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Neeson may well have made a good Bond.
LTK was pretty good, so he left on a high. Who knows what would have followed?
Just curious as to why you think that? For me, he's the best of the Bond actors, and the closest to Fleming to boot. To my mind, Dalton had a lot going for him.
Agreed but then I felt that about Craig pre Skyfall and Spectre and now wellllll
But timing is everything and as good as he is the 80s films sold him short, and likely that would continue if he returned in the 90s. It was probably better for everyone involved to make a clean break with a new actor.
Aside from the "Nan" scene, I think this could of been Dalton’s TSWLM moment. And I prefer it to the revised draft which had a plot focusing on a stolen stealth fighter being used to plan a nucealr attack on China, had a monster truck chase through Las Vegas, and Bond infiltrating a rodeo disguised as a cowboy.
I prefer it too, but with modifications.
I would remove:
-the comic theme of "I'm too old for this shit" "I'm a nuisance", etc.
-The mistake of not defusing the plane's bomb, and crashing the plane in Yupland's office.
-Bond dressed as a cowboy and the whole sequence.
I would prefer a mix between Alfonse Ruggiero's draft and Davies and Osborne's draft.
It would eliminate the attacks on nuclear power plants, and would put the theme of the theft of the fighter.
Change de "Nan" sequence for the pretitles sequence in which Bond is attacked by a robot-like object that is in charge of the security of the industrial complex.
I have a feeling that the 130-page draft screenplay that auctioned in 2015 https://propstoreauction.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/26/lot/3381/JAMES-BOND-BOND-17-Draft-Screenplay
is the draft full screenplay that Michael Wilson and Ruggiero wrote based in the "Bond 17 Outline" draft treatment.
I suspect had Pierce not been available, that may have happened. We all know they wanted. Brosnan, though, and had since '86.
I'm glad he didn't get it. I find him to be extremely wooden. I know Pierce gets a lot hate on here, but he was the right guy at that time.
EON needed to re-establish the series after a big break, and reaffirm the character post cold war. Brosnan was a safe pair of hands that could bring them elements of Connery and Moore. A big departure, like Craig, wasn't what was needed in the 90's.
Having read the Lost Adventures of James Bond by Mark Edlitz, I agree on removing the comic theme of Bond bemoaning "How he’s too old for this shit" and breaking the fourth wall at the end - sounds like something Sir Roger would do! And the whole Jennings character is something you’d find in DAF. I just think Ruggiero’s draft was more mature and less comedic.
Still, Reunion with Death would of been just as solid.
well that would be your opinion of course. ;)
I do think Eon needed Brosnan for GE. The future of Bond post-Cold War (ha!) was very much in doubt, so he was the safe, and right choice, for then.
And possibly they needed Brosnan for TND, just to show that the first success wasn't just a one-off (the same reason why they rushed out TMWTGG and QoS).
I'd argue that Brosnan's legacy now would be stronger had he only done two films.
Without a doubt. It all started to go wrong for him in TWINE. It's a rare thing for a Bond actor to have two absolute bottom dwellers in a row, but this happened with TWINE and DAD.
Anyway this thread is about Tim Dalton, so I don't want to derail it.
I felt this way about Craig if you have an actor who brings Fleming's bond to life his films should have Fleming titles.
If you read John Glens book, 'For My Eyes Only ' he states that Dalton was in bad humour on the final days of filming, but puts it down to the arduous shoot!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus:_The_Discovery
Nevertheless, I think there are some relatively interesting elements that could have been, perhaps by mixing them with Ruggiero's draft for Bond 17, the basis of an excellent installment for the series.
Among these elements, I'm thinking of the meeting between Bond, M and the English industrialist in a glass and steel complex outside of London, immediately followed by the assassination attempt with Bond noticing that the smoke emanating from M's pipe reveals the beam of a laser pointed at the building. All this industrial espionage and economic terrorism story would have mixed well with what Ruggiero had imagined with his Sir Henry character. Too bad Richard Smith did not try to lean on this foundation to weave his story.
We were chatting on here recently about the idea of someone like John McTiernan doing Licence To Kill, and it's certainly not hard to imagine it being a bit more thrilling and visceral if he had.
Oh really? Not heard that one.
Yes the podcasters got very excited by that, but really, is that all that exciting? We'd seen that sort of thing in a dozen movies by then, plus it even made it into Spectre and no-one really hails that as a great cinematic moment- nothing wrong with it, it's just... fine. If that was the best thing in the script then it shows how interesting the script is!
What is quite interesting about the podcast is that they do make it quite clear that it was primarily the studio's decision not to use Dalton again.
LTK has a slightly Die Hard-ish vibe, anyway.
I still think Glen mostly did a fine job on that, and all his Bond films. He lacked the visual flair that Terence Young and Lewis Gilbert brought, but he had a terrific eye for action.
That being said I was unaware that various actors didn't rate him.
Not that Alec Mills was a bad cinematographer, it's quite the opposite, but his style probably lacked both classicism and modernity. Dalton was different and it would be in his best interest for the cinematography to summon both the glamor associated with Bond and a new dynamism capable of competing against the action movies of that time. By comparison, Mills' work seemed dated.
If Bond 17 had a Far East setting, Alex Thomson or Jan de Bont would have been perfect.
It was much more complicated than that. Dalton had it in his contract that he would have to be consulted if the producers wished to replace the director. The notorious producers Alexander & Ilya Salkind fired George Cosmatos and replaced him with Glen without Dalton's input, and then they didn't provide a bank guarantee for Dalton's salary. So one would assume that Dalton's exit had more to do with the Salkinds (who he ended up suing) than Glen.
I think it's incredible that EON even considered hiring John Landis to replace Glen on LTK (Landis's actions on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE were irresponsible and downright criminal). In the interview in The Lost Adventures of James Bond, Landis reveals that he considered the script beneath him, which I find funny considering the junk that he committed to later.
McTiernan is a nice fantasy choice. But that was back when Eon had that strange rule of only hiring British directors. I can never quite understand that given the producers were American and there were numerous American writers.