The James Bond movie Roger Moore hated the most: “My least favourite”
The iconic James Bond actor Roger Moore took on the mantle that Sean Connery left behind as the third person to play 007. Where Connery exuded a sense of seriousness, masculinity and charm, though, Moore delivered his version of Bond with more of a lighthearted and comical feel while still retaining the double agent’s famous suaveness.
Moore’s portrayal of Bond brought him widespread admiration, and his charisma and presence on screen made him eternally attached to the legendary role. Delivering seven performances as Bond, including Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, Moore is the actor with the most appearances as the famous British spy.
However, while Moore will indeed forever be tied to the Bond series, not every movie he ever performed in as 007 was quite to his liking. He once pointed out the film from the iconic spy franchise with which he has the worst relationship, the 14th in the series, 1985’s A View to a Kill.
That’s often the trade-off that comes with becoming so closely associated with one role. The highs are enormous, but any misstep ends up living alongside the classics, especially in a franchise as closely scrutinised as Bond, where every entry is measured against what came before it.
And for an actor like Moore, who brought such a distinct flavour to the character, those differences were always going to be magnified. What worked in one film might feel out of place in another, particularly as the series itself started to shift in tone during the mid-1980s.
A View to a Kill marked Moore’s seventh and final appearance as 007. Even though the title is taken from Ian Fleming’s 1960 short story of the same name, the screenplay is entirely original and saw Bond take on Christopher Walken’s villain character, Max Zorin, a technology company president who plans to destroy all of Silicon Valley. Moore once admitted that the film was his “least favourite in the Bond series”.
An incident that occurred on A View to a Kill left Moore somewhat traumatised. On the commentary track on the film, Moore explained that he’d taken a refresher course at a military training camp to touch up on the skills that he’d be expected to demonstrate during production.
During that time, Moore was handed a gun that had a blocked mechanism, and when the actor pulled the trigger, the gun suddenly went off in his hand. He was thankfully left uninjured but was “deafened for a few days”, leading to further fears about guns and the damage they could cause.
In an interview with the BBC, Moore explained his distaste for such weaponry. “I regret that, sadly, heroes, in general, are depicted with guns in their hands. And to tell the truth, I have always hated guns and what they represent.” Naturally, James Bond had to be portrayed with a gun, but it was a facet of the character Moore might have preferred to avoid.
