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Nice article in Vue Weekly about Dalton’s tenure as Bond, with a great opening line:
Don’t believe me; Daniel Craig said it too: “Timothy Dalton was great in the part.”
haha - wow - time for a cold shower ;)
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/08/entertainment/la-et-mn-skyfall-timothy-dalton-daniel-craig-bond-20121108
I'll have to revisit LTK again soon. It has been too long.
But they never found their public the way Craig's movies did (regardless of what I personally think of LTK, which I don't like as much as people did). Heck, much lesser Bond movies during the Brosnan era found their public, just for this I'd be green with envy and rather bitter.
Back on the OP, it would be interesting to find extensive comments of Craig about Dalton's tenure, but I doubt any Bond actor can say anything else than the usual clichés about the others: "he was great in the role, he brought something different", etc. I think only Brosnan may have said sometimes something akin to inelegance, and even that is debatable.
I think Dan is telling the truth when he compliments Tim and Sean. And Brosnan is wonderfully honest about how his Bond experience was, and it is quite entertaining to read his many comments on it. Looking at some of the things that happens in his films, you wonder if he knows how bad that line or that scene was, and boy did he.
Though it was well past the time for a new Bond when Dalton came on board, much of the public was still hung up on Moore as Bond and the antics of Q and the rest of the Carry On Bond comedy.
Dalton being rather true to the character, a bit more gritty and such, even with Q's silliness still, didn't hit the general public's sweet spot.
The same might have been said with Craig too except that after Die Another Day two things were in play... It was so bad (the last two-thirds anyway) that the public was ready for a new Bond - stars get credit (right or wrong) for the movie all the time - and it was four years between films... The public was gagging for anything Bond.
Having seen both The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill this week in the cinema, along with the Moore films, I can say they stand the test of time a lot better than most.
My only beef with them is that they didn't go far enough with cutting out the gags and Q. Dalton was an excellent Bond. With better writers and a bit better cinematography, they may have been masterpieces for some.
I think it also would've been a bit unfair to just fire Desmond after 25 years because they wanted a change of direction.
I regard the Daltons as classics. LTK and TLD are 4 and 6 in my current rankings; SF and CR are 3 and 5.
there's a part of me that thinks craig and the producers/directors of CR/SF knew full well how full on dalton/fleming they wanted to go - but wouldn't dare be too implicit with the media about it coz of the poison chalice it might create...
I wished many times during this cinema Bondathon that I'd seen all of them first on the big screen. It makes a world of difference.
As for the cinematography in Dalton's films .... I just found the colours lacking along with some of the composition. Maybe I expected too much but I went in thinking that TLD would look like Lawrence of Arabia and LTK would look like Miami Vice... Colours!! I want colours and scenes that standing alone as a still would make fantastic art.
They certainly are not worst of the bunch and it wasn't bad enough to whinge about it... just that with it being a bit better - given their locations - it could have been amazing... to me. ;)
Exactly. And that's where the whole outcry in favor of Brosnan came from. That Remington Steele guy seemed like the perfect actor to pick up where Rog left off and Carry On (sorry) in the same vein.
This gets to something I've been arguing for years. Roger Moore really did succeed in supplanting Sean Connery as the definitive James Bond. By the mid-80s, and ever since, when most people thought of Bond, they imagined a Moore-type character.
Rog cast a long shadow, which hindered Tim but helped Pierce, and from which the series only now might be emerging due to Dan's recent success.
Agreed 1000% with all my Dalton man love that he and his era are criminally underrated and he never got a truly fair shake following Moore and being the second choice to Brosnan in both EON's and the public's perception. Tim was the true successor to Connery in many ways, whereas Pierce was the successor to Moore. I always wondered to myself if Pierce would have been given the serious films he claims he wanted during his tenure, or if he would have been a Moore add-on. @00Ed makes some great points above about how Tim was hindered by Moore's legacy, but I wouldn't say Moore was the "definitive" Bond by any means. Connery still had a loyal following of original, classic fans like myself who never forgot him. We thought Moore was good and he was our choice to replace Connery. But let me be clear on this. We never thought Moore was better. But what Roger did do was recognize he had to be his own Bond, and make his own generation of fans, and he kept us as fans while he was at it so of course he was quite successful as a result. But not always. He had gotten tiresome for the older fans by 1979, that film was not one in keeping with Bond, but FYEO was like manna from heaven and so he was redeemed for another film. Then we get to AVTAK, where Rog was still living on good will after recovering from the MR-like schlock of the first half of OP, but our perception was that a change needed to be made after OP. Dalton was like FYEO for us- a great, big breath of fresh air and Connery fans rejoiced that the kind of Bond we grew up on was back. He was a Bond for the real world. Just like our current Bond. Since both Craig and Dalton were terrific actors with terrific debut films, it does make me wonder why Craig was able to succeed where Dalton didn't- was it because DAD was so awful? Or was it because maybe Brosnan wasn't as popular as Moore?
I never thought about it like that. It sounds just like Lazenby though. He failed to "wow" too, but his film is considered a classic. Although we do know who the real actor is between those two.
But sometimes that is not enough. But I hope, he reads this forum, where many discover him new and appreciate his work.
I do believe that DC has had a better opportunity to make his mark with the whole reboot thing whereas Timbo was still within the same framework as the old fims.
That's a very good point you've made. Personally, I think Craig showed us last year that he could indeed have jumped in and did a regular type of portrayal quite well, as I felt Dalton did, and both differed greatly from the Moore and Brosnan portrayals at the time their debut films happened. I do have to wonder if the reboot and all the negative publicity was a blessing for Craig, more so the reboot, as Dalton also faced similar negative publicity as well although not nearly to the depth Craig did. Only Lazenby faced an equal amount of initial fan and critical derision, I can only imagine what it would have been like with the internet and all the many more media outlets in play nowadays. Could we have seen a "George Lazenby Is Not Bond" website created by Connery hardcores back then? I'd bet on it.
Yes the whole tabloid rumours that circulated during the making of OHMSS, "Diana Rigg eats garlic before love scene with Lazenby" are very much akin to the whole "Daniel Craig cannot use a manual geabox" or "Daniel Craig has his teeth knocked out".
Good to see the British press hasn't really changed over the last 40 odd years!