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It was Brosnan’s idea.
It's a fair point, yes. It was both of their ideas! :)
I didn't know and I'm VERY surprised. Never thought he'd have dared such a move.
No, they can't bring Renard back!
Sorry, that Blofeld image reminded me more of him. Otherwise it's a very cool piece of fan art.
What did happen with that, in his opinion?
Bond had always been a summer franchise and a move that many don't talk about is how the producers moved the premieres to winter going forward where there is a bit less competition. I believe both of Dalton's films were summer releases.
It's my fav film of all time, but, yes, it must be said that when LTK was released, it had to compete with the likes of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Batman or Die Hard 2. At least two of these films are excellent. I think that should it had been put on hold like No Time To Die has been now, it would have fared a bit better.
That and the release of a better marketing campaign. EON and MGM/UA got lazy here for some reason.
Plus the cast didn't have any sizzle and looked more like what you would find in a TV show. Many were regulars on American TV. No colourful characters outside of Wayne Newton.
LTK is not one of my favourite films so I may be sharing more of the problematic elements of the film. Oh and John Glen, he of Iron Eagle 3 was the director and couldn't compete with Spielberg, and Burton. Even Reny Harlin of Die Hard 2 had a more impressive resume then Glen.
It would be a long time before Bond found his way out of the wilderness. I think a McClory film at this dead time might have meant the series jumping to another studio.
And maybe the end of EON? Just wondering...
I'd quibble a bit with some of your points. First, nobody cared who directed a Bond film back then, many probably don't care now, so bringing up people going to see Indy or Batman because of their directors was much less of a selling point than the characters themselves in 1989.
Also, I think you and bigladiesman meant Lethal Weapon 2. Die Hard 2 wasn't released until the following summer and I really doubt anybody cared who Reny Harlin was, just that there was another Die Hard movie, aside from some hardcore film fans.
And was the cast really a factor? How many of the previous films were successes with little-known or unknown actors? Sean Bean was also the only real recognizable face in GE and it was huge.
The trailers weren't great, but they had enough action and girls highlighted Bond is famous for and that shouldn't have necessarily turned anybody off. I agree the other franchises were more fresh at the time and the marketing in the U.S. was lacking, as if they just thought putting the franchise name out there would automatically mean a large audience and it didn't work, at least here in the U.S. Didn't LTK actually do good business around the rest of the world?
Yes the cast was a factor. Sean Connery in an Indiana Jones movie was a big deal! Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns a big deal. Joe Pesci in LW2 a big deal. We've got Robert Davi, the bit character actor from the Die Hard films. We have Carey Lowell. you could argue that Talia Sotto was the biggest "star" in the film. I remember Wayne Newton making the rounds on the talk shows to talk up LTK. You certainly can't send out Don Stroud or any of the other made for TV actors that make up a good deal of the cast. Even Hedison wasn't going to generate much interest.
I think the producers felt the name and the change to a revenge piece was enough to get butts in the seats. They were wrong in the USA. It got lost in the shuffle.
Premiere weekend at the Box Office and it came 4th!
GE had the stunts. The dam stunt was profiled many times. Sure the cast wasn't A list but it had a known director and pent up demand. Plus it took Bond back to fun and entertainment.
Bond was not a summer franchise until TSWLM--before then it just as likely that a Bond film would open in the winter in the US. After LTK the franchise moved to fall opening dates, which undoubtedly helped the Brosnan and Craig films, since they stayed out of the summer tentpole season.
The tanker chase remains one of the greatest chases in the series. It certainly had more explosions than the bungee jump in GE and explosions never hurt a trailer. Furthermore, none of three Bonds preceding LTK had stand-out single stunts but they did fine.
And the public was drawn in by the obscure European character actors in Goldeneye?
And the public was drawn in by international auteur megastar Martin Campbell? The public doesn't care who directs a Bond film unless it's a very big name. Campbell wasn't.
Regarding Glen's post Bond film--you can easily go through the resumes of Terence Young, Guy Hamilton, and Peter Hunt and also find embarrassing films they made after leaving the Bond series. It doesn't mean anything besides the fact that directors can get typecast and sometimes work on low budget projects to stay in the business.
Pent-up demand, a bigger budget for the film and marketing (thanks to new corporate leadership at United Artists), and a fall release date. And contrary to your disdain for television actors, the presence of a well-known TV star as Bond undoubtedly helped.
Twice, in fact!
Guess my opinion is invalid since you have gone point by point and refuted each one. That's okay. We see this film differently.
Regardless of how one feels about them now, the later Moore films and Dalton's first got fairly mediocre reception in the US upon their initial release and that does eventually affect a franchise.
Doubtful. There would have been a replay of the courtroom drama that preceded TSWLM and deep-sixed the script McClory had co-written with Connery and Len Deighton. If McClory could have made an original Bond, he would have--instead he was stymied, made Never Say Never Again, and then couldn't even remake that. His final stand, with Sony's backing, was an attempt to capture the entire Bond franchise by claiming he was the co-author of the cinematic 007, and that shows how desperate he had become by the end.
I would like to think that as Irishman Pierce Brosnan had an inbuilt blarney-detector, and it probably rang very loud after his first couple of meetings with McClory.
His only post-NSNA attempt that ever looked like it might have some actual merit, optioning the rights to Sony so they could make new adaptions of it and CR, turned out to be a bust.
I doubt whether he was ever going to have lightning strike twice again. Having Sean Connery on board for NSNA was pretty much the only reason it got the studio funding necessary to push through the legal red tape in the first place.
I suppose one has to admire the man's tenacity but it's clear that while he was a very charismatic individual, an experienced maker of blockbusters he was not.
Well, this is more or less what I imagined. McClory had no right to interfere on TSWLM and pretty sure Cubby would have sued his ass in retaliation if he tried to pull an original history on.
I think McClory may have had a point about the SPECTRE aspects (of which he was joint author) originally in TSWLM ("Number One" references), which is why Cubby scrubbed the film of them. This is also, IMHO, why Stromberg is a weak villain. He's truly a watered-down Blofeld.
NSNA and any other potential remakes had the challenge of how would McClory disassociate the character of Bond (from Fleming) and the tropes of the first three Bond movies (from Eon) from whatever McClory was owed by co-creating SPECTRE and the Thunderball story. It was not a bright legal line.
And yet I think it's aged better than some of those others. A good chunk of the budget of BATMAN went to Jack Nicholson's paycheck, and -- seen today -- I think the fashions look dated and the massive, clunky sets pretty shoddy. GHOSTBUSTERS II never looked good, not even in 1989. I also think that some of those other blockbusters (including LETHAL WEAPON 2) have inferior scripts.
I haven't read this script, but those who have say the robots have been exaggerated. Furthermore, what came closest to being filmed was a substantial rewrite of this script that very few people have read.
It's an interesting point. Obviously Davi does a great job in LTK, but if he'd been a Jack Nicolson or someone could that have attracted the audience a bit more? Maybe.
GoldenEye had audience curiosity from Bond being away for 6 years and a rebooted series as a result, plus the ultimate attractor: a new Bond. People want to see the new James Bond.
LTK didn't have that, and in fact had a possible minus in that the Bond in it was one that hadn't really set the world on fire the first time around.