ChangesPosted by Mark Oates on 20-7-2008 04:13

Okay, maybe I'm inviting a flame war, but the question is worth asking. Is Sir Sean Connery's version of James Bond 007 really the best? Or is it because he was the "first" Bond.

The thing is, he wasn't. We all know the old Trivial Pursuit chestnut that Barry Nelson played "Jimmy" Bond for US Television in the 1950s, and that Bob Holness gave us a P (and a PK) on radio. Ian Fleming stated that the Bond in his head looked completely different to Connery, and the Bond of the novels is as far removed from the movies as Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes is from Jeremy Brett's.

Personally, I think it's all down to who was playing the role when you first got "into" the franchise. My "Doctor Who" has always been Jon Pertwee, but most people's favourite in the past was always Tom Baker (disproving first is best, otherwise everybody would be saying "Ah, but you can't compare the new bloke with Bill Hartnell!"

I'm a Moore Bond fan. I always have been. My first encounter with Bond was the hot summer of 1973, when as a ten-year-old I went to the pictures three times to see the jaw-dropping stunts of "Live And Let Die". Every other year as they came out, I went to see the next Bond film starring Roger Moore and I loved the action and the spectacle, the beautiful women and of course, our suave and sophisticated hero wise-cracking his way through the action.

I'd seen Roger Moore on telly most of my childhood, in shows like The Saint and The Persuaders!, so he was a familiar face in among all the mayhem. It took until the ITV network started screening the older Bonds in the mid 1970s for me to catch up with the delights of Dr No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger et al. I enjoyed them - I enjoyed them a lot - but I didn't enjoy them as much as the Moore Bonds. They missed a certain something, a certain glint in the eye or tongue in the cheek that the Moore Bonds had.

Later, when Roger retired (one film too late - he should have quit after Octopussy), the fun was still there even with the more hard-nosed Timothy Dalton. Timbo's Bond was more of a deadly assassin than Roger's, but his adventures still had a lot of style and fun about them - even Licence To Kill, which I think is wrongly accused of being too violent. It stretches the envelope of what a Bond adventure is by having him waging a vendetta against the baddies, and has a very prosaic set of villains in Sanchez and his men, but the film is executed with great elan.

I always felt bad that Pierce Brosnan had missed out on playing the role because of his Remington Steele contract, so I was delighted when he finally got the role in 1995 with Goldeneye. (Similarly, Roger had missed out on playing Bond in 1962 being under contract to play The Saint and in 1969). Pierce's four outings as 007 are terrific fun, and not a quarter as bad as many so-called Bond fans make out. The only mistake his final outing made was to include a very dodgy CGI stunt which should have been ditched at the planning stage.

As for Daniel Craig? This jury's still out. Casino Royale is a fantastic action picture, but is it a Bond movie? I'll tell you when the second half - Quantum Of Solace - comes out with hopefully all the traditional Bond elements reinstated.

Which brings me back to Sir Sean and his outings as the world's most famous secret agent. Is he overrated? Maybe, maybe not. His portrayal of Bond is certainly iconic and sets the bar for the actors to follow him. The first three movies are absolute gems, as is his last official outing Diamonds are Forever which is the closest to the Moore style of Bond movie. There are, however, two movies which suffer in pacing - Thunderball with its interminable underwater sequences, and You Only Live Twice, which you can tell Connery is tiring of as it progresses. The less said about Never Say Never Again the better.

For me, Roger Moore batted a sound 6/7 Bonds he made, Tim Dalton did a great job of his two, as did Pierce Brosnan with his four. Even George Lazenby did great on his single entry (and I wish he'd have done more so we could have seen him develop as an actor). Sean Connery, on the other hand made three perfect Bond films and three duds in my opinion, and I feel much of his cinematic kudos is built on that slightly shaky reputation.