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http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/bond_17_intro.php3
Secondly I think some of the posters on this board are overestimating Brosnan's popularity at the time. Yes American audiences wanted him as Bond in 1986 but by the time 1994 came around Brosnan had been forgotten in the minds of alot of fans. He'd pretty much become an 80s tv hasbeen with 1 successful role since Remington Steele but with a laundry list of flops. GE in many ways saved his career.
No matter what GE would've been a success. Whenever there is a prolonged gap between Bond films the series always comes back strong. Whether it was Dalton, Brosnan, or James Purevoy stepping into the role the general feeling was that audiences had missed that Bond series and by 1995 had wanted it back in a bad way. However I'll agree with Dalton's lukewarm reception I suspect GE wouldn't have taken in as much money. A Bond debut always rakes in extra cash as audiences are naturally curious. But I believe had Dalton returned GE would not have been as dark as LTK and a concious effort would've been made to make a more quintessential Bond film.
Some of the lighter scenes would have been tossed (like the socking the bad guy taking a dump and maybe the tank chase as well--I don't know. )
Dalton would have played well opposite Bean and his conflict at having to kill his old friend was taylor made for Dalton.
The film would have made gobs of money but not as much as it did with Brosnan being touted as a "new Bond".
James Bond is a viable and profitable entity and if I were a distributor I would not shy away from marketing and exhibiting one.
OHMSS did a hell of alot more than merely break even. It had a 7 million dollar budget and grossed 82 million dollars. That sounds like a profit to me. I hate the misconception that OHMSS was a flop. It was actually the second highest grossing film of 1969, behind Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. It was an all around financial success. It just wasn't the mega blockbuster GF or TB was. With all due respect to @actionsteve ofcourse. ;)
You are absolutley right, if you look at actual tickets sold OHMSS did good business, a lot of blockbusters would be happy to have OHMSS in this day and age!
I think a lot of the misconceptions about OHMSS being a "flop" were to do with the fact that Laz (apparently) walked away before the film was even released. Hence he was (and is) seen as a "lesser Bond" who was sandwiched between two films with that "other fella".
Of course GE would have been a succes with Dalton. Everybody was gagging for a Bond film after the 6 year wait.
One misconception was that LTK was a disaster. The only market where LTK severly under performed was in the US, which wasn't helped by a poor last minute marketing campaign (poster and name changes etc) and the competition of other films in summer of 89.
LTK is a great film and one of my personal faves and its sad that such a great actor as Bond like Dalton only did 2 films, especially when his tenure as Bond was as long as Brosnans (8 years).
That said, GE is a great film and Brosnan is superb in it. It certainly looks and feels like the last of the 'traditional' Bonds. Great Marketing campaign as already mentioned.
The US is one of the biggest nations in the world so if a Bond film is going to under-perform the US is NOT the place it should do so.
Also, I'm not sure I buy this whole "competition of other films" stuff. True LTK had a lot of competition at the time but TND (an inferior film btw) had to compete with possibly one of the biggest, most anticipated films ever made upon its release date (Titanic) and still managed to make a hefty amount of cash.
Dalton bashing? I thought the general consensus was one of adoration. I figured that my personal Dalton bashing was against the vast opinion of Dalton love. ;)
Well I believe the bigwigs who stomped the money up realised that GE would be more of a success with Brosnan than with Dalton which is why they gave Dalts the option to fall on his sword rather than be taken out and shot. He (Dalton) was very gracious but accepted his fate. And it was the right call. GE was popular, so was Brosnan.
It's only my theory and I could be a long way off the mark, but I do think Dalton was quietly forced out.
Agreed, the US is the one market which forms how succesful the Bond films are:
Connery was anything between 1/2 and 1/3.
Lazumby was 1/4.
Moore was anything between 1/3 and 1/4.
Dalton was 1/4 for LTK was just under 1/5 (almost same figures gross in both US and ROW as LALD 16 years earlier)
Brosnan was actually best US performance since Connery and under 1/3 total gross.
Craig was actually better gross than any Brosnan in the US but the ratio is down because worldwide gross was much higher.
Having said that, competition from Titanic is not the same as having competition from Batman, Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2 and even Ghostbusters 2 all at the same time.
Speaking for the UK, summer of 89, warm weather, so many films to go to and limited multiplexes as the old traditional cinemas were replaced obviously affected the box office of LTK here.
Winter of 97 meant colder weather, lots of evening trips to the cinema and a direct choice of Titanic or Bond. Seems everyone on the planet saw Titanic and even I got dragged in by my then girlfriend, but I saw TND a few times because of nothing else :)
You are indeed right "licensetforum", Cubby was very good friends with Dalton and was upset that circumstances didn't allow them to make a third Bond film together!! Timothy Dalton is also great friends with Barbra Broccoli too, I bumped into both of them at the John Barry Memorial Concert last year and she referred to Tim as her Bond, which I found interesting!, at which MGW raised his eye brows. Tim put his arm around her and pulled her tight to him, being that the man is a giant! Tim is a lovely man and seeing him in GE would of been the Bond film he deserved, esp with Martin Campbell getting even more out of him than the lame John Glen!?
Brosnan could of then done his 3, and then that would bring us to the present day and DC.... :-B
LTK sold 39 million tickets world wide..... GE sold 81 million tickets world wide, which is twice as more..... only CR67 made less than LTK... even NSNA made 10 millions more ticket sales than LTK, MR which came 10 years before LTK sold more than twice as many tickets than LTK.
GE is the only Bond film to have sold twice as many tickets than its immediate predecessor.... so GE and Brosnan made the biggest improvement in the box office for a new Bond's first outing.... would GE have made twice as more as LTK if Dalton had returned ? Even Connery at the height of Bond mania didn't manage to make film that outgrossed 2 times its immediate predecessor...
Hmm hat's a good point dchantry. I suppose none of the other Bond films have had that kind of competition from films out at the same time.
Still, you'd expect a Bond film to at least do better than it did.
http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1989&p=.htm
By that point James Bond had been a familiar name in the cinema for 27 years, thats much longer than someone like Indiana Jones. Even if it under-performed it SHOULD have done better than number 36.
I think we both know what the answer to that would be ;)
BUT the story wouldn't have suited him.
I don't think that at all. Bond's personality in TLD and LTK was as much a desire of the producers as Dalton, and probably would have happened either way. Also, Dalton just fits in TLD (not so much LTK, but still a good film). Brosnan, on the other hand, came in on the right film, and shouldn't have happened any earlier. Imagine Michael Bay's Transformers coming out in 2000, when CG wasn't as good as it was seven years later, it would have been just plain wrong.
Just the way he catches the machine gun Trevelyan throws to him in the facility is epic.
That's really the question that bugs me about Dalton. He's tall, he's dark, he's handsome, he's a good actor and he's probably a nice bloke in real life but is he "cool"? Brosnan is a bit light-weight in GE (and a tad effimate sometimes) but he does have a "star" quality which you really need to play Bond.
I dunno...I'm probably thinking about it too much
:-? :-? :-?
What I was saying was if Brosnan had been in TLD, the style would have been different, and would probably have performed better at the box office because he wouldn't have been such a brutal change after Moore..... whether Dalton or the producers wanted to make TLD that way is irrelevant - the TLD that was made did not set the box office on fire, whereas a Brosnanized TLD would have performed better.
That's Connery :p
I know what you were saying. The style wouldn't have changed at all. Brosnan would have been the same kind of Bond as Dalton, just with a slight Irish accent. The only thing that might have had an impact would have been Brosnan's recent role as Remington Steele.
I agree, If Brosnan had come in straight after Moore then people would just have said, same Bond, only younger :)
Personally, I love every interpretation of Bond when the films come out because I love the Bond in the cinema experience.
We can make arguments all day about this actor in this film, even each actor played it differently dependant on the film (watch Connery, Moore and Brosnan in their first and last to see) so its hard to say would one have made as much money.
That brings up a very good point @dchantry. Each Bond actor was a bit different in their very first film compared to their later ones (I suppose Connery played it consistently though- he's an exception)
So another thing to consider is: Would GoldenEye have been better with an established Bond, and not a noob? HELL. YES.
I always thought Dalts was cool by being more of the strong silent type. Brosnan is cool too, but in ore of an award ceremony sort of way.
I agree with you that Brosnan on the surface seems "cooler" than Dalton, and does indeed have much more of that star quality. However, Dalton to me looked like someone who could kill you easily, and that's Bond. At least that should be Bond. Brosnan didn't really have that quality, at least nowhere even close to Dalton. But I guess it all goes back to what we want out of Bond.
This can be debated forever...
You see. I don't know about that :-? I see what you mean but I think, in some ways, Craig has more of that genuinely scary manner about him. Craig could (and did) kill people in a heartbeat. With Dalton it sometimes seemed a bit...put on sometimes :\">
I don't see this, but anyway, what does Craig have to do with any of this?
This is about Brosnan, and as cool as Brosnan was, Dalton looked/acted alot more dangerous. He looked like he didn't give 2 sh*ts about the rules and could kill anyone at any second. Brosnan didn't have this feeling, which is fine, he was a different type of Bond and I like him, but I prefer Dalton.