Hacker News Reader

Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

He is an amazing actor with a great range, and I'm hoping he is not the next James Bond. It would be a waste. The thought that some studio is not willing to do something original with someone like that troubles me greatly. Plus, recycling these roles with simple replacement just seems insulting. Its basically saying that there is no original thought to culture and audiences cannot accept the new.

View on HN

I would hardly categorize Daniel Craig's refresh of Pierce Brosnan's Bond interpretation as "simple replacement." I think each new Bond actor has great potential to bring their own unique artistic interpretation to the role and to make it work for them.

I would (I'm not a Daniel Craig fan and his saving grace is he got better scripts than Brosnan), and it really would be a shame if such a good actor were cast in a series that wasn't designed for him from the ground up.

Not sure if it's just the scripts the new bond films are much more "realistic" and gritty than the more fun and lighthearted older Bonds including those that Pierce played in.

That said however Craig seem to have a much better emotional range than Brosnan, or at least he's a better type cast for the "new" bond.

Brosnan kinda made that cocky can't do anything wrong thong melting bond work. But he would probably not being able to play the new bond judging by his quite poor performances in any of the serious dramas he ever had a role in.

I'm kind of willing to give the Bond franchise a pass on this front. It's been a brand, if not its own mini-genre, for longer than I've been alive. And it's not like Hollywood is performing brand necromancy on it; it's been active for a good bit of that time. It's more like Doctor Who and less like Charlie's Angels.

Wow, Doctor Who is actually a fantastic comparison I had never thought of before.

Fans of both franchises have been making this comparison for years, and one of the more famous fan theories is that Bond is a Time Lord (which is usually tongue-in-cheek... well, a little bit at least).

I always like it when someone new notices the similarities :)

Dr. Who I can see, all of the doctors have been able to put a truly unique stamp on the franchise and the situations allowed are really broad. James Bond is just the wrong vehicle, he deserves his own start at a franchise. He needs his Die Hard, not to be the next guy in the queue.

Yeah, I understand that some series are perpetual because they're basically cultural institutions. We shouldn't expend extra effort to revive them if there's no current interest (such as, say, Star Trek as a TV show), but we shouldn't feel too bad if people want to keep watching them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com