I'm not terribly familiar with the James Bond series, but I managed to catch most of this one. Ms Richards is a competent actress. She's surrounded by greats, plus a legend. In that company, the film is going to focus more on everyone else, and her role is reduced very nearly to "decorative."Batgirl III wrote: ↑Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:18 pmA still photograph of Jane Seymour could perform better than Denise Richards.BriarThrone wrote: ↑Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:03 pm Jane Seymour could play a more sympathetic character in the fleeting moments between sleeping and waking than Denise Richards could with six hundred takes.
Don't get me wrong, Denise Richards is cute as a button and has a decent sense of comedic timing... She's not the worst actress that I've ever seen, but in a film with Pierce Brosnan OBE, Robert Carlyle OBE, Robbie Coltrane OBE, and Dame Judith Olivia Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA... Well, hell, even Sophie Marceau seems out of place.
The World Is Not Enough has an astounding amount of talent both in front of and behind the camera given how weak the script is. Pierce Brosnan has a weird record as Bond, he's great in the role (the prefect blend of Connery's suave cool and Moore's cocksure charm hiding Dalton's cold-hearted killer), he works with some absolutely stellar co-stars (Sean Bean, Sophie Marceau, Michelle Yeoh, Judi Goddamn Dench), and yet the movies themselves are all kind of... meh. Great performers and excellent stunt work can only do so much to patch up a weak script.
It's interesting to examine the relationship between actors, plot, and the quality of the outcome. Before the Star Wars prequels, Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman had great artistic reputations and an impressive portfolio each. Those movies appear to have torched their leads. Including the poor kid who played little Ani in Phantom Menace, who did a fine job as a child actor considering his challenging material, but got so much blame and backlash that he seems to want to never think of acting again.
I did write a review of the other major series to have a rotating lead actor, Doctor Who, as an example here, but I felt it was way too long and off-topic to post