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Comments
You think yours was somehow less emphatic?
Well, you're certainly free to think so.
:P
:-\"
Again, Dalton was not going for a Bond like Connery and Moore. In fact, Mr Broccoli said in his book that Dalton wanted to be respected for conveying Ian Fleming's Bond. He was his own man. Moore was nothing like Connery either.
LTK was violent but then again CR was not exactly Mary Poppins either. Did you see the bottomless chair scene? That was very sinister. And both LTK as well as CR are true to the violence in the books.
Both Bonds show that his life is on the edge and any stupidity leads to a nasty death. This is why Craig and Dalton's Bonds are brutal men. Kill or be killed attitudes.
Check your math, mate. I think you failed to carry over a seven somewhere. :-P
When it comes to giving the character different layers, Dalton got there first. So much so that audiences could not handle it. As for Bond's cool, the Roger Moore era overdosed on the character being cool as in suave and charming. So the Dalton era had to address his roots as in those of the Fleming books.
I will agree though that Dalton was hampered in his ambition and the legal battle of 6 years caused the franchise to hit the hand brakes on development and give us a safer traditionalised take for the 90's.
Craig has elements that are not exclusively Fleming. His Bond is the ice coldest of the 6 and even in the books he was not that cold. But it works for the modern age.
Craig has elements of a man who is in the special forces like the SAS.
It took the franchise 44 years of trial and error before they could even attempt to usher in the Craig style we have now. And ironically it came from seeing what a franchise like Bourne was doing that Bond was not. Not two ways about it.
Had Craig got the same scripts as Dalton, his approach would be out of place. But for his time, Dalton was way ahead. Craig has the benefit of looking back and seeing what experiments worked in the past best. Craig's era was very well calculated no matter what anyone says.
The thing that always impressed me about him was his insistence on being faithful to the character's literary roots. As a result, he was the first - and so far, IMHO, only - actor to really convey Bond's complex, often contradictory, nature.
Daniel Craig has come mighty close to matching Dalton's portrayal - not surprising, when you consider that he too insisted on re-reading Fleming before playing the role.
But, at the end of the day, Timothy Dalton IS - and always will be - Ian Fleming's James Bond.
I like all the actors, but Tim's the closest.
Licence to kill confirm my first impression. I thought he would be Bond for at least a decade. And then...oh well...
Casino Royale hit me like a garbage truck would. Even if Craig's Bond was in some way out of character (killing without trying to get information first for instance), he was totally awesome! When Bond entered the embassy going after Mollaka, wrecking havok all the way, right there I thought "this is one of the best movie sequence I had ever seen".
The shower scene, the defibrilator scene, those were all very powerful stuff for me.
I went to see Living Daylights and Casino Royale 4 times each in theater. Two of the best 10 movies I've ever seen.
So, don't ask me to choose between Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig. I love them both.
Plus he's made the Bond Franchise Mega again after years of disappointment. Dalton i will praise for wanting to turn thins a bit more dark but i don't think personally think he came Close to Any of Craig's Bond films but at least he tried unlike Moore and Brosnan.
Craig does have the most badass scenes that ever been yet, he's such a stuntman in addition to being an actor. He has a cold (if not frozen) act, very pro (as if he caught both best parts of Connery and Dalton) secret agent style. But he definitely lacks of style, class to play 007 as we knew him, and his wit isn't developped enough. Furthermore, he seems not to care of that part. It's pity, until QoS. Lastly, he did not brought his own "Bond identity" as his predecessors (except Lazenby, who struggled but did stunts well) which it doesn't appear too obvious in the good "Skyfall". His best film, indeed.
800 million would disagree with you ;)
It's funny. I've never read Fleming and yet I just appreciated the Dalts right from the start. But for me there is not this huge gulf between Connery, Moore and Dalton that others see. Obviously he was different, but still in the same overall tradition. I think it was the Cubby magic that just made all the films (almost all) up to LTK 'feel' like proper Bond movies. It all went to pot with GE and (IMO) has never fully recovered, although DC was a big step forward.
I agree @Getafix There was no huge gulf between Connery, Moore and Dalton. All three looking different will feel different naturally like you said. You are right about the Cubby magic too.
With Cubby's passing the Bond films became different entities. I assume that is down to studio pressure as well. Bond formula in John Glen's book is not the whole answer to what makes a Bond film. I think the older films had a style that set them apart from other movies.
Nowadays, you see elements of other films in the Bond series than ever before. But back when I saw TLD, it still had a style that could only be Bond and nothing else.