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Comments
He just wasn't buttering any parsnips for anyone except hardcore Fleming fans and no one cares what those people think.
Studio, public and producers (whatever they may say about wanting to carry on with Tim) were happy the change took place.
And the fact is Broz did save the series at its most fragile moment since 1974 when it looked like the public weren't going to take to Rog.
Had Tim come back in 95 would GE have been as massive a hit? I'm not so sure and a second film of underwhelming box office would have forced them into a change. Not sure it would make that big a difference to the overall timeline with Broz just stepping in a film later, although maybe then with just 3 films under his belt after DAD maybe they would have kept him on and just done a FYEO with CR?
What a terrifying thought! CR ruined by having Brozza in it.
We all dodged a bullet there.
LTK performed perfectly well commercially outside the U.S. - and stateside the marketing was catastrophically mishandled.
Look back now at US film reviews from the time and it's also surprising how well received LTK was critically too. Dalton was winning plaudits for his performance and the grittier take on Bond.
There's a lazy assumption now that people at the time 'didn't get' Dalton's take on Bond, but the picture is much more nuanced than that. As you say after Gun it wasn't clear that audiences were going to accept Rog, but then Spy changed everything.
Six years would have been a long gap though and you can see why they either needed Dalton to commit to three or move on.
I am just grateful we got those two Dalton films and were spared having Brosnan in the role from 87 to 2002.
Although a commercial success, Brosnan was artisitically the worst thing that ever happened to Bond. The series went into creative limbo during his tenure and far from being an aberration DAD was the logical conclusion to the Brosnan era.
Agree with all your points. But I remember watch GE in 95 (at the age 13) and thinking that LTK was a much better film. I also remember thinking PB was 'ok' but not a patch on Connery or Moore.
and gave us the literary Bond on screen. Similar to Craig, who admittedly looks
nothing like how Fleming described 007. Brings the character, his Brutality,
inner demons, his sense of duty, from the page to screen.
I can only hope the "next fella" will be as good, or better ? =D>
Well said. That's why I am in support of Hiddleston.....for all these reasons......but adding back the snobbery too.
swagger, arrogance , physicality yet humanity of Bond.
Bring back Dalton!
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/licence-to-kill-1989
Dalton 'can have the role as long as he enjoys it'.
'Licence to Kill is one of the best recent Bonds'.
Hardly suggests US critics saw it as the turkey that many now claim it was seen as being at the time.
There are plenty more reviews like this from the time.
Regarding Dalton not being accepted I think this case is unproven. Had Rog quit after two, many would say the same of him. But Spy totally changed perceptions and he never looked back after that.
A third Dalton with a more lighthearted story and who knows what the reaction might have been. I have no doubt GE would have been much improved by Dalton's presence.
I don't think the Fleming direction helped either. At the time, after 12 yrs of increasing humour, the public's perception of filmic Bond was set, and Dalton's pivot to the book character seemed too jarring for a lot of people to accept.
If he had been better with the humour (and if there had been more of it) this might have helped, but chaps like Willis, Gibson & Arnie were owning that space post-Moore (and ironically they were channeling Moore humour in their biggest entries).
In retrospect, LTK was one of the better action films of the 80's. Or at least one of the most underrated.
Yes absolutely but the fact that Brosnan was the presumptive heir didn't help. Had Brosnan done TLD he would have at least been first choice and with a relatively popular tv series to back him up. By the time GE came out they had already sold Brosnan as Bond.
So the basis for saying Dalton wasn't accepted is one under-performing movie in one (admitedly crucial) market, where the film was barely promoted by the studio.
These days the relative importance of the U.S. market is much less, which is one reason EON has the freedom to make more imaginative casting decisions with the lead, such as Craig.
I agree that if you ask the average Joe their attitude towards Dalton would be negative, but that's something that came later and was not evident at the time. The same is true of Laz, despite him starring in one of the best films.
In the late 80s Dalton was establishing himself, just as Rog had done before him. He was getting good reviews and his films performed well in every market apart from LTK in the U.S. Had he done three more, that would have just come to be seen as a blip, as we now look at the relatively poor performance of TMWTGG - a part of the cyclical waxing and waning of Bond's performance at the box office.
I agree, but it also leads to pandering, like Bond jetting off to Shanghai.
The US market is still much more critical (marketing and brand wise) than people give it credit for. I'm 99% sure that the SP story will not continue (going on the record here now) and that is because of how poorly the film did in the US.
Indeed, but what we got was shameless pandering.
That's what I've argued in the past too. Moore was popular with both the British and the Americans.
No, because they either use the location well, or it just makes sense to the story. Bond randomly jetting off to China only to return virtually the next day is a different story.
They needed to forge a new direction definitely post-Moore. They had the right idea, but I believe Dalton's characterization was the wrong one for the times and perhaps he was the wrong man too. That wasn't what people wanted of Bond at the time. If he had been Bond in 2006, I think he would have done very well.