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20 years ago - November 17, 1995

GoldenEye
Pierce Brosnan famously missed his first chance to follow Roger Moore as James Bond due to contractual requirements and ended up playing private eye Remington Steele on TV while Timothy Dalton was chosen play 007 in 1987’s The Living Daylights. Audiences didn’t appreciate Dalton’s humorless take on the character (their mistake! It’s still the truest portrayal of Ian Fleming’s character in my opinion) and Dalton’s run ended after two movies when his contract expired while legal disputes held up the next movie. The franchise’s future seemed to be even more in doubt with the end of the Cold War and The Soviet Union.

But Brosnan and GoldenEye turned all that around, combining both the classic elements of the older films with a 1990s contemporary style. The plot, involving a space-based weapon intended to cause financial chaos, brought the age of computers into the Bond universe through two computer programmer characters (Scorupco and Cumming). Judi Dench portrayed the first female M, a role she reprised in six more films. Sean Bean plays the movie’s traitorous antagonist along with the bloodlusty Xenia Onatopp, played by Famke Janssen in her breakthrough role. Tina Turner provides one of the better Bond theme songs, and Eric Serra’s techno score, while controversial, was certainly a stylistic update for the the series. Starting with a pre-credits sequence that included two 00 agents and two eye-popping freefall stunts, the movie made a strong statement that Bond was back.

Critics were impressed by both Brosnan and the character’s refresh, and audiences agreed. GoldenEye opened #1 ahead of last week’s Ace Ventura 2 with $26.2 million from 2,667 theaters - by far the best opening for the series to that time. It also became the first $100 million Bond movie (not adjusted for inflation), earning $106 million in the U.S. A videogame based on the movie followed in 1997, itself a pioneer in the first-person shooter genre. Brosnan starred in three more Bond films, followed by Daniel Craig, and this weekend’s theater marquees featured the 24th movie in the series: Spectre.

The American President
Four years before bringing The West Wing to television, Aaron Sorkin delivered the screenplay for this romantic comedy which included Martin Sheen as an advisor to the President. Michael Douglas plays widower President Andrew Shepherd, who falls in love with a lobbyist played by Annette Bening. The politics in the story addressed environmental protection and gun control. Reviews were positive, and the movie opened at #3 with $10 million from 1,508 theaters. During its run The American President earned $60 million, just shy of the $63 million of Kevin Kline’s 1993 presidential comedy, Dave.

It Takes Two
This comedy stars Kirstie Alley, Steve Guttenberg, and Olsen twins Mary-Kate and Ashley. The twins, now nine-years-old, had just finished the eighth and final season of the ABC sticom Full House earlier that year and had already released half a dozen mystery episodes of The Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley. Reviews of It Takes Two were fair for a family-friendly movie. It Takes Two opened at #4 with $5.5 million from 1,581 theaters. It eventually earned $19.4 million.

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