Roger Moore’s Best James Bond Stunt Proves 1 Thing Daniel Craig’s 007 Era Missed
Roger Moore’s greatest James Bond stunt highlights a key aspect of the franchise that was missing from Daniel Craig’s on-screen tenure as 007.
SUMMARY
- The Roger Moore era of James Bond films excelled at incorporating animal action and wacky humor, a key aspect missing from Daniel Craig’s more realistic portrayal.
- Moore’s Bond films featured some of the franchise’s greatest stunts, blending practical effects with high-octane thrills, such as running across crocodiles’ backs.
- The absence of animal action in Craig’s Bond films, driven by a desire for gritty realism, was seen as a loss by some critics and a departure from traditional Bond tropes. The next Bond actor could consider reintroducing animals and a campier tone for a fresh approach.
The greatest stunt from the Roger Moore era of the James Bond franchise highlights a key aspect that was missing from Daniel Craig’s tenure. Thanks to its use of slapstick gags and tongue-in-cheek humor, the Moore era is often looked down on as the silliest incarnation of the Bond series. The Craig era, on the other hand, has been praised for its dark tone and gritty realism. But the Moore era does one thing in particular better than the Craig era, and shows how the Craig movies could’ve lightened up a bit.
In the sweet spot between the perfection of practical effects and the rise of CGI, the Moore era gave way to some of the Bond franchise’s all-time greatest stunts. Octopussy has a stuntman hanging off the wing of a plane, The Spy Who Loved Me has the iconic Union Jack parachute jump, and The Man with the Golden Gun has a car doing a perfect barrel roll across a broken bridge (although it’s ruined by a goofy slide whistle sound effect). But arguably the best stunt of Moore’s 007 tenure can be seen in his first film, Live and Let Die, and it highlights a missing ingredient from Craig’s tenure.
Live & Let Die’s Crocodile Scene Proves That Daniel Craig’s Bond Needed More Animals
In one of the most iconic scenes from Live and Let Die, Moore’s 007 finds himself marooned on a little island in the middle of a crocodile farm. To escape the farm, Bond runs across the crocodiles’ backs while they snap at his feet. This scene perfectly established the tone of Moore’s Bond films: mixing wacky self-aware humor with genuine high-octane thrills. This is one of many classic animal moments from the Bond movies. Blofeld is constantly stroking his loyal cat. Bond kills a bad guy with an electric eel in Licence to Kill. An assassin sends a tarantula into Bond’s hotel room in the very first Bond film Dr. No.
There are plenty of other great animal moments in Moore’s subsequent Bond films. In Moonraker, when Bond drives a gondola out of the Venice canals and onto the street, a pigeon does a double take. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Jaws is lowered into a shark tank and takes a bite out of the shark. In For Your Eyes Only, a parrot named Max provides Bond with key intel. Involving animals in the action is visually interesting, and a fun way to put Bond or his enemies in a dangerous high-stakes situation.
Why There Aren’t Many Animals In Daniel Craig’s James Bond Era
The Craig films are mostly bereft of the series’ traditional animal action. There’s a scene in which Bond fights a henchman in a Komodo dragon’s den in Skyfall, but that’s the only animal scene in all five of Craig’s movies. With his first outing, Casino Royale, the producers set out to bring Bond into a post-Bourne world with a sense of gritty realism. Casino Royale transplants the 007 character into a more grounded reality without any far-fetched gadgets or unrealistic storylines. The movie has brutal fight scenes and a shocking extended torture sequence, and its villain doesn’t have a signature quirk or a secret lair; he’s just an evil guy.
Although Casino Royale was widely praised as one of the best Bond movies, some critics lamented the loss of all the franchise’s identifying tropes. Craig’s third entry, Skyfall, started to reintroduce some of the more far-fetched elements like Q’s gadgets – and this included an animal-based action scene. But it still, for the most part, maintained the dark, gritty tone established in Casino Royale. Since running along the backs of crocodiles and feeding people to sharks isn’t exactly grounded, the Craig era largely avoided animal action. And that’s a shame, because animals are a staple of 007 adventures.
Will James Bond 26 Return To Animals & A Different 007 Tone?
Now that Craig’s era has ended with No Time to Die, the producers are searching for a new actor to play James Bond and trying to figure out a new approach for the next incarnation of the series. The best way to differentiate the next Bond from the previous Bond would be to go the other way and return to the campy implausibility of the shamelessly zany Moore films. That could mean bringing back the quippy one-liners or bringing back the nonsensical gadgets that don’t adhere to the laws of physics – or, indeed, bringing back the animal action.
The greatest stunt from the Roger Moore era of the James Bond franchise highlights a key aspect that was missing from Daniel Craig’s tenure. Thanks to its use of slapstick gags and tongue-in-cheek humor, the Moore era is often looked down on as the silliest incarnation of the Bond series. The Craig era, on the other hand, has been praised for its dark tone and gritty realism. But the Moore era does one thing in particular better than the Craig era, and shows how the Craig movies could’ve lightened up a bit.
