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I wasn't aware tht TD didn't get on with John Glenn, I thought they all signed up for the harder edged 007?
I don't know the details. I think Dalton wanted to go back to Fleming, and make the character more human. But I believe it was EON's decision to adopt the ultra-violent (by Bond standards) approach in LTK. I remember reading somewhere that Dalton received the script two weeks before shooting started. I don't think he was particularly closely consulted on the exact direction of LTK. I think back then, as with pretty much all the actors up until Craig, Dalton was hired to do a job and expected to get on with it. Obviously EON were tailoring the films to his take and his style, but that doesn't mean Dalton had much creative input into the gestation of LTK.
I read an interview with Dalton after LTK, saying he wanted the next one to be more light hearted. Even though he wanted to portray the character with a more human side, I don't think that means he wanted all the violence and for the films to be overly serious. As Dalton has demonstrated elsewhere, he's more than capable of handling the lighter stuff. Despite what some say, I think he handles the lighter elements of TLD very well.
I think the disagreements with Glen were more to do with Glen being more focussed on the action and Dalton wanting the director to focus more on the drama. There must have been a personal dislike as well, I suspect, for whatever reason. Glen says LTK is the Bond film he's proudest of though, so I don't think the falling out entirely overshadowed Glen or Dalton's view of the film.
Funnily enough though, I think Dalton was actually much less happy about the general direction of the series in LTK than people assume. I really don't think he wanted to take things that far. But may be I'm wrong.
Ok fair enough. However, Hugo Drax in the MR novel is a european being disfigured and mistaken for another european....not a build, hair, skin and body change.....followed by a Robocop outfit for good measure in DAD. :)
I'm not here to defend the DAD story or its massacring of the MR novel. DAD is clearly total garbage. But despite that, the film and the sequence of events is explained sufficiently that when I watch it, it does actually make sense. It's really bad, but I know what is happening, and why.
And I think some of the 80s cop shows, like Miami vice.
Haven't seen them for years, but is there a bit of Lethal Weapon in there too?
Fair enough. I know I am in an minority! ;)
But seriously, how does Bond survive at the start? Does that not bug you at all?
I understand how Bond survives the start of DAD and TND - the bad guys miss. But in SF he gets shot - twice! And then falls from a huge height into a river and floats away unconscious. I don't understand how he survives that and the film doesn't even attempt to explain it. I've never actually seen a sequence like that in any other film. Where the central character to all and intents and purposes is killed, and then miraculously reappears. If that happens in other films, it is because the death and survival are central to the plot - i.e. there is a mystery to be unravelled. Is this the same person after all? That kind of thing. But in SF they just completely ignore it. Wow. I admire those who can just overlook it though. Wish I could.
I know I'm being pedantic, but seriously, don't you require any explanation at all?
Yes, I can understand that he survives being shot, even being shot twice. I can just about understand him surviving the fall, although, let's face it, he's most probably looking at a wheelchair after that, if he survives at all. And I can understand him surviving falling into a river unconscious, if perhaps by some miracle someone sees it all and fishes him out.
But put it all together and have zero explanation of how he even gets out of the water alive, and I say that just makes no sense whatsoever.
Sorry, think this is derailing the thread, and has been covered elsewhere many times before.
I have to be honest and say it didn't bothered me. I think for two reasons, 1) It's Bond, he's not going to be dead. 2) There were so many other things that annoyed me after this, I pretty much forgot about it. The Komodo Dragons, the generally poor and at time abysmal CGI work, the fucking GF DB5, the Moore era one-liners, the use of techno-babble to bypass any rationale behind the plot progression etc. Yeah, the fall had passed me by come the end of the film.
I totally agree and that is one of the points I've made before. It's not just one thing - it's the whole accumulation of lazy, patronising film making gimmicks that really lets it down. When I first saw the film, I really wanted to enjoy it and was actually getting into it up until the point they leave Silva's island and (IMO) it all just falls apart completely. After seeing the whole film, and rewatching it, the fall is just one of many huge holes in the story/plot.
Any way, may be I should try and get back to Dalton and whether he'd have made a cracking GoldenEye!
Highly unlikely, I mean highlyyyy unlikely, but we can never say impossible.
And @Getafix, look I'm a grumpy old man, seriously don't give it another thought.
And also, I'm no expert on the Fleming books. I've read them twice, tops, apart from CR which I've read three times. So any link between book Drax and film Graves passed me by- although it doesn't make any more sense to me knowing that.
The films were my passion from day 1 and remain so. I'm not a Bond fan in that sense, I'm a Bond film fan. I've read some but not all Gardner and none since. I can't see the later book Bond as the same man in Fleming's books, and I do believe the suspension of belief we accept in films simply can't be the same in novels.
However, I do understand your point of internal logic vs unacceptable plot progressions. But now my brain is hurting....
Agreed. Sorry for allowing my extreme pedantic side to come through!
I am also a primarily (almost exclusively in my case) a fan of the films. I've only read MR actually. It was interesting, but did not particularly tempt me to read more. It did give me a sense that the early Connery films best capture the mix of reality and fantasy/adeventure though. It's a really weird mix, but Fleming definitely makes it 'work'. It's an integral part of the success of the films as well - the flat out weirdness of some of the plots and characters.
You can see how they sometimes try and delve back into the weirdness, but the further we get from the time the books were written, the less that weirdness seems to work. Or may be the new stories and quality of the writing is just not generally up to scratch. It's actually really dififcult to do the crazy, weird stuff, and maintain that plausibility - when they manage it though, that's Bond magic IMO. I can see why people love SF for this very reason - I just feel personally it does not work.
DAD is definitely a MR homage though. And SF 'borrows' heavily from TMWTGG - not sure if it's the book or the film though. But rewatching TMWTGG recently I realised how many parallels there are with SF. It's almost a remake.
Yes, but. ... We know Indy survives because he's in a fridge. Daft? Yes. Makes sense? Well sort of, within the context of an Indy movie. At least his survival is explained. We don't just see him emerging from a thermonuclear cloud, dusting himself off, or appearing in the next scene lecturing his class. We are shown how he gets out of the scrape. Key difference IMO and that is the only point I'm trying to make.
I agree actually - the way that Silva is written is more annoying than the PTS. The PTS is just emblematic/symptomatic of wider problems as far as I'm concerned. I blame the writing primarily, and Mendes to a lesser extent. I just really hope the whole story is tighter for SP. I don't want to be distracted by lazy/poor writing.
I think SF is a great movie with superb characterizations, atmosphere and acting, but the plot holes relating to Silva cannot be denied. For me, it started with his MI6 escape. Up to that point, the movie was difficult to fault critically. I don't have a problem with the PTS personally.
I think the issue a lot of people have with SF is the near idolatry that's conferred on it by some, on this board, generally, and by critics (Rotten Tomatoes at 92% is a bit much to me. Metacritic at 81% and IMDB at 78% are more reasonable). DAD and other Bond movies hardly received such unadulterated praise. It is not the greatest thing since sliced bread, or even since Barack Obama imho, but it is a very entertaining movie, and one worthy of several rewatches.
However, after the long 4 year wait, I personally would have preferred it if they had given us something with a tighter, more coherent plot.
True, and I think I may be cheating there a little, by adding Barry to the star billing.
Imagine if they'd got Ken Adam back as well....
This is all I ask for. A 'caper' as Maibaum would have put it. It can have as many themes cleverly woven through it as it wants, it can have symbolism at every turn, but I'll sacrifice both of those without hesitation for great character work and an intriguing plot.
yup
Bond told Moneypenny his wounds were not critical, 4 ribs, some of the less vital organs, nothing major.