Cinema's Unlikable Movie Characters?

Marla Grayson in I Care a Lot and Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Both played by Rosamund Pike. I give her props for angering me so.
 
Don said:
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A fan of the literary character, often seen re-reading and referring to the novels on set, Dalton determined to approach the role and play truer to the original character described by Fleming. His 007, therefore, came across as a reluctant agent who did not always enjoy the assignments he was given...​
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Unlike Moore, who always seems to be in command, Dalton's Bond sometimes looks like a candidate for the psychiatrist's couch – a burned-out killer who may have just enough energy left for one final mission. That was Fleming's Bond – a man who drank to diminish the poison in his system, the poison of a violent world with impossible demands.... his is the suffering Bond.​
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— Steven Jay Rubin writes in The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopaedia (1995).​
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Some modern critics have compared Dalton favourably to Daniel Craig. The Guardian wrote that "they want Bond to be closer to the original Ian Fleming character. They want him to be grittier, darker and less jokey. What they really want, it seems, is to have Dalton back." Dalton himself has claimed that the Bond films starring Daniel Craig are "believable" in the way he wanted his own Bond films to be ...​
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Having read a couple of bond books I can honestly say there is quite a difference between the screen and book incarnation. Closest was probably a cross between Connery and Moore. But even more disparate is the choice of cars! Bond had an old beat up Bentley that was rather unkempt and hand painted in parts!
 
James Bond in the movies was the knight errant--and people like that romantic adventure image. It sells. For some reason Hollywood has never peddled it much (Errol Flynn in Robin Hood being one of the exceptions--totally unflawed, gregarious successful character).

There's not a lot of that kind of character in mainstream movies--even in the 1960s, and certainly not today.
They say Men's Adventure Fiction has been enjoying a nostalgic revival--I suspect partly because there's so little like it now. Nothing like it now.

And as Michael Caine observed, his younger leading men got shorter and shorter over the years.
6'2 used to be the standard, but they keep getting shorter.

James Bond, Spider-man, Batman, Superman, they all get shorter.

The Incredible Shrinking Leading Man?
 
KGeo777 said:
James Bond in the movies was the knight errant--and people like that romantic adventure image. It sells. For some reason Hollywood has never peddled it much (Errol Flynn in Robin Hood being one of the exceptions--totally unflawed, gregarious successful character).

There's not a lot of that kind of character in mainstream movies--even in the 1960s, and certainly not today.
They say Men's Adventure Fiction has been enjoying a nostalgic revival--I suspect partly because there's so little like it now. Nothing like it now.

And as Michael Caine observed, his younger leading men got shorter and shorter over the years.
6'2 used to be the standard, but they keep getting shorter.

James Bond, Spider-man, Batman, Superman, they all get shorter.

The Incredible Shrinking Leading Man?
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Bond in the book was not a pleasant man at all. Band in the movies , charming but still not pleasant. In Goldfinger , that game that he pulled on Goldfinger with the cards got sister Jill and Till Masterson killed.
 
Bond always seemed daft to me, a Mary Sue character whose world was rigged to favour him. Directors might as well expect me to relate to a unicorn. He would make a pretty good villain, though - IIRC, Alan Moore used a thinly-disguised Bond as a villain in one of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books.
 
Toby Frost said:
Bond always seemed daft to me, a Mary Sue character whose world was rigged to favour him. Directors might as well expect me to relate to a unicorn. He would make a pretty good villain, though - IIRC, Alan Moore used a thinly-disguised Bond as a villain in one of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books.
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When you read him in book from . Bond is easy to dislike.
 
Fleming supposedly said he wasn't meant to be liked. He was a government killing machine.
But you know, I was researching names and quite a number of western names mean sword or spear. The name "Roger" in fact, means "spear."
I think the expectation of a warrior story is something genetic and lingers on in public consciousness.
 
I really thought that Timothy Dalton tried to inject the element of Bond s the stone cold killer.
 
Ash science officer on the Notromo who's actions contributed to the Demis of its crew.
 
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