Would Goldeneye have been a success with Dalton?

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  • NicNacNicNac Administrator, Moderator
    Posts: 7,582
    TLD simply continued the downward spiral of the franchise already noticeable in the late Moore era. We were good and ready for a new, more serious Bond, I promise you. But while Dalton had certain curiosity value in TLD the goodwill factor wore off in LTK. He didn't have the IT factor that's for sure.

    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.

  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited September 2017 Posts: 23,883
    NicNac wrote: »
    What Bond really needed apart from a USA friendly actor, was an upgrade. A new, shinier, more contemporary look. GE gave us that.
    I'm inclined to agree and, perhaps controversially, feel the same way about now.
  • Posts: 19,339
    bondjames wrote: »
    NicNac wrote: »
    What Bond really needed apart from a USA friendly actor, was an upgrade. A new, shinier, more contemporary look. GE gave us that.
    I'm inclined to agree and, perhaps controversially, feel the same way about now.

    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 ?

  • Posts: 3,333
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.
  • edited September 2017 Posts: 11,189
    I know that a lot of the publicity material was changed fairly late on following LTK's title change, but the enthusiasm for Bond seems fairly strong here. Maybe its a shallow thing, but I suspect that the harder tone of LTK just wasn't quite what audiences wanted at the time (Note Terry Wogan's boyish comments of "the girls, the casinos, the girls, the gadgets, the girls etc"). Wogan almost seems like Moore #2.

    Couple this with the fact that's it's just a rather tatty looking film. Not the spectacle it once was.

  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited September 2017 Posts: 23,883
    bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.
    @bondsum, in general adjusted inflation numbers are approximations. I agree that they're not perfect. The only way to truly gauge success is ticket sales.

    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.
  • bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.
    bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.

    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.
  • edited September 2017 Posts: 3,333
    The Wogan Show was an early evening family entertainment program, just after the 6 o'clock news, much like The One Show is today. It was filmed at the Shepherds Bush Theater. The tickets were free, and the audience would have clapped and cheered at anything, as they did with Esther Rantzen's That's Life, coincidentally also filmed at the Bush Theater. It's what audiences did back then, so I wouldn't necessarily use it as a genuine gauge of popularity. I'm sure @Getafix must have been seething watching this back in 89 on the telly, knowing he was too young to go and see it. And there, I'm afraid, lay the problem for LTK. Families just couldn't go and watch it together anymore.

    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.
  • edited September 2017 Posts: 3,333
    bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.
    bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.

    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.
    You liked my post so much you quoted me twice, bless. So what you're saying is is that Office Mojo's magically-adjusted figures are based on real estate, not on actual tickets sold? Or maybe it's potatoes and carrots? It still doesn't explain how certain movies had similar BO results in the early Seventies and yet they haven't had the same careful consideration and adjustments made to them today. Take Love Story for instance, a huge no.1 BO movie back in 1970, but according to present day stats it made less than half of what The Exorcist made 3 years later because the swing-o-meter that's presently used is factoring in inflationary shifts that weren't present in the early Seventies Movie Grosses that had these two movies practically neck-and-neck, and now we believe that Love Story didn't perform all that well. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the disparity wasn't as great back then as the modern figures would have you believe.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    There was more competition in the 80s as home video had entered the stage.
  • bondsum wrote: »
    bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.
    bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.

    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.
    You liked my post so much you quoted me twice, bless. So what you're saying is is that Office Mojo's magically-adjusted figures are based on real estate, not on actual tickets sold? Or maybe it's potatoes and carrots? It still doesn't explain how certain movies had similar BO results in the early Seventies and yet they haven't had the same careful consideration and adjustments made to them today. Take Love Story for instance, a huge no.1 BO movie back in 1970, but according to present day stats it made less than half of what The Exorcist made 3 years later because the swing-o-meter that's presently used is factoring in inflationary shifts that weren't present in the early Seventies Movie Grosses that had these two movies practically neck-and-neck, and now we believe that Love Story didn't perform all that well. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the disparity wasn't as great back then as the modern figures would have you believe.

    OK, I didn't get that. Thanks for the explanation.
  • NicNacNicNac Administrator, Moderator
    Posts: 7,582
    There was more competition in the 80s as home video had entered the stage.

    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.
  • edited September 2017 Posts: 628
    One reason why LTK performed so poorly at the box office had to do with all of the competition that summer (BATMAN, LETHAL WEAPON 2, GHOSTBUSTERS II, INDIANA JONES, etc.) If it had been been moved to the fall, I believe it would have had a much stronger performance -- maybe not GOLDENEYE numbers, but considerably stronger.

    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.
  • Posts: 11,189
    I do remember Brosnan himself being pretty big back in 1995 around the time GE came out. I was 9 odd but have a vague memory of one of my (female) teachers describing him as "the best since Sean Connery".
  • Posts: 15,106
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    I do remember Brosnan himself being pretty big back in 1995 around the time GE came out. I was 9 odd but have a vague memory of one of my (female) teachers describing him as "the best since Sean Connery".

    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.
  • This has been stated in the thread already but is always worth repeating: Brosnan was washed-up when he got the GE gig. MGM/UA needed an actor who could be hired cheaply to keep the costs of the movie down.

    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.
  • edited September 2017 Posts: 11,189
    I'm not disputing that Brosnan's career had stalled somewhat before GE. I'm just saying what I remember: most people liked him when GE came out and he was a big selling point ("you were expecting someone else").
  • Posts: 15,106
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    I'm not disputing that Brosnan's career had stalled somewhat before GE. I'm just saying what I remember: most people liked him when GE came out and he was a big selling point ("you were expecting someone else").

    He had built his whole pre-Bond career for that moment.
  • Posts: 11,189
    Ludovico wrote: »
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    I'm not disputing that Brosnan's career had stalled somewhat before GE. I'm just saying what I remember: most people liked him when GE came out and he was a big selling point ("you were expecting someone else").

    He had built his whole pre-Bond career for that moment.

    Exactly.

    "Action and espionage share a common bond"
  • Posts: 11,425
    Are there iTunes or streaming figures available for the Bond films to give an idea which are the most watched these days?
  • Posts: 3,333
    bondsum wrote: »
    bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.
    bondsum wrote: »
    But you're missing the point I'm trying to make, @bondjames. Tora Tora Tora used to appear in the top of the BO charts, now it's appears to have been reassessed and vanished. I mean, if I look at the figures for The Exorcist it now appears magically as $204,565,000 because of Office Mojo's magical adjusted-for-inflation calculator, however that actually works? Try and find the true unadjusted 1973 BO takings for The Exorcist and it's pretty darned near impossible. The original taking for The Exorcist was close to $40 million without all the adjustment smoke and razzmatazz. It all depends which figure I want to use to validate and make my point, and which yearly BO chart. None is more reliable than the one the year the movie came out, unadjusted of course.

    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.
    You liked my post so much you quoted me twice, bless. So what you're saying is is that Office Mojo's magically-adjusted figures are based on real estate, not on actual tickets sold? Or maybe it's potatoes and carrots? It still doesn't explain how certain movies had similar BO results in the early Seventies and yet they haven't had the same careful consideration and adjustments made to them today. Take Love Story for instance, a huge no.1 BO movie back in 1970, but according to present day stats it made less than half of what The Exorcist made 3 years later because the swing-o-meter that's presently used is factoring in inflationary shifts that weren't present in the early Seventies Movie Grosses that had these two movies practically neck-and-neck, and now we believe that Love Story didn't perform all that well. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the disparity wasn't as great back then as the modern figures would have you believe.

    OK, I didn't get that. Thanks for the explanation.

    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.
  • MajorDSmytheMajorDSmythe "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it."Moderator
    Posts: 13,978
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    I do remember Brosnan himself being pretty big back in 1995 around the time GE came out. I was 9 odd but have a vague memory of one of my (female) teachers describing him as "the best since Sean Connery".

    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.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    Posts: 23,883
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    I do remember Brosnan himself being pretty big back in 1995 around the time GE came out. I was 9 odd but have a vague memory of one of my (female) teachers describing him as "the best since Sean Connery".

    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.
    Yes, I recall he was floundering about in the 90's, and had the reputation as the man who could/should have been Bond. I think it was Mrs. Doubtfire that put him back on the map.
  • edited September 2017 Posts: 11,425
    I'd never heard of him before he was cast as Bond. Think his profile in the UK was very low, but obviously higher in the US.

    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.
  • Posts: 11,189
    It may have been lower than in the US but he wasn't unheard of. A former work colleague of mine signed a petition campaigning for him to get the role in the 80s.
  • Posts: 11,425
    In the UK? In the 80s? I would hazard a guess Dalton was as well known (probably better known) at that time in the UK than Brozza.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    I knew of both Dalton and Brosnan years before they were cast. Not so with Craig.
  • Posts: 11,425
    Had you not seen anything with Craig in? He's was reasonably well known.
  • Posts: 19,339
    At the time,i only knew Dalton from Flash Gordon,Craig was mainly Layer Cake.
  • Posts: 15,106
    bondjames wrote: »
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    I do remember Brosnan himself being pretty big back in 1995 around the time GE came out. I was 9 odd but have a vague memory of one of my (female) teachers describing him as "the best since Sean Connery".

    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.
    Yes, I recall he was floundering about in the 90's, and had the reputation as the man who could/should have been Bond. I think it was Mrs. Doubtfire that put him back on the map.

    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.
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