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Part of me thinks that it would have been a verbal bloodbath - although Dalton would have openly praised him in interviews.
Not sure how that makes me a loser but to each his own.
(isn't that a 'pointing above' emoticon?)
I saw it as an "L" over the head. My mistake.
oh god I heard everything now.
His Bond films have won awards, critical acclaim and box office. Oscars and Bafta's and critic's onside, I don't think any other Bond actor had that in their time. Casino Royale and Skyfall are probably the two best Bond films since Connery's Peak. Come on son, get you're head out of the clouds.
I liked Dalton but his Bond films are the least spoken about and seen cause they aren't really top tier Bond films simple as. The Dalton fan's would have you believe they are lost classic's, they are fine films but hugely flawed not cause of Dalton but of the time they were made. I liked The Living Daylights but damn Dalton is awkward when it comes to the romance and The third act is a total failure. LTK is Miami Vice-lite with James Bond thrown in, Dalton gives a fine performance but Davi is the man in that film. While Craig films are especially in the case of CR and Skyfall. Top tier Bond films, well made action films with heart. With a top notch supporting cast with great directors especially in the case of Sam Mendes. Since Craig has come aboard the Bond films feel like Events again during Dalton's reign it felt on crusie control really.
Nicely put.
These days character actors can become massive stars as leading actors, so I don't think someone like DC would have been a big star back in the 80's.
Character actors have always broken through and become leading stars. From the 30s, Charles Laughton, Spencer Tracey, Humphrey Bogart, all the way up to the 70s and Charles Bronson and Gene Hackman. Not a pretty boy amongst them. All had a certain charisma though.
Charisma and screen presence has always been essential for a top star whether they were handsome or not. No one has ever become a big star without this kind of attraction to pull the punters in. When you put a non charismatic support star into a lead role eg Vinnie Jones now, or someone like Franchot Tone back in the 30s, then the results are obvious.
Great actors? That's something else entirely. Many great stars have been limited as film actors (Arnie), or have been allowed to do what they please with occasionally worrying results (Al Pacino, Jonny Depp). You certainly have never needed to be a great actor to be a great star.
I think Craig is a great if at times overly earnest film actor. And he has charisma to spare.
That said, I don't put Dalton in the same league as Connery or Moore or probably even Craig for on-screen presence. But I think Dalton holds the screen pretty well. He was not and never became a huge star and there must I suppose be a reason for this. I think in a way Dalton suffered from lack of ambition. He did not want to become a big star - or thought perhaps that his actorly credentials would be devalued by embracing too much the persona and mindset of a 'star'. Perhaps that's just the man he is. You can see Craig struggling with similar issues, although I think he is now increasingly more comfortable with his star status. I do think perhaps with different directors and with a different attitude, Dalton could have really broken through, but we'll never know.
One other thing. The old school actors, particularly Moore, were actively groomed by the studios to make them into 'stars' - ways of talking, walking and generally behaving were all to an extent managed by the studios. From Dalton onwards, the actors have come from a totally different place. I personally don't think there are many screen actors around today who have quite the presence of the old school.
Mind you his torturer (scorpion girl) was at least good looking in a kink kind of way, and he was spared the torture of having to shave every day. silver linings.
To the question at hand. I think its been well answered by others. The public mood was more receptive to Craig's portrayal in 2006 than it was to Dalt's post-Moore depiction circa 1987-89.
Personally I am much more receptive to Dalton's Bond than Craig's. I was reasonably satisfied with TLD at the time. I didn't like CR at all though, other than bits and parts of it, but that's just me.
Craig hardly looks like a "movie star" but he does capture the screen more than Dalts IMO.
I sound like a broken record :p
Yes which makes it even more of a shame that ten minutes later it's all forgotten about when he's lording it up in a 5* hotel...
And of course the psychological damage can easily be undone by laying out your designer shirts on the bed.
I'm far from an expert on Hitchcock, but I think he would have kept an eye on the actors, rather than leave them to act. But I can't ever imagine EON hiring a director as big as Hitchcock, surely he would have wanted more control over the film than EON would have been willing to give up?
Yes I often wonder if that's why Spielberg was never offered the gig.
Brosnan is of a different generation, but his approach to acting as a job is very old school, I think.
"Dalton Failed"?
How about looking at it another way:
Why did Craig's movies fail when Dalton's succeeded?
Especially Skyfall. Yeah, let's go on about how much money it made, and meanwhile I'd like to point out that The Phantom Menace, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Titanic all made similar money. Also remember that DAD was a huge hit for EON. Big box office usually means a film isn't too good IMO.
CR was damn good. QOS was better. SF is adequate.
None of them are better than Dalton's two. As BOND movies, that is. As a giant generic action blockbuster designed to make one weep at the end, SF is fairly peerless.
End of counter-rant.
My opinion of SF has changed slightly over the weekend. I rewatched it and no longer think it's quite as awful as I originally thought. I found that the thematic elements came across much more strongly on the last watching and that this helped to sort of paper over a lot of the narrative and plotline cracks underneath - although I still don't think it's nearly as good as the hype makes out and agree that I'd still put it beneath CR and QoS.
One thing that I was even more struck by is the shift in character from CR and QoS though. It's not necessarily a 'fault' but the jump from QoS to SF is a bit stange, considering that CR and QoS were about a rooky and then suddenly in SF we have a washed up old has-been.
I wouldn't describe it as generic action blockbuster though.
And for me personally TLD remains a much more enjoyable Bond movie than all of Craig's outings. I can see that DC has huge popular support, but from my personal perspective he has less range - certainly as Bond - than Dalton did. DC''s Bond feels to me less 3-dimensional than Dalton's, but that's obviously a controversial view.
The two Dalts films make for a fine double bill. I also like to pair AVTAK with TLD. Makes for an interesting transition pair, moving from the Rog period into the late '80s Dalts interlude.
I explained in details what I meant by that. It has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the movies, or Dalton as an actor.
This seems like going over old ground, and just because Skyfall (and indeed QOS and Casino Royale) made a shit load of money, doesn't make it so. Bond today brings in more money than it ever did at the time of Dalton's tenure, so while Craig's Bond has been more commercially successful than the other, you take all those dollars away, and it still doesn't make for an all-round better James Bond actor. Granted, all of Craig's releases are vibrant, exciting (for the most part), and suspenseful, and with bigger budgets today and money to splash around, the finished product will be more of an extravaganza than past years, but don't tell me they all make for a better Bond with it
Craig was up against it from the moment he was annnounced for the part, with the issue of hair and eye color, not to mention Bond being more physiqued than usually seen, and while detractors will still raise issues (I learned to let it slide and give Craig a chance) the actor has done a great job of things, but once more, the biggest issue I have now it would appear is the 'indestructibility' side of things, that wasn't as evident with any previous Bond actor - certainly not with Tim Dalton
Both Craig and Dalton took over from Bond actors that provided a last awful movie release, and had stayed too long in the part, and while some may argue that either failed, I can't look beyond the fact that both of them were a success. Unfortunately Dalton never got to do another James Bond adventure after his second, but with those two releases, he is on a plateau with Connery only in '62 and '63 for true Fleming characteristics. Craig has come close, very close on occasion, to being up there with them in his hitherto adventures, but still can't quite place him in that elite category
I do hope that covers everything because not going back to it
Just some clarification, re. Glen and actors in LTK - in Cinefantastique magazine, Carey Lowell asserted that Glen seemed largely disinterested in delving into character histories, whereas Dalton provided her some feedback/discussion there. I haven't seen any interviews suggesting all the actors went to Dalton for guidance.
Robert Davi, in the same magazine, said he loved working with Glen, found him a keen collaborator, and underrated as a director of actors. These are sentiments Davi has repeated decades later (i.e. the sentiments are more sincere than just simple "press junket" endorsements). Could be that Lowell prefers delving into character, while Davi and Glen run more by instinct. Hard to say, unless there are some other words on record to clarify this.
In his autobiographical "For My Eyes Only", John Glen mentioned that he and Dalton did have "a bit of a slanging match" towards the end of principal photography of LTK. He was unsure whether it related to tiredness or just the accumulated tension of an arduous shoot. Dalton may have his own view on why the slanging match occurred, but to my knowledge, hasn't spoken on the issue. There's nothing to say Dalton was calling Glen out on his work with actors.
In the same book, Glen mentioned that Dalton stepped out of "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" around the time Glen stepped up as director. Dalton cited "creative differences", but he did not state with whom or how many these creative differences occurred. Generally, creative differences relate to actor-director disagreement, but CC:TD was a troubled production on many-varied levels (script issues, producer issues, financing issues), and Dalton may well have been on "creative" tenter hooks prior to Glen's arrival. (And Glen's stated concern was that Dalton might have felt "typecast" through appearing in another John Glen film so soon after TLD and LTK.)
Anyway, for all that, all I can say is that I loved how in LTK Glen really gave the scenes (and the relationship) between Bond and Sanchez the time of day. By today's standards, such scenes (sadly) could be classed as leisurely. But they have a great quiet tension (not hyped up by filmic bells and whistles), so much so that I'd argue that the climax of the film is not so much the tanker chase, as it is Sanchez's angry outburst at the factory following his discovery of Bond's true identity.
I know which one you mean from TLD. The kitchen fight. But which one are you talking about from LTK?
Either way that probably wasn't a reason.
The Living Daylights did do slightly better than A View to A Kill, and Bond had been on a steady decline at the box office since Moonraker, but Dalton still didn't do as well as the producers certainly hoped.