As far as what Sean Connery thought of Pierce Brosnan taking over the role of James Bond, it’s hard to know really. Apparently, Connery is a bit of a private person and doesn’t enjoy doing interviews that often, so it’s difficult to say whether or not he had anything other than a perfunctory approval that someone else would be taking on the mantle of Bond other than himself. It’s strange when actors don’t care for the roles that helped to make them famous, but Sean Connery honestly doesn’t care for the role of James Bond and doesn’t talk much about it, preferring to be known for his other roles throughout the span of his career. That’s a bit strange considering how much fame he gained from playing the part of the British super-spy, but it’s been well documented that Connery really can’t stand the role of James Bond and was glad to be done with it. To be fair he’s not the only one that wanted out, as Daniel Craig has reportedly been wanting a way out of being Bond for a while. Apparently playing the part of a suave, handsome agent with nearly unlimited resources at your fingertips and a legion of fans isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, as the desire to be known for something else is a desire that Connery and Craig have in common. As far as Pierce Brosnan goes, he desperately wanted to become 007 years earlier than he did, but thanks to his part in Remington Steele it didn’t happen until the 90s when he finally stepped into the role and thus into Bond history as one of the more impressive characters in pop culture.
Sir Roger Moore apparently thought it was a good idea for Brosnan to step into the same shoes that he’d occupied for a while, and had actually met up with Brosnan years before and been impressed by him. Pierce’s first wife was actually in For Your Eyes Only and wanted him to play the part when he had the chance as well, so there was more than a mere notion pushing Pierce Brosnan to become the famed spy. But there is a shelf life for those that play the part of Bond since unless the agent is going to start aging in a big way it’s necessary to keep finding those that can take on the mantle and possibly keep the story moving. There have been talks about making Bond into a woman, which has met with a great deal of opposition, and there have been talks about Idris Elba becoming the next Bond. It’s great that people are thinking of ways to keep it going, but the whole idea should be to move on from 007 and come up with something along the same lines but that’s convincing enough to exist in the same world and take over where Bond left off. That appears to be the part that people are hung up on, trying to move on without the need to stick to the original 007 and the idea that an agent can be someone other than a white man since the source material has Bond being a white Englishman that is notably skilled and quite deadly. There’s no reason that the next big thing in the agency couldn’t be a woman of POC though, and things wouldn’t have to change so much that it couldn’t be recognized. Bond hasn’t really changed much over the years, which makes it feel as though the character is due for a serious upgrade or retirement.
Would be so bad to retire Bond? The agent has lasted through so many movies at this point that just about every variation has been done in some way, and any more would be a great deal of repetition that would keep going, and going, and going. True, new stories would offer a new chance at excitement, but that’s the same as thinking that any franchise is going to come up with something groundbreaking to keep things moving in a forward motion. Eventually, they all start repeating themselves at some point and will borrow from one movie after another to keep their ideas supposedly fresh and forward-thinking. The unfortunate truth is that many movies have been telling the same stories over and over in different ways for years, and Bond is just one of many individual characters that have continued to build into the repetition. Pierce Brosnan brought his own look to James Bond, I won’t say that it was brand new and entirely unique, but it was his take on the character and it worked for a time. But like the others before him, eventually, he had to step down and pass it off to the next person in line, much as Daniel Craig appears ready to do.
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