31 replies to this topic

[0077]

If Connery had played Bond until 1985, he certainly would have aged better than Moore.

Doubtful.

[Chicago103]

I actually think that Roger Moore looked younger in A View To A Kill than Sean Connery did in Never Say Never Again. Sure Roger Moore was starting to look old but it didn't bother me as he still look dignified to me. Maybe you can say that both AVTAK Moore and NSNA Connery looked equally old albeit in different ways but when it comes to OP Moore and NSNA Connery it is clear that Moore looked younger. Just watch both movies with a random person and most will be shocked that Moore is three years older than Connery, more people would think it is the other way around. Now if you watched DAF and LALD back to back you would swear Moore is like ten years younger. Sean Connery as an older sexy man actually started with NSNA and later, in the period between DAF and NSNA he actually didn't look that good IMO, it is only when he embraced his baldness and had a white beard did he start looking cool again. As a 40 something out of shape balding man Sean Connery wasn't much better than a typical middle aged man and couldn't compete with seasoned pretty boy look of Roger Moore.

Never Say Never Again was somewhat of a turning point in his career, sure he still didn't embrace his old man look yet but he needed to return as James Bond just to seem credible again and perhaps the fact that Moore was starting to age by 1983 in Octopussy actually helped him, they were both aging action heroes and that was fine. Roger Moore's action and really big movie career pretty much ended with his tenure as Bond but Sean Connery started a comeback with returning as Bond in a mediocre remake of one of his own old Bond films. A few years later he was in Highlander than the Untouchables where he played an older wise character, there was also a movie where he played a middle ages monk in the mid 1980's, forget the name but same deal.

He still looked old for his age though, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade he played Indiana Jones' father in spite of being only 12 years older than Harrison Ford who was 46 and he was 58, that is only one year older than AVTAK Moore. It worked though because Connery's character looked about 25 years older than Indiana Jones, now I realize they probably made him dress, look and act older for it to be realistic but I think I still have a point about Connery's natural mature look. Henry Jones Sr. is my favorite non-Bond Connery role and I couldn't imagine it being done by anyone else but I think that Harrison Ford is almost a cross between Sean Connery and Roger Moore in his looks, the rugged look of Ford as Indiana Jones harkens to Connery's rugged 007 looks but at the same time Ford has those boyish looks at times that harkens Roger Moore and he aged more like Moore, in fact he aged better than Moore IMO. I always thought it would be neat if Roger Moore was in the next Indiana Jones movie (if there is going to be an Indy5) as an uncle of Indiana Jones on his mother's side to demonstrate how he got the other half of his looks. It is too bad Sean Connery didn't come back as Henry Jones Sr. in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I wonder how they would have made him look on screen in that one.

Also Harrison Ford being 65 years old playing Indiana Jones in KOTCS shows that older action heroes are now common in cinema in part due to Sean Connery and Roger Moore. Connery himself was later in movies like The Rock and Entrapment as an older bad and even in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen it didn't look like he had aged much since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Then you have Silvester Stallone as Rocky and Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenneger in Terminator 3 all well over age 50. I shouldn't say that James Bond actors Connery and Moore started this since Cary Grant was in his mid 50's in North By Northwest way back in 1959 but my point is certainly in retrospect a 52 year old Connery as James Bond in NSNA and a 57 year old Moore and James Bond in AVTAK is not absurd by any stretch given the above examples so I am surprised that contemporary people are still making a big deal about their ages in those movies.

So the short answer to the topic of this thread is that it is easier for me to picture Connery as Bond in the 1980's (as he did in 1983 with Never Say Never Again) than it would be for me to see him as Bond in Live and Let Die as strange as that sounds for the reasons I mentioned above. So I am saying that I am glad it turned out just as it did with Roger Moore brining new vibrancy to the series with a peak of an older Connery in the unofficial Bond film of Never Say Never Again.

Edited by Chicago103, 28 May 2011 - 11:47 AM.