Pierce Brosnan rescued James Bond from a six-year exile, made him bigger than he'd ever been, and then broke him so badly the franchise had to start over. On this episode we discuss his rather strange run as Bond from the mid-90s to the early 2000s, get into all four films — GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day — and dig into both the series' complicated past and its resurgence after his run as cinema's most famous spy.
Pierce Brosnan rescued James Bond from a six-year exile, made him bigger than he'd ever been, and then broke him so badly the franchise had to start over. On this episode we discuss his rather strange run as Bond from the mid-90s to the early 2000s, get into all four films — GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day — and dig into both the series' complicated past and its resurgence after his run as cinema's most famous spy.
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 An Intro to The Pierce Brosnan Years
00:43 Our Relationship with the Brosnan Era
04:14 The Bond That Took My Bond Virginity
04:52 A 30-Second History of James Bond
06:21 The Connery, Lazenby & Moore Years
06:54 Roger Moore at 57 and A Franchise in Crisis
07:13 How Pierce Brosnan Lost Bond the First Time
07:32 Timothy Dalton, License to Kill, and a Reshaping Action Genre
09:02 Bond Disappears For Six Years
10:10 Enter GoldenEye
10:43 Hot Take: James Bond Is a Terrible Spy
12:49 GoldenEye — Why It Still Holds Up
13:19 Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp — Best Henchwoman Ever
15:39 Jean Grey to Murder-by-Thighs
16:38 GoldenEye vs. Thunderball — Ranking the Best Bond
17:02 Judi Dench As M
19:31 Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
20:35 The Laziest Villain Goal in Bond History
21:46 What the Film Got Backwards
22:24 Roger Spottiswoode, Titanic, and a Doomed Production
22:58 The k.d. lang vs. Sheryl Crow Theme Song Controversy
24:01 Michelle Yeoh Is the Only Reason to Watch This
24:28 The Crime of Being Forgettable
25:49 The World Is Not Enough (1999)
26:00 "Always Have an Escape Plan"
26:48 Sophie Marceau as Elektra King — Best Bond Girl Ever?
27:24 Robert Carlyle's Renard and the Bullet in His Brain
28:10 The Iran War Allegory You Didn't Ask For
31:24 Denise Richards as a Nuclear Physicist — WHY?
31:52 The Worst Line in Bond History
33:05 Die Another Day (2002)
33:39 Surfing the Ice Palace and Other Crimes Against Cinema
35:46 Halle Berry as Jinx and the Madonna Problem
37:09 The Diamond Laser, Explained
38:20 The Plan to Burn the DMZ — Who Was Kim Jong-Il's Physics Teacher?
39:23 Madonna's British Accent and the Iceland/Greenland Mix-Up
40:23 Punching Newton in the Dick — The Aston Martin Flip
42:23 The Death Knell of Brosnan's Bond
42:58 Why Brosnan's Run Ended at Exactly the Right Time
43:29 Austin Powers, Bourne, and the Death of Camp
44:40 Casino Royale Rights, Brosnan Gets Fired
44:50 The Post-9/11 Case for Daniel Craig
45:56 The Daniel Craig Backlash That Shut Up Real Fast
46:44 Were the Dalton Films Ahead of Their Time?
48:21 Ranking the Brosnan Films, Worst to Best
49:50 The Theme Song Debate
53:30 Best Bond Villain, Best Bond Girl, Worst Bond Girl
55:34 Closing Thoughts
56:24 Outro
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