Timothy Dalton was a better Bond

[Valeri Petrofsky]

Now let me get this straight, I really like Pierce Brosnan. I've watched and rewatched every episode of remington steele, have watched The Fourth Protocol a million times and even found the good in Tafin. I had (when I was a younger) a scrap book of Brosnan cuttings, and taped every promotion tv appearence he made when Goldeneye came out. However, I honesty don't think he was the best Bond, or even my second favorite Bond. For me, none of Brosnan's bonds can match up to what Connery had, and I actually think that out of all the actors who played Bond, the best and most realistic was Timothy Dalton. I watched Licence to Kill tonight, and Dalton was so good, so real and tough. My dad said a telling thing and that was, the difference between Moore, Brosnan and Dalton is that Dalton will headbut someone and not give a shit. I'd rather have him in my corner". Well that's my dad for you, but I agree that although Brosnan looked good in the suit, and had a lot of charm, but to me wasn't Bond. Bond is tough, and to me Brosnan can never be tough, it just doesn't work. In his early days he looked too pretty, and now he just doesn't convince,he seems to nice a guy. And when he does get tough he does that silly squint, you know the one, where his eyes become a couple of slits. Brosnan in Remington Steele was great because he is a very handsome man who doesn't act like he knows it (like Cary Grant) However as Bond he walks around acting like he knows it and so in my mind loses the appeal. With Dalton he was a tough *astard who looked good in a suit, and that to me was Bond. And I also think thatLicence to Kill was a much better film than any of the following films in the Bond series. The villian played by Robert Davi was fantastic, certainluy beter than the limp villains like Sean Bean and Robert Carlyle (the worst ever!) Now I'm sure you are all thinking he doesn't like Brosnan at all, well it's not true I do!> I saw After the Sunset with my dad on Sunday night and loved it! Loved it because Brosnan was playing an extension of Remington Steele the character he was born to play, funny but not tough.

Don't hate me!

Valeri Petrofsky

[Ace]

What's to say but I completely disagree. Dalton while able to be a charismatic actor, witness The Rocketeer is an absolute charmless dead fish as James Bond. He comes off as a really annoyed grumpy civil servant. He has no style, no charm, no sex appeal, no verve as Bond and License To Kill is a piss poor 1980's revenge flick, poorly written and directed (like a bad TV movie) without style or any real subtance. Davi was OK as a thug drug dealer, but was like any other cookie cutter one out of Miami Vice. Menancing in a mundane and cheap way, but fitting for the rest of this film that tried to play it dark and yet had Q following Bond around comically and ending it all with Felix flirting with nurses after his wife had just been raped and murdered. Not to mention the winking fish and the really poor for the most part supporting cast. And Dalton does nothing to make it rise above it's craptitude. In LTK his Bond is basically indisinguishable from any run of the mill surly 80's action guy. While not a huge fan of The Living Daylights either, it's a mess of a storyline and the villains and lead actress are poor, at least the film had some visual style and Dalton didn't always look like he needed malox.

If you can find Brosnan believably deadly as Petrovky where he tends to pout more often than not how you could not find him convincing as Bond is mind boggling.

Steele was far more a self regarding peacock than his Bond ever was. He knows he's the most handsome thing on the planet and that's played up often to comic effect. It's part of the gag, and PB often played goofy to undercut it.

Bond on the other hand just is. He's far more confident and matter of fact about it. The added sexual appeal and attractiveness comes probably not only from the character but Brosnan's own increasing maturity and confidence. It's something that he pretty much brings to all his roles now though from Bond to Thomas Crown to Tailor of Panama to After The Sunset.

As for being convincingly ruthless and hard, if that look at the beginning of TWINE in the Banker's office doesn't convince you then nothing I can say will. He's brilliant at showing the hard determined professional ruthlessness of the man under the handsome intelligent elegant exterior. He's an iron fist in a velvet glove and he's done that combination better than any Bond for my money and the only one that comes close to handling both those extreme facets of Bond is Connery. Moore was all velvet, Lazenby was all fist (not necessarily iron) and Dalton all constipated seriousness.

If you want to see Brosnan convincingly mean with almost all the niceities and veneer stripped off then watch The Tailor of Panama. He's completely brilliant and convincing as a vile bastard extraordinaire.

Ace

[Valeri Petrofsky]

Sorry but I just don't buy it. Brosnan never once convinced me of his toughness in the Bond series, and no, not in the bankers office either. He needs to have a coldness from within his eyes and he does not have that. To say Licence to Kill was rubbish blows my mind. The story was the most realistic that had ever been filmed, Dalton was fantastic as the revenge seeking spy and the involvment of Q was fantastic, instead of his normal walk on part in the later films. Brosnan playing Steele was excellent and yes he did play goofy to underplay his looks, and yeah that worked. But in my own opinion it didn't convince as Bond, Dalton looked like he had been drawn from the pen of Fleming, Brosnan looked like he had been drawn from the pen of anyone designing the latest clothes model. Brosnan also looked like he had never been in a fight, let alone saved the world a million times. In the later films he bought a depth to the role, and good on him for that, but he still did not have the edge to him that Dalton had. Now this is just a personal view and I know that hard core Brosnan fans will scream "ook how much money Brosnan's films did", and I agree they did fantastic. But Licence to Kill was released without any publicity and right up against Lethal Weapon 2. Hardly going to have much of a chance is it? This is despite the fact that Licence to Kill tested better with preview audiences than ANY Bond film before or since. And yeah, I thought Brosnan was great in The Fourth Protocol, but that was that and Bond is Bond. And I prefere the Dalton Bond to the Brosnan bond who is ordered to sleep with a woman (pump her for infomation) in Tomorrow Never Dies. Turning M into a pimp was a new low for Bond, and that's all M was in that film. And as for Moneypenny snogging Bond in Die Another Day, well, what can I say?, because I couldn't quite hear what they were saying for all the noise that Ian Fleming was making spinning in his grave

Valeri Petrofsky

[sparklingblue]

I think you are doing what countless other people do, you judge PB by his looks. I think if people were willing to look past that, they'd see an incredibly talented and intelligent actor.

Pierce is not responsible for the material they give him to work with. He did a great job as Bond. And the scene from DAD with Moneypenny was just incredibly funny and imho also an hommage to the innuendo that has been going on between the two characters in every movie.

Ace, I'm with you on all you said about Pierce's Bond.

[Ace]

Box Office has nothing to do with the quality of films and why I enjoy them. IMO, Brosnan's Bond films are better, Brosnan as Bond is better. Box Office just shows more of the audience agrees with me than you.

But if you're going to bring up B.O. on License to Kill, let's. It did have a marketing budget, more than the films before it. Whether anyone could market that film well or did is another question. It did not open directly against Lethal Weapon 2 or any other big film, it opened in the same summer, that's it. It's not like it directly opened against say The Titanic, like TND. It opened against no other big film and it opened in fourth place and it opened with just a few dollars less per screen than did TLD. It made much less because the audience as a whole didn't like it and word of mouth and repeat business wasn't good, just like it opened bigger in the UK than TLD and then made significantly less.

Turning M into a pimp was a new low in Bond eh? So for all your going on about Fleming, have you ever read the books? Or have you even watched the Connery films? In the novel, From Russia With Love, M orders Bond to play Tanya's so called fantasy man and pump information out of her, while he's on the plane he ruminates about how his job makes him a prostitute.

As for making noise during the DAD Moneypenny scenes, I'm more likely to bet there'd have been gagging at the putridness that was "Miss-come listen to my Barry Manilow records-Moneypenny", during the Dalton years. But then since Moneypenny was such a minor character in Fleming's books which instead emphasized his relationship with Bond's own secretary, I doubt he cared much.

Ace

[Ms Holt]

I agree, found this on the net

Defending Timothy Dalton
Aug 19, 2004
By: Kareem O'Keefe


The following is two portions of text extracted from different parts of an early draft of The Living Daylights:



BOND places frame on lines, and rides over and across road on the telephone lines.
Police men looking up, astonished, to see BOND riding a “magic carpet.”

Landing in front of BOND. GORILLA grabs him, pulls him close, then reaches out with a huge hand and plucks BOND'S eyelash.



A magic carpet ride, a gorilla who plucks out eye lashes, a pair of divorcees and an aging Roger Moore. This is what The Living Daylights would have turned out like if Roger Moore did it…

Some Bond fans and a majority of the general public express the same view: Timothy Dalton was terrible as James Bond. They think that his characterization was too serious and too real. Dalton is known as an actor who nearly destroyed the James Bond franchise. Here is my chance to defend him and the two Bond films he starred in, The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill.

After Roger Moore’s seventh and last appearance in the Bond film A View To A Kill, producer Albert R. Broccoli started looking for a new actor to play James Bond. Choices ranged from future Bond actor Pierce Brosnan to New Zealand actor Sam Neil, but the role ultimately went to actor Timothy Dalton.

Dalton had been approached with the Bond role years before. In 1968, Albert Broccoli asked Dalton if he would be interested in taking over the role of James Bond after Sean Connery, but Dalton later said, "I considered myself too young and Connery too good." Dalton wanted a bit of variety so he alternated between film, television and stage productions. He was offered the role again in the 1970’s but turned it down because of film commitments.

Dalton's first big break as James Bond occurred when Pierce Brosnan was kept from taking on the role due to a contract starring in the television series Remington Steele. Dalton tested out for his role as 007 and was offered the part. After he re-watched all of the previous films and re-read all of Fleming's books, it was officially announced on August 7, 1986, that Dalton was the new James Bond.

Production of The Living Daylights began in September of that year, and a week later Dalton was introduced as James Bond at a big press conference in Vienna. Dalton took his role of 007 very seriously, and brought back the more realistic character of Bond from the early Fleming books. In the production of Licence to Kill, writers made several adaptations to the script to suit his style of acting.



Dalton, better known as a Shakespearian actor of repute, brought his Bond characterization to a whole new dimension. He brought a dangerous edge to the character which was not seen in any of the previous films. He played the role with a seriousness that was, at times, scary.

The Roger Moore Bond films had moments that did not benefit the film series. Fans of the Ian Fleming novels were disappointed with what Roger Moore was doing to the character. Every Moore film had something that made Fleming fans cringe with embarrassment. Bond snow boarding to the beach boys, Bond as Tarzan in Octopussy, the Jaws and Dolly relationship in Moonraker and the car jump with whistle in The Man With The Golden Gun are all perfect examples of moments that bring embarrassment to the series.

This was the time came for a change. That change was with Timothy Dalton. Roger Moore was out of date. His Bond characterization was past its prime and he was too old to play the part. If Roger Moore hadn’t of retired with A View To A Kill, it it was possible that he was going to star in The Living Daylights. A script was already tailored for him but he turned down the role because he felt he was too old to play the part. An early draft of The Living Daylights featured stunts and gimmicks which you would only see in a Roger Moore Bond film. Imagine if Moore continued as 007. The Living Daylights, which (in my opinion) is probably one of the best James Bond films ever, may have ended up like Moonraker.

Licence To Kill had Dalton playing Bond like he was in the Ian Fleming novels. He was human and felt emotion. This was not received well by the public though. They were use to the fantasy adventure, the exotic locations, the trademark Bond humour and a film that promised you non-stop action. Licence To Kill was an adventure, but not a fantasy. The plot was taken right out of news headlines. The locations were not exotic and the humour was dark. The film was the first in the series to feature a PG-13 rating for the violence that it featured. The Dalton Bond films were gritty and realistic, something that the audiences of that time were not ready for.

After the box-office failure of Licence To Kill and the 6 year layoff of the Bond series, Dalton announced in 1994 that he woouldn't reprise the role of Bond.

Before you judge Timothy Dalton on his Bond films and his performance. Think what the films would have been like if Roger Moore continued the role.

The truth is, Timothy Dalton was too good to be a successful James Bond.

[Ace]

Who said Dalton wasn't better than Moore? Frankly for me it's a toss up depending on the film or even a section of the films. But to me, FYEO and TSWLM are leagues better than any Bond film starring Dalton, while TLD is pretty much better or as good as any of the rest of Moore. TMWTGG and LTK are equally horrific and borderline unwatchable and not just a little of that goes down to the lead performances which I find grating,. unnuanced, charmless and off putting.

And a dangerous edge not seen in any previous Bond films? So much for Connery then, eh? And that stuff about Dalton being "too good" to be a successful Bond... puhlease.

That script for TLD was a generic one penned for a new Bond and was written after Moore left the role. So much of scripts never make it to the screen, even stuff filmed doesn't always make the cut. But if we're talking of horrific scripts and concepts get a gander at what have been the proposed 3rd Dalton film, robots with Whoopi Goldberg as the villain.

And please, if you're going to continue to post do it under one name. I can tell by IP addresses who is the same individual. Not logging in doesn't change that ability. Logging in also gives you the ability to edit and delete your own posts which is a benefit to the poster.

Ace

[Ms Holt]

As I said, Valeri and I have the same computer he is my brother, I am his sister. I would appreciate itif you didn't delete a post just because it doesn't agree with you. I bet you had that power in real life rather than this controlled one.

Ms Holt

[Deddy]

What?

[Ace]

Guest-Ms said:

As I said, Valeri and I have the same computer he is my brother, I am his sister. I would appreciate itif you didn't delete a post just because it doesn't agree with you. I bet you had that power in real life rather than this controlled one.

Ms Holt

The post was deleted because it was rude and insulting. Since you don't like the culture of this board, it is best you find another.

Ace

[IcyCalm]

Petrofsky, I see you are a man who lives dangerously. To initiate this thread in a forum comprised of mostly PB-crazed females – you have to be some kind of thrill seeker. I won’t challenge your arguments for Dalton’s Bond since you have already convinced me of your appreciation for Pierce’s work. (Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here at all.)

May I join the fray with my own opinion about Dalton? I’ll be democratic, however, and cover all 5 Bonds; specifically, my VERY FIRST impressions of each of them (sure hope I won’t regret this).

CONNERY: Like Pierce, I was a preteen when I saw my first Bond film (Goldfinger). The movie was great but I was turned off by the lead actor on first sight. Here’s why: world culture was undergoing a major upset, brought on by The Beatles and all things British - a HUGE and welcome improvement! However, there was Sean with his short, greasy hair wearing un-cool clothes and a Boris Baddenov hat. This was 1965, not 1956 – did somebody transpose these numbers at Pinewood? Plus, he treated girls like objects and that will never fly with me. Couldn’t wait to exit the theatre and get back to my nice fluffy Beatles. I still feel his Bond belongs to the Sinatra crowd.

LAZENBY: To quote Pierce, “Poor George.”

MOORE: Just plain icky. Blonde?? Doomed from the start and indeed ended up an embarrassing run of colossal proportions. Who paid money to see this buffoonery? By rights, the franchise should have died during Moore’s reign. I want to brush my teeth just thinking about it. Icky.

DALTON: They had just shafted Pierce out of the role and I was beyond fury. He could have saved Bond. Again, like him, I didn’t want to watch The Living Daylights but somebody goaded me into seeing it. I thought it was excellent. Really. I remembered Timothy Dalton from “The Lion in Winter” as the king of France and thought he had an arresting, dramatic look. I was very pleased with TLD, got past my anger, and acknowledged the franchise had turned a major corner with him. Finally, an up-to-date, velvet-glove yet iron-fisted Bond. And not bad to look at, either! Dalton was smooth, sophisticated, intelligent, chivalrous to his Bond girl ….uh oh, wait … oh, NO … this will never work! Guys will HATE this! Oh, sigh, I just give up. Sure enough, License to Kill didn’t. (Personally, I blame Wayne Newton.) So, quite unfairly, Dalton will go down as having nearly destroyed Bond, when that dubious honor should have been all Moore’s.

BROSNAN. Years go by. The planets line up. The rip in the space/time continuum mends. Success is the best revenge. (I leave no clique unturned here.) Effortlessly yet spectacularly, Pierce revives Bond. “You were expecting somebody else?” You look at him and see he obviously IS James Bond. To such a degree, that to my mind, there was nobody before him, and there can be nobody after him. We know what he went through to get the role, and he owns it right from his first scene. Suffice it to say the sum total of why I think PB is the definitive Bond, could fill an entire thread on this board.

And yet, despite the way I feel, when one of my dreams came true last month and I saw him in NYC – the persona I saw sitting there not 25 feet from me wasn’t James Bond at all. That’s how good an actor he is. Supreme mastery of his art.

-IcyCalm

[sparklingblue]

I'm currently deliberating whether I should simply put the phrase "I agree with IcyCalm and Ace." in my signature.

[Ace]

IcyCalm said:

CONNERY: Like Pierce, I was a preteen when I saw my first Bond film (Goldfinger). The movie was great but I was turned off by the lead actor on first sight. Here’s why: world culture was undergoing a major upset, brought on by The Beatles and all things British - a HUGE and welcome improvement! However, there was Sean with his short, greasy hair wearing un-cool clothes and a Boris Baddenov hat. This was 1965, not 1956 – did somebody transpose these numbers at Pinewood? Plus, he treated girls like objects and that will never fly with me. Couldn’t wait to exit the theatre and get back to my nice fluffy Beatles. I still feel his Bond belongs to the Sinatra crowd.

That's just it, Connery's Bond wasn't fluffy. He was "dirty", sexy and he was adult and he was so beyond the Beatles and then teenyboppers that he could quip in Goldinger "That just isn't done--it's like listening to the Beatles without earmuffs."

Yes, Connery's Bond treated women as objects and they treated him the same, the object was sex and they both wanted it the same way. The women knew what they were getting into and wanted things on the same terms more often than not. In fact the first "conquest" in Dr. No is made by Sylvia Trench of Bond and not the other way around, she pursues him. Not too different from current Bond with Jinx and Miranda in DAD.

Dalton was smooth, sophisticated, intelligent, chivalrous to his Bond girl ….uh oh, wait … oh, NO … this will never work! Guys will HATE this!

Dalton was chivalrous to the Bond girl? In the storyline he uses her to get information out of her and plays at a relationship until I guess there is one. It doesn't work though for me because it isn't romantic and it isn't sexy.

When Bond wasn't making unconfortable googly eyes at her during ill conceived sequences like the Ferris Wheel, he treated her with barely supressed contempt. He rolled his eyes at, sneered and was more exasperated with his Bond girl than Moore seemed to even be by his litany of dingbats Not that I blame him. Unlike most of the Connery and now Brosnan "girls", his was indeed a girl and not a woman.

Ace

[IcyCalm]

Don’t forget: those first impressions of Connery were made by a little 11-year old girl!!! In fact my favorite thing in Goldfinger was the white ’64 Ford Thunderbird the American agents drove. (We owned a brand new white ’65 T-Bird.) Hey, I think Pierce’s favorite thing, himself only 11 years old over there on the other side of The Pond, was the guy who could slice you up with his hat.

Yeah, I had forgotten that insult Connery made about the Beatles! Goldfinger was on Spike TV last week and that’s what gave me the idea to post my thoughts here.

You don’t think Dalton was being chivalrous to the blonde cello player in The Living Daylights? He was very protective of her, I thought, very un-Bond-like. Then there was that tender piano music overlaying may of their scenes together.

I hadn't seen any of Moore's movies, so I couldn't compare TLD to Bond history up to that point, with regard to how he always treated women. I still haven't seen any.

-IcyCalm
P.S. Oh, now I remember: Pierce’s other favourite thing was the naked girl on the bed all painted gold. I wonder if his step-Dad had second thoughts about bringing him along to such a racy film for those days!

[Ace]

Well I'm sure his step-father had seen Bond films before so knew what he was taking him to see and 11 is old enough to appreciate gold painted naked ladies.

Ace

[Lauryn]

Yeah, I had forgotten that insult Connery made about the Beatles! Goldfinger was on Spike TV last week and that’s what gave me the idea to post my thoughts here.

I don't think The Fluffies, er, I mean, the Beatles took it personally. They were far more inclined to jump on the Bond bandwagon than the other way round; JB was, in pop culture, the sine qua non of British cool in the mid-60's no matter what side of the generational divide one was on.

Case in point. The Beatles' movie Help! (1965) is one extended Bond spoof, with all the location hopping from the Alps to the Bahamas and evil masterminds after Ringo's magic ring. Austin Powers just came along a bit later, LOL!

[Myrtle Groggins]

Just have to state my opinion here. I like Dalton's Bond. He was rough, tough, and just like the Bond of the original books. Must admit that I didn't see his Bond movies until a few years ago. I boycotted them because he 'stole' the role from Pierce. Now I own both movies on tape and DVD, plus most of his other films, too.

Pierce - what can I say? He's Pierce. Gorgeous, sexy, delightful. He can be my Bond any day. Since he's no longer Bond, I'm no longer interested in the franchise.

Connery - the first movie Bond. Never could figure out what all those Bond girls saw in him. To me, he wasn't sexy then, and isn't sexy now.

Moore - loved him as The Saint. As Bond, he was a bit too weak, but nice to look at....but certainly no Dalton or Brosnan. His light hair was a striking change from the dark-haired Bonds, and he definitely didn't put the physical effort into the role that Pierce and Dalton did.

Lazenby - his movie had a good story. Think he looks 100% better since he has aged. Love his silver hair. He just didn't fit as Bond.

Dalton has a huge following, too. He's a very good actor, particularly on stage. He has this marvelous booming voice that curls my toes.

MHO