film basis. On "Octopussy", Cubby knew that without Moore, they'd be sunk against Connery's Bond movie and it wasn't a given that he would return. Moore literally signed on at the eleventh hour to come back. He was talked into coming back once more in "A View to a Kill" and after that, he actually had to tell Cubby he couldn't do it anymore.
So, it's not really Roger Moore's fault. I certainly don't blame him for coming back to a place where he was wanted and well-liked. And I love Moore's three post-Moonraker films too, so I wouldn't change it for the world.
Moore literally signed on at the eleventh hour to come back. He was talked into coming back once more in "A View to a Kill" and after that, he actually had to tell Cubby he couldn't do it anymore.
It would have been interesting if Broccoli, knowing Moore didn't really want to do another Bond film, had asked Connery to come over, since Connery was willing to have another go at the character after all those years. Not realistic, I know -- I don't think Broccoli was particularly interested in working with Connery again, and I don't know if Connery would have been willing to work with Broccoli again. But if they had been willing to get together, I'm sure "Octopussy" would have been a real hit with Connery back in the role, as people would have flocked to see it, probably even more than they did his non-Eon Productions film "Never Say Never Again."
And that would, of course, have preempted "Never Say Never Again," which would be fine by me. It's a decent movie, but it's just a straight remake of "Thunderball" (which, owing to copyright issues, was literally the one and only way Connery could make a James Bond movie without Eon), but it's nowhere near as good as the original.
Roger was awesome and seasoned in For Your Eyes Only. I think he brought great credibility to the film. Besides, it's kind of cool that you can imagine him as the same James Bond whose wife was killed in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." He's about the right age! (Hell, the line where Bond says, "Courage is no match for an unfriendly shoe" even SOUNDS like George Lazenby.) Notice how they didn't even bother to hide the date of Teresa's death on her grave marker? This was meant to be an aging 007. And I thought it worked very well.
shareMr. Moore still had two more solid Bond films in him after Moonraker. AVTAK isn’t bad, but it pales compared to the three or four films preceding it.
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