It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
I like the idea of Michelle Pfeiffer. She hadn't entered my thoughts, but she would have been perfect...and might have done it--perfect point in her career.
But let's not stop at Dalton. What if Pierce started with AVTAK?
I feel similarly. AVTAK has always been one of my favorites. It’s both a Moore film and a Glen film through and through, yet has an identity all its own, and while it’s fun to imagine Dalton or a young Brosnan as the lead, some of the film’s charm and dare I say “soul” would be lost with the removal of Moore’s gentlemanly older Bond. There is little in the film that needs to be taken out to improve the whole. I’d readily take my shears to the bumbling San Francisco cop and ensuing fire truck chase and maybe have Bond outwit the myriad thugs by means other than fisticuffs so they wouldn’t all have to be quite so aged and dusty looking, but that’s about it. The cast is terrific as is. Some interesting replacements for Tanya Roberts have been mentioned here, and I’d go along with Pfeiffer or whomever else. But Walken, Jones, Macnee—can’t think of better replacements for any of them. Sure, Bowie would have been incredible, Sting interesting, but either of them better than Walken in this? Not a chance. Then you’ve got Paris and San Francisco put beautifully on display, one of John Barry’s most sublime scores ever, and a masterpiece of a title song by Duran Duran. Perhaps things could have been pushed further for heightened effect: the relationship between Zorin and May Day, the interference of the KGB tracking Zorin down, the threat posed to the Bay Area by Zorin’s scheme beyond the display Bond and Stacey discover. But these are all additions rather than subtractions—or rather elaborations. What exists is at its worst solid and at its best an indispensable chapter in Bond history.
That's fun, although she'd have been even younger than Roberts and I'm not sure that would work well with Roger! Plus two pop stars in the same film might be a bit much :)
Yeah I agree there. I think better set pieces could really help (I was watching it in the background last night and I'd forgotten about the fight with the 'baboons' in Stacey's house- there's no real concept to it and feels like it went into the script as a placeholder until they could think of something better, as a few of the other sequences do too) and maybe the earthquake theme could have been expanded a bit (maybe have Zorin set off a test quake somewhere and Bond gets caught up in it), plus, yes I'm afraid I'd probably swap Stacey out too, but otherwise I actually really like it! :)
Well that's what I said a few posts ago: Dalton would have really struggled with this one and in my mind he'd have been blown off the screen by Jones and Walken, but Brosnan would have managed this one just fine. He'd have probably been a bit... enthusiastic with some of the comedy stuff as St. John Smythe but at least he could have handled it.
But I still prefer Roger in it.
Good point about the KGB: why does Pola disappear? Just because Bond takes her tape it doesn't mean her investigation stops: he barely learns anything from the tape anyway. It might have been quite fun if she'd popped up at the mine at the end, maybe getting killed by Mayday or something.
That sounds interesting, although to me that would give Bond one more motive to terminate May Day. Remember the knife throwing twins? "That's for 009!" Necros begged in vain for mercy because Bond was presumably thinking about Saunders's murder. Not to mention Licence To Kill as a whole.
I have to wonder how many victims it would take to push Bond over the edge with May Day.
Sorry. I'm having difficulty selecting quotes and I can't seem to delete my posts and try again from scratch.
Yes it's a good point, I just don't think he's ever let it compromise a mission: we've always seen him getting revenge as a by-product of the mission.
Yes it can be very complex on here with all of the multiple quotes; I have trouble too. It's a nightmare on a phone! :)
I see Jones as a much better henchman/foil for Walken than Jordan who, like Lonsdale, is underrated in the canon.
Couldn't May Day have been part of the firetruck chase (or some other action scene here, or at the mine)? This chase is dumb as it is, and could have been excised in its entirety.
It's a good idea. I think you need a big action scene there, but as you say the firetruck scene doesn't really work. There's a poster concept that depicts it involving helicopters and all sorts and I wonder if it did need to be bigger or something.
That's strange to consider. Assuming the script for Gobinda's role was 100% exactly what they had originally written for Jones, it certainly feels weird to picture her in the climax involving the plane.
Kamal: Go out and get him.
Jones: (nervously) Out there?
Kamal: GO!
Jones: (reluctantly) Yes excellency.
Then we all know what happens next, but Jones meeting Gobinda's fate feels so very out of place. Maybe I'm just so used to the character we did get for Octopussy's henchman, but I think it's probably the part of momentary fear at being ordered to go climbing over the plane that does it for me. That feels so unworthy of Jones's May Day character. She would not hesitate to fight in any reckless situation no matter how dangerous.
Madonna can’t act :D
Yeah, considering they pretty much knew at the time, it would have been nice to have had a nod or two towards Bond nearing the end of the road.
I'd forgotten about this thread- it's a fun one! I love this film, despite it not being the best one.
I know what you mean. Something about those shots of Bond hanging onto the rope over San Francisco; the aging hero with the odds up against him, always puts a lump in my throat. Same thing with the music when he rescues Stacey from city hall. Everything about that says it's Roger's last hurrah to me, even if the scene itself is pretty over the top.
I don't think it was intentional, but it's hard for me not to see it in that context, and I think it's to the film's benefit.
Quite agree. I always have a good time with it, even if objectively, there's quite a bit wrong with it.
The second half has some rather dark moments that would play to Dalton's more obvious strengths anyway.
Great point @j_w_pepper ... You're so correct!
GE was PC and people knew that at the time.
Very true! Don’t forget all of the ‘has James Bond met his match?’ posters- we’d never be hearing the end of the whining about having a black woman in it.
Yes it would have been nice to bookend Roger’s run with a reappearance of David Hedison. Although I guess that would mean perhaps repeating the Tibbett dynamic slightly, and I wouldn’t want to lose him! I think it could probably work though.
LOL I love it.
For me, I'm just used that everytime Bond goes to America, there's Felix Leiter to welcome him and act as his contact.
This film is literally where Bond goes to America, kinda like Diamonds Are Forever, but in this film, it's lacking because Felix Leiter completes that presence, I'm really missing him in this film, always makes me think where was Felix at the time Bond arrived there.
Instead, we're given by a sacrificial lamb and a forgettable character in Chuck Lee.
Then when in a film like The Living Daylights where he's not totally necessary, the Producers decided to put him there.
I don't care who played him, the important was to make the Felix Leiter appear everytime Bond goes to America 😁.
Completely agree. The only reference I can recall addressing this was in the Starlog AVTAK magazine that came out at the time, someone said since Bond is in America they usually use Leiter but since this AVTAK has a Chinatown it would be more appropriate to have an Asian actor as a contact. That's a pretty flimsy excuse.
Thanks for the info, but yes, a flimsy excuse indeed, a hollow reasoning.
Ugh! So woke!! Babs should be replaced immediately!! Cubby wouldn’t be so wo-
Oh…