Roger Moore was true to the original vision of Bond

The argument

The argument for Roger Moore is an argument about fidelity to the source. Ian Fleming's Bond, on this reading, was an intelligent and gentlemanly figure — closer to a sophisticated detective than to an action hero. He worked by observation, manners and social access rather than by force, and the violence, when it came, was incidental to the character rather than the point of him. Moore played him that way. His Bond was not a fist-throwing, explosion-dodging, muscle-bound thug but a man who moved through the world by poise, and that is exactly how Fleming described him on the page. The same fidelity shows in the smaller details of characterisation. Fleming's Bond is a bachelor, conspicuously available to women and conspicuously unavailable for anything lasting — a man whose detachment is part of his equipment rather than a flaw to be resolved. Moore captured that balance precisely: charming without sentiment, intimate without attachment. Other actors have pulled the character towards either end of that line, making him either colder than Fleming wrote him or more emotionally entangled. Moore held the position Fleming set. Proponents also point to Fleming's own apparent preference. It is believed in some circles that Fleming wanted Moore to play Bond from the beginning, and that the writer was reportedly very pleased when Moore finally stepped into the role. If that is right, the judgement of the character's creator points the same way as the textual comparison does. The claim, then, is not that Moore's films were the most spectacular, but that his Bond was the most accurate. Where the question is who best realised the character as written, the answer is the actor whose performance matched Fleming's conception rather than the era's appetite for action — and that was Roger Moore.

Context

The character of James Bond was originally created by author Ian Fleming, who based the spy on some of the actual secret agents he knew during World War II.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Moore was an awful actor. He even confessed himself that his entire range of facial expressions was limited to three, “right eyebrow raised, left eyebrow raised, and eyebrows crossed when grabbed by Jaws.” Even his idea of “cool” and “sophisticated” came across as spoofy and damaged the Bond brand. Sean Connery even accused Moore’s Bond of being “a sort of parody of the character.” Following Moore’s portrayal, writers had to get Bond back on track and make the character realistic and tough again. That is why they cast Dalton, who brought a heightened level of realism and attempted to shed Moore’s fantasy, goofy, pun-laden image of the character by adding a layer of psychological intensity.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Fleming's character was tougher and more sophisticated than Moore portrayed.