56 replies to this topic

[Double-Oh-Zero]

We know that Miss Richards was a little...questionable as a nuclear scientist. So who would be your pick(s) if you were to cast (or re-cast) the role of Christmas? I think Catherine Bell from the show J.A.G. would've been good.

[Jeff007]

She would have been a good choice!
http://www.fhmus.com...=&id=186&page=1

[ShockTroop22]

Personally - I dont think there was anything wrong with the casting of Denise Richards as Christmas Jones. I dont know how many people will agree with me on this one, but i think she is a very able actress, definatley not oscar material but still a fantastic actress. Her casting was not the choice of Debbie McWilliams, i think it might have been Babs and Micky G (cant remember).

The fault was down to Feirstein in my opinion. We all know how he came in and messed up a good script, hence the reason we arent seeing him back for Die Another Day. Its a real shame, because i would have loved to see Denise go down as one of the best Bond girls.

I think because of her "Golden Rasberry" winning performace (the awards given to all bad things in Holywood, previous winners include the Spice Girls), that is the reason they took on Halle Berry for the role of Jinx. That way, there is no chance of people critisising and comparing Die Another Day to The World is not Enough.

[Roebuck]

Story that I read was that Christmas was originally an insurance investigator for Lloyds but MGM wanted the part changed because it was too much like Thomas Crown Affair (in their opinion anyhow. Go figure).

I imagine having your character changed into a nuclear physicist overnight could screw up any actresses preparation.

Apparently she was really professional, especially during the difficult water tank scenes at the end and did a lot of research with real atomic scientists (none of it being reflected in the script).

In short, I think I'm seconding Shocktroops motion that Richards got something of a raw deal.

[Blue Eyes]

I think there are two faults with Christmas Jones. It's an under developed character given little time to turn into anything. And Denise isn't the best actress and did very little with what she was given. I feel she could have put a lot more into it.

[Double-Oh-Zero]

I'm not saying Denise was a bad choice in that film. She was just too young for it, I think. And as Blue Eyes said, she could have done more with the role. I belive she should have waited to take on a Bond Girl role to mature her acting skills a little more. ST22 is right about her being an able actress, too. But the question still stands.

[ShockTroop22]

000, your lucky u added that last sentence, or i would have unleashed my wrath.

[Xenobia]

I think if they had gotten an actress who looked older...or made Denise Richards look older...then I would have had an easier time believing that Christmas Jones was a nuclear physicist.

I agree that Catherine Bell would have been a great choice. The actress from the TV series "La Femme Nikita" was another great choice, as would have been the actress who played SevenofNine on Star Trek Voyager.

Those are the ones that immediately spring to my mind.

-- Xenobia

[rafterman]

Denise was fine, sure the part seemed a little underdeveloped and she's not the best, but really she stands out because the character and the acting is just so different from Sophie in the film..but she's not that young, she's like thirty or so....don't know why she gets such a raw deal, she's not as bad as many of the Bond girls who turn out to be twits who lose all their brains at the end of the film, at least Christmas was very useful....

[1q2w3e4r]

Catherine Bell is a great actress, anyone who's watched JAG for a period of time can attest to watching her get better and better, I'd LOVE to see her appear in a Bond film. Another one's Alias' Jennifer Garner. But that's just purely because I look at her and it stops my breath... No thats not true, she can act to boot as well.

[Peter]

I think Denise suffered from an unbelievable character. First of all, if she had been merely a grad student, say, instead of a doctor, that would have helped. But she had to be able to diffuse nuclear bombs in the first place so Bond could meet her at the missle silo and also the pipe line sequence. The script writers were trying to make her integral to the story, but it was stupid.

Second, why was she even in the pipe line sequence anyway? Again, to give the character time to develop. But hasn't Bond defused bombs many times himself in other adventures? Plus why wouldn't MI6 have someone on staff (there seemed to be a lot at Elektra's HQ) who they would trust over Christmas (not that her skills were suspect)

Third, why was she involved in the caviar factory and Russian safehouse sequences? Wouldn't Bond do better in these situations without a civilian? Mainly, Christmas relates technical dialogue which is not only difficult for the actress to handle, but stupid sounding to the audience as well. It's not like Kara, who was essential to the story to track Koskov, or even Stacey Sutton, who's oil wells and experience as a geologist could help Bond interpret the facts. Poor Christmas is stuck in the rest of the film because of a contract.

Finally, she is given little to work with in the scenes themselves. The three things she expresses are: indecipherable techno babble, Gen X sass ("For those of us who don't speak spy"), and a few moments of tentative interest in Bond ("So what's the story with you and Elektra King?") The last romantic part seems the strongest to me because she's actually playing a character. The second generic Gen X angle seems out of place for an idealistic, supersmart, adventerous scientist that her character background would suggest.

Fortunately, Denise Richards is lovely, but I feel sorry for her that she got stuck with such a poorly written character. You never now, she may have turned in a great performance and then they chose all her bad takes. Let's hope they've learned from their mistakes.

[Mourning Becomes Electra]

Arhh, I hit reset form by mistake.... one more time

DR was badly miscast. She was certainly old enough to play the role but she comes off years younger in both looks and manner. Compare and contrast her to the younger Rosamund Pike who projects a maturity and intelligence. Just as there was a yawning chasm beyween Carole Bouquet and Lynn Johnson in FYEO even though they were only separated by one year.

I sincerely doubt that Michael Apted, a renowned actress's director left all of DR's best tales on the cutting room floor. The sad thing is that performance on the screen was the best he could get from her. Yes the character was underwritten but other actresses have done much more with much less. The Danish Professor, The Cigar Girl, Dr Warmflash... all much more appealing and lively characters and most of that came from the actresses not the script. DR had no excuse to give less except a lack of talent. Her line readings were particulalry flat, her voice monotone and her expression vacant. It was her job to give more even if the script didn't give it.

I do give her kudos for being so game in the physical scenes, especially the submarine one. She also gets points for not screeching or whining her lines though the film like Gloria Hendry, Tanya Roberts or others. And her character unlike others as pointed out is not helpless and useless at the end. So I don't rank her as the worst of the Bond Girls, but then again she's not even in the middle. I do think she gets unfairly singled out more than other offenders in the lame actress sweepstakes though b/c the other acting around her is pretty top notch and she suffers in contrast.

[Max Zorin007]

denise looked the part but she couldnt act the part. I wouldnt have liked a bony little thing to play her and yes they needed her to be older........im thinking jenniffer aniston or angeina jolie.

[PaulZ108]

Originally posted by Max Zorin007
denise looked the part but she couldnt act the part.  I wouldnt have liked a bony little thing to play her and yes they needed her to be older........im thinking jenniffer aniston or angeina jolie.

Jolie would have been excellent, but Aniston? I don't see how that would work.

And I know what you mean about having a "bony little thing" play her. I'd much prefer a nice curvy Bond girl to a sickly thin Calista Flockhart Bond girl.

[Mourning Becomes Electra]

As for older... Angelina Jolie is now 26, DR is 31 (28 for TWINE). It comes down again to maturity, DR just looked and acted younger than she was, which is why she was better in all those teenage nympho movies like Wild Things.

As for Calista Flockhart... does anyone but Harrison Ford actually find her appealing?

[Max Zorin007]

Ok now that i think about it ......aniston would be terible.....i just like friends

[Hardyboy]

It would have been interesting to see Angelina Jolie as Christmas Jones--since CJ's look was pretty much borrowed from Lara Croft, Angelina could have considered it a dry run. As for who might have been a better CJ. . .how 'bout Milla Jovovich?

[Double-Oh-Zero]

Angelina Jolie would have been good for the part, I would have liked to see how she handled the submarine sequence. Milla Jovovich is an interesting idea. I recently saw Resident Evil and she was pretty good in it. However, she seems just as young (if not younger) than Denise on screen. I think Denise is older than her in real life, but when she's on screen, they look almost the same age, so the character still wouldn't have been believable. I can agree with what MBE said about the actresses who had smaller roles than DR were more lively and better developed. If Maria Grazia Cucinotta wasn't already cast as the Cigar Girl, she might have been good as Christmas. If she lost the accent a little. And cut Harrison some slack. He's getting old and confused.

[Hardyboy]

Interesting, I never thought of Milla as looking too young. In The Claim she plays a cathouse madam and she comes across as weathered and mature. . .it's actually a very good performance, leagues better than her more popular roles--she could be a good Bond girl.

[General Koskov]

Originally posted by Roebuck
Story that I read was that Christmas was originally an insurance investigator for Lloyds but MGM wanted the part changed because it was too much like Thomas Crown Affair (in their opinion anyhow. Go figure).

Don't hold me to this, but I believe you're thinking of the original girl for Tomorrow Never Dies, who was Sidney Winch (the other girl being Paris Harmsway). Actually she was a salvager, and Bond was disguised as an agent from Lloyds of London.

But I'm probably getting mixed up.

[ChandlerBing]

Shannon Tweed would have fit the bill and would have been a handful for Bond.

[Peter]

MBE:

Good comments. I do disagree with you though on some points. Admittedly, DR is not the best actress. But I still feel that anyone playing the role would suffer because of the poor motivation and dialogue of the character as written.

Although Apted is supposed to be a "renowned actress's director", I did not feel any of the women in TWINE were superior (again primarily because of the script), though I know lots of people liked Elektra. But I will concede that Elektra is not bad, and Warmflash is good in her scenes. But like all Bond films, it's the producers who call the final shots here, not the director, and I think they would definately sacrifice a good take by DR for a better one of Brosnan.

Also, you bring up an interesting point regarding the seeming age of these characters. DR's Christmas comes off as young, brash, and a little stupid. Elektra, in contrast, seems very much a woman in charge of her destiny. The only hint we have of Christmas' inner strength is the fact that she pursued a doctorate in Nuclear Physics and that she's "hiding" in South Central Asia disarming nuclear bombs. I don't know how old Sophie Marceau is, but DR is technically old enough to do what her character does (28 at the time). But as you point out, in FYEO, Carole Bouquet and Lynn-Holly Johnson were only one year apart but also seem years apart in character age. In both films the director seems to be contrasting the characters.

Unfortunately, perhaps Apted directed DR too far to contrast with Elektra: we all agree she does not come off well. After all, the actress brings herself and her talent to the table, but the director (or on Bond movies, the producers, also) have to mold her and guide her. Not having seen any other of DR's movies, but having seen the other performances in TWINE, I have to give DR the benefit of the doubt.

(Incidentally, have you ever heard the story of Jane Seymour's experience on LALD? Supposedly, she was delivering a highly intelligent portrayal of Solitaire, and the producers almost fired her until she sexed it up. She later joked "their idea of character was breathiness, a heaving chest, and eyeshadow")


Returning to the quality of the writing , the reason the cigar girl, Danish Professor, Warmflash, etc all work is that they are limited characters. They don't have to sustain a beleivable character over the 2 hours the way the main girls have to. So they may be no more or less talented than DR, but had a lot less to show their shortcomings.

I also still hold that Christmas was non-essential in most of the movie. But I also admired her spirit (helping Bond back with the missle tubes was her other best scene) as well as the actress's pluck. Believe me, I want all people associated with Bond to be great in the film and later in their careers. I just feel she had too much to overcome in terms of an ungrounded, misplaced, and underwritten character.

[Roebuck]

Originally posted by General Koskov


Don't hold me to this, but I believe you're thinking of the original girl for Tomorrow Never Dies,who was Sidney Winch .

If memory serves me General (which it rarely does these days) the info I posted was in Iain Johnstone's TWINE companion book.
Be interested in anything else you can tell me about Sidney Winch and her role in TND. I hadn't heard of her character before.

[Mourning Becomes Electra]

Peter, but I have seen some of DR's other roles, and it's pretty much the same vacant monotone flat delivery unless she's playing breathless and taking her clothes off in Wild Things. In Starship Troopers a film filled with poor but beautiful actors she stood out in her vacant delivery. It's pretty bad when you can make Casper Van Diem look good by comparison. Even those short commerical spots for Undercover Brother showed her deliving her lines in a disjointed flat manner as if the cadences of the English language were foreign to her.

And unlike you, I think Marceau excelled as Elektra. I found her seductive, intelligent and riveting, everything DR as X-Mas Jones was not. Yes she had by far the better role but she's also by far the better actress even when performing outside her mother tongue.

As for DR sustaining an underwritten character for 2 hours (unlike Warmflash or Cigar Girl), well she was only in the second half of the film and had very few scenes with actual dialogue. Most of her scenes were action scenes and I don't think that was a coincidence. As you so correctly point out she shows a lot of pluck in the physical scenes and her character is not a hinderance or a whiner. But her dialogue though not sparkling isn't dreadful and it's not as if she was written to be a pathetic mess like Mary Goodnight or a Rosie Carver. I really think any half way competent actress could have done so much more with the role, and wouldn't have had 1/2 the audience laughing in derision everytime she opened her mouth. And it wasn't b/c she was camping it up as a sexpot, to her credit she tried to play the role straight, but because her line readings were beyond vapid.

I'd never read that story about Jane but it explains alot about her performance. Even so she manages to give a credible performance unlike DR, who is a lovely looking woman, by most accounts a nice person and a game gal, just not a good actress.

[Mourning Becomes Electra]

Roebuck, there's a breakdown of the changes in the TWINE script at 007 Forever and it says that in the first draft X-Mas Jones is a French/Polynesian nuclear scientist

Sydney Winch is the first draft of TND, which is basically an entirely different film. As said she's in "salvage" and Bond is undercover as an Insurance Agent.

You can read the changes in the Bond scripts at www.007forever.com

http://www.007foreve...06/wild_scripts!.htm

[Roebuck]

Ta MBE.
So much for Iain Johnstone. :mad:
Glad I only picked his bloody book up on remainder.

[Roebuck]

I decided to double check my info on Christmas and It looks like I did pick it up from the Iain Johnstone book.
Specifically a Robert Wade quote on page 32 of the TWINE companion.
You would hope for a little more accuracy from an official tie-in.

Thanks once again to General Koskov and MBE for putting me right on this.

[Simon]

For lack of anything of substance to add, I have but to agree with all of the very well made points by MBE and Peter.

[BondChick007]

Yeah I have to agree, very good points MBE.

As for my answer, Any actor would have been better.

[LKane]

Guys and gals this reply is a little late in coming but I actually like Richards as Jones. She just comes across as young in a few scenes. But if you approach the character as a cocky whippersnapper rather than a seasoned vet like Goodhead, she is okay. Heck, Ebert even called her first-rate in his review of TWINE.

Also, EON first met with Natasha Henstridge for this role. She would have been perfect but had just given birth to her son and couldn't take the role. Failing to land Henstridge, they then considered Richards, Geri Halliwell from the SPICE GIRLS, and Tiffani Amber Thiessen from 90210. So clearly EON was after a hot twenty something and popular celebrity for Dr. Jones. Frankly, if Henstridge couldn't do the role, then Richards was probably the best of the rest . I mean Dear Lord.... Can you imagine a Spice Girl or Kelly Kapowski alongside Bond ? They would've been even less credible.... So Denise is actually better suited for the role than you think, given who else EON was considering for it at the time. If Henstridge hadn't just become a mom, though, the role would've been hers... Still, Richards is okay if you view Christmas Jones as the smart aleck Gen X unlikely scientist hottie she really is...

Edited by LKane, 03 July 2014 - 10:53 AM.