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I hear about the big action films of the 80s being a reason for LTK underperforming, but I'm more inclined to think that Die Hard and the like were simply better film with the sort of beefcake heroes the 80s were demanding.
Also, I'm told it was poorly publicised but I recall loads of TV interviews, radio discussions, magazine publications promoting the film endlessly.
What Bond really needed apart from a USA friendly actor, was an upgrade. A new, shinier, more contemporary look. GE gave us that.
Same here.
I'm also wondering,thinking about SP underperforming in the US,whether Craig is beginning to lose his shine with the American public ?
Couple this with the fact that's it's just a rather tatty looking film. Not the spectacle it once was.
Regarding the Exorcist: The $40M is just for the R-rated release. $232m is total unadjusted US gross. Adjusted is $983m (domestic #9 of all time)
Just to confirm though: the numbers I posted earlier for the Bond films are 'unadjusted' UK gross.
I am not sure if I'm getting you a point. Don't you believe that the dollar is only worth a fifth of what it used to be way back in the early 70s? If so I can assure you it's absolutely true. Probably more so! A good middle class flat in on of the USA's big cities did cost you less than 200 bucks back then. A 15 cent really bought you something in the grocery store then,just to give you another way of perspective.
I also don't want to give the impression that TLD was as big as say TSWLM, that's not what I was implying in my recollections of that year. As @NicNac quite rightly pointed out, Bond had been on a downward trajectory since MR. They were still making money, packing out theaters, but they didn't have the same longevity of TSWLM or MR at the BO. Not every showing was a full house. American audiences seemed more attuned to their own cultural goings on by then, such as Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, Star Trek, Rocky, Rambo, Gremlins, the list goes on, more so than Bond in the Eighties. It didn't help that the Moore Bond's were considered comedies by then and that he was getting rather long in the tooth continually playing Bond. For me, Dalton was a breath of fresh air, but I still didn't like some of the goofiness that still lingered on in the films. I honestly don't know if Brosnan had appeared in place of Dalton in TLD that it would have done any better. Brosnan instead appeared in The Fourth Protocol with Michael Cain that same summer, and that didn't particularly do great numbers either. Even though I'm not a great fan of GE or Brosnan, I can't deny that he arrived at exactly the right moment and that GE felt revived and fresh compared to LTK, even TLD.
Going back to Die Hard, I did watch it recently and it's not as good as I remembered it being. But one thing stood out, and that was again Alan Rickman. He really was like a Bond villain in a highrise with Bruce as the pesky mouse.
OK, I didn't get that. Thanks for the explanation.
That (home videos) is an excellent point and can't be overlooked. There was a point in the late 70s when videos were a growing concern to the future of the cinema. Multiplexes came in to combat it, but it was a threat. During the 80s it was a concern that simply grew.
Thinking about it now, I wonder if a big part of GE's success had to do with when it was released (in November), and less to do with Brosnan.
That was the general sentiment. Unfounded but all the same. Dalton fans were far and few and could not stand against the vox populi of the time.
I believe the film succeeded for three reasons: time of release (fall), an excellent advertising campaign, and television/home video access to the previous films that got younger viewers interested and older fans excited again.
He had built his whole pre-Bond career for that moment.
Exactly.
"Action and espionage share a common bond"
That's ok, mate. I don't pretend to understand it all myself. As another example, I was looking at The Towering Inferno figures for 1974 that IMDb has down as a gross of $116 million, but Nash Information Services has its own adjusted-for-inflation figure set at the more acceptable $503 million gross. As most of you that were around in '74 will recall, The Towering Inferno was the No 1 blockbuster hit of that year and was seen by an astronomical amount of people of all ages. It was a proper event movie that everyone had to go and see, and yet the IMDb figures don't match just how huge that movie was, especially when compared to other movies made around the same time.
Was he really big at the time though? His career had cooled off since 1986, to the point where he was knocking about in b-grade thrillers like Like Wire.
The fact I knew nothing about him meant I went into GE with an open mind.
@BAIN123 I don't think anyone was calling him best since connery prior to GE but I may be wrong.
Lawnmower Man too, from what I recall. But ultimately it had always been Bond: he was known for almost getting it, probably getting it one day, etc. Whether he made B movies or blockbusters he was the Bond to be.