Sean Connery, what were you thinking?
There can be no doubt that Sean Connery is a cinematic legend. He is the definitive James Bond, and he is Indiana Jones’s father. He won an Oscar for his portrayal of Jim Malone in The Untouchables, and rightly so. He is The Man. But for someone as highly regarded as him, he’s appeared in some really…let’s just say, craptacular movies.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Connery plays Allan Quatermain in this adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. The makers of the film decided to leave out Quatermain’s drug dependency, which I can certainly understand. But did they have to eviscerate the rest of the story as well? It wasn’t long after this film debuted that Alan Moore asked that his name be removed from all cinematic adaptations of his work.
The Avengers (1998)
I was never a fan of the original British television program, and so I don’t know how well this re-imagining of it stacks up in comparison. Connery plays against his James Bond legacy as Sir August de Wynter, a villain who tries to blackmail all of England by making the weather even worse than it already is.
Mostly the movie is just dull, but it does have one truly memorable WTF?!? scene with our man: he calls a meeting of his scientists to make sure they are all on the same page, and for some inexplicable reason everyone is wearing a different colored bear suit.
I would love to see the memo that went out for this: “meeting in conference room B at 10:00 to discuss weather domination situation. Be sure to wear your bear suit.” The scene becomes even more bizarre when de Wynter kills two of his scientists after they ask to be excused from his evil plot.
Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991)
The first Highlander was a fun action flick that didn’t really make a whole lot of sense if you tried to figure it out, but the rockin’ soundtrack by Queen and kick-ass sword fights helped to gloss over this fact. Rather than expand and illuminate the Highlander mythology, this film muddies the plot even further and goes on to become one of the most reviled sequels in cinematic history. Even though his character was killed in the first one, Sean Connery returns as if nothing ever happened. In the end, there should have been only one - movie that is.
Meteor (1979)
Long before Deep Impact and Armageddon we had this all-star train wreck about a meteor that threatens to destroy the Earth. Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, Martin Landau and Karl Malden appear along with Sean Connery. Bad music, bad acting, bad special effects and a bad plot drag this movie down into the Mystery Science Theater 3000 range. Even though it looks like a cheap, plastic model, watching the World Trade Center get destroyed by a meteor storm is rather unnerving.
Zardoz (1974)
This is one of my all-time favorite “so bad that it’s good” movies. Whereas The Avengers has only one WTF?!? scene, Zardoz features one inscrutable, Ed Wood-like moment after another. The movie begins with a disembodied, floating head named Zardoz that tries to explain the movie you are about to see, but fails miserably. Zardoz appears once again in the next scene, only this time he’s a floating rock head of Mount Rushmore proportions. “The gun is good. The penis is evil,” Zardoz says in a booming voice, and then barfs out a cornucopia of firearms for his worshippers to go forth and kill with.
Sean Connery plays Zed, an executioner who serves Zardoz. He runs around for most of the movie in a red diaper, except for a brief scene where he appears in a wedding dress. That’s right, a wedding dress, complete with bridal veil. You’ve just got to see this movie to believe it.
My final “what were you thinking” moment is for a movie that Connery declined to appear in. Apparently the head honchos at New Line Cinema were nervous about launching the Lord of the Rings movie franchise without a big name star attached to it, and wanted him to play Gandalf. Connery read the script, but turned down the role because “I never understood it.” New Line was prepared to offer him 10 to 15 percent of the total box office earnings, which would have earned him well over $400 million dollars. I don’t think he would have been bad as Gandalf, but it’s hard now to imagine anyone other than Ian McKellan in the role.
One Comment, Comment or Ping
Eoghann
I think many of Connery’s decisions make sense if you view his career as a job rather than a vocation. Meteor, Highlander 2, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, even Zardoz makes sense in those terms.
Connery doesn’t strike me as a person who is worried so much about artistic merit as earning a living.
And don’t get me started on the Avengers movie. How they could turn so much potential into so little baffles me.
Jul 1st, 2008
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