Next week, Vin Diesel returns (along with Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordanna Brewster) to the Fast and the Furious franchise, which he’d abandoned after the first movie (he did have a cameo in part 3). When news first hit that he’d be reprising the role of Dominic Toretto for the fourth installment, simply titled Fast & Furious, most of us saw the actor as returning under a veil of shame. Because he initially departed the series with an inflated ego — and with it unrealistic salary demands — it does seem obvious that Diesel is now only desperately crawling back because his career failed to take off the way he’d hoped it would.
This is quite sad considering not even Steve Guttenberg ever crawled back to the Police Academy movies, nor did Burt Reynolds ever get dragged back for a fourth Smokey and the Bandit. But there have been other shameful returns by stars to franchises they’d previously sat out of (whether the hiatus was of their own choosing or not). Only one of these may have been as desperate as Diesel now appears, but it’s worth looking at four additional actors and actresses who should be very embarrassed of their delayed reprisals.
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When I heard Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster say in the promo trailer that he tried to make the Bond film he always wanted to see, I thought “Uh-oh.” But my “Uh-oh” turned to “Oh, shit,” once I got to the screening and saw Paul Haggis listed in the credits as one of the writers, my distaste for Finding Neverland Forster trumped only by my loathing of faux-deep Haggis. And yet none of this mattered in the least because I was going to see Quantum of Solace for one reason and one reason only: to watch Daniel Craig get naked. (Heck, I’d have happily sat through Crash a dozen times if Haggis had tossed in a naked Daniel Craig every once in awhile!)
You see, ever since Craig’s debut in the remake of Casino Royale, the dusty old, 007 series was offered a prime opportunity to expand its audience for the first time in decades. Not only would hardcore Fleming franchise fans and massive car explosion enthusiasts be lining up for tickets; there was now a third audience of those like me, indifferent to the Bond legacy and shaky cam chases alike, but hot and bothered by Mr. Craig. And Forster and Haggis, not surprisingly considering their very un-sexy track record, blew it.
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Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale might eschew gadgets in lieu of a hard punch to the nose, but it’s hard to argue that the best Bond gadget in recent years isn’t the invention of the Blu-ray DVD. Now the classic Bond films have started appearing in the format with upgraded images, sound, and a slew of special features. Casino Royale was previously released on DVD as one of Sony’s first “must have” discs to show off your Blu-ray player (which was probably a Sony PlayStation3), but now they’re visiting a smattering of different Bonds in this first release.
As I’ve learned in my adult life, there are sometimes those moments that you realize you’re probably unhealthily obsessed with something. For me, that moment came when I was seriously considering purchasing a $2,999 framed collage featuring signatures of all the actors who had played James Bond in the “official” movies, along with various playing cards, casino chips, photos and what not. I ultimately had to pass on it, and my wallet was grateful after the fact.
Thankfully there are much more affordable ways to feed this obsession, some of which can be documented in the series of Bondcasts that I used to host with Athena Stamos at Cinematical. One of those ways has been collecting the James Bond movies on DVD. There have been not one, nor two, but now three different collections of Bond issued on DVD, and while I really miss the menu screens from the first set, (”Please activate your remote control to activate the Goldfinger Special Edition DVD” — complete with an extremely Bondian gadgetlike interface), you can’t argue that Blu-ray is definitely giving the previous James Bond films a shot in the arm.
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- “Shaken, not stirred.”
- “Hello, Moneypenny.”
- “Bond, James Bond.”
These are some of the classic lines you hear in nearly every James Bond film. Then there are lines that are unique to each film, and that stick with you after you’ve seen them. Lines like:
- “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” - Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger
- “Good choice, she is very sexiful.” - Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice
- “Now put your clothes back on and I’ll buy you an ice cream” - James Bond in For Your Eyes Only
But what Bond movies excel at — besides action, intrigue, and sex — is pure, unadulterated cheese. These films have given us some of the cheesiest lines in the history of filmmaking, and the updated Daniel Craig movies are no exception. From Sean Connery on down, the actors in Bond films have had to deliver cringe-inducing dialog from time to time. We remember the worst after the jump.
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A man was arrested in London last week for imitating James Bond. He wasn’t going around and ordering vodka martinis though, he had numerous fake IDs, replica guns, and even a personalized wallet styled after From Russia With Love. That’s dedication right there. We’ve had James Bond imitators in the movies for more than 40 years, but sadly none of them have ever been arrested. Although thankfully, a few of them have been entertaining. Check out the James Bond knockoffs in the list below, as we ramp up towards Quantum of Solace.
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