Okay, Mr. Wick, that almost caused coffee to be all over my screen and keyboard! 
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He had a hairstyle?
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He helps people with problems.
Sucks we didn’t get it but I just watched quantum again the other day and if you put the living daylights and licence to kill in a blender and hit puree you get Quantum of Solace:
Opera scene in Austria(!)
Deserts scenes in Bolivia(Afghanistan)
Panama, Caribbean, south America locales
European opener
Revenge motivation
Hotel room confrontation with Bond pointing gun at target
Boat chase
Airplane action scenes
Camile as an agent
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You’re right.
Add in Felix Leiter (who appeared in both Dalton films), transporting someone away from a danger zone (White and Koskov), plus M putting a capture or kill order on Bond - “there’s too many people.”
And good to have you back!
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A Third movie might have given Dalton a tone of his own but failing to gain the third movie he shall forever be remembered as that fella between Moore and Brosnan.
I found Dalton always the one I forget or ignore as a baddie in various other movies he worked much better.
GE was a good vehicle to start a new 007 and was never really suited for a Dalton and far better for the next actor who wanted a darker Bond and was never really given him. Except for spare moments in a movie.
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Hi guys, new member here.
I became a bit obsessed with the idea of a third Dalton film that I ended up making my own fanedit on iMovie.
It was my first go, so a bit rough around the edges. But might be of interest to some of you:
I think Dalton’s third would’ve been much closer to the adventurous/traditional spirit of The Living Daylights, but still with elements of Licence To Kill’s gore. If he had a Moore length era of five or six films I think that would’ve been the general tone.
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A PG Dalton would have felt like a step back, hopefully they would have gone for a 12 as they did with Brozza (even though the BBFC still cut the film).
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John Glen and Richard Maibaum were publicly let go after LTK’s disappointing box office. It’s also no secret that John Glen and TD had a blow up during the making of LTK.
What was the Dalton-Glen blow up about?
Bit harsh for them to let Glen go after he made a string of successful entries and had been in the Bond family for so long. Sure, the experiment of making an 80’s violent action Bond didn’t pay off, but is that his fault? He directed a script that wasn’t what people wanted. Give him the right material and he’ll make it sing (as we saw with LD).
Totally agree about the cheap TV movie look. The lack of soaring John Barry score didn’t help either.
Daylights just has an epic classic movie feel that you don’t get at all in the rather throwaway LTK. Sometimes I think a third Dalton would have diluted his excellent contribution.
It’s hard to say how a third film would’ve been received, and thus what would’ve happened to the franchise. It could’ve been a roll of the dice, or the series could’ve survived just fine anyway.
It’s entirely possible a third could’ve cemented Dalton in the role, much like Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me. The content needs to be decent, but simply having more content like Connery, Moore, Brosnan or Craig is a huge advantage as people start to build stronger connections.
If Dalton’s third was a disaster financially, the series could’ve been on hold for some time, but even then I imagine a resurgence would’ve happened eventually. As it stands, Dalton has two great movies.
The mauling of Felix and Sanchez’s villainy makes LTK the better Dalton film, in my opinion. The way Bond enters his criminal enterprise and brings it down is really satisfying. We don’t really see Bond in such a prolonged deep cover situation anywhere else, apart from Sir Hillary Bray in OHMSS.
Plus, that tanker chase never gets old.
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The failure of LICENCE TO KILL can be largely attributed to the way that production was run on a shoestring budget. With roughly MOONRAKER’s budget it was supposed to outdo OCTOPUSSY - a decade after MOONRAKER. It’s often been said LICENCE TO KILL kicked off the power struggle behind the curtains of the Bond franchise. But the truth is probably that this struggle already began with the fledgling budget, maybe even with the intention that the film wouldn’t be produced at all.
A third Dalton would have entirely depended upon whether the studio was willing to invest on an altogether different scale, instead of treating Bond as cheap cash cow. Given how long and fiercely the fight for the franchise was fought it was perhaps inevitable that this had to happen. Giving Dalton a third film, but without the proper budget, would only have resulted in an even bigger disaster.
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And Dalton just failed in the eyes of American audiences so hence the fact that the BO of LTK was similar to to the BO of Batman with Michael Keaton in the first weekend.
Timothy Dalton was not the actor American audiences wanted and Cubby might have kept him the next movie would have been even more shoestring as the American studios wanted somebody else.
Which they got some years later And he did well and is positively remembered unlike Dalton. He was jus not the actor for a financial successful continuation of the franchise.
I’m unsure whether Americans didn’t like Dalton altogether - or didn’t like Dalton in LICENCE TO KILL. Which showed Dalton/Bond significantly different from THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS.
No doubt, part of the audience was expecting Brosnan to take over from Moore, the guy they saw weekly on the telly. But if mere disappointment had been enough to refuse Dalton then THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS should already have been the dealbreaker.
What tipped the scales two years onwards was in my view the darker tone together with some unfortunate costume decisions and the ‘when-I-grow-up-I’ll-be-Miami-Vice’ feeling. LICENCE TO KILL made it easy for people to say ‘Dalton is just not right in the role’ - while they forget they enjoyed him in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS.
LICENCE TO KILL frequently gets a beating, to a large part for the obvious reasons. But in the many years since I haven’t heard nearly as much criticism of Dalton’s first film - which should rightfully have tanked if all that was missing was Brosnan. In Europe the missed change-of-guard was by far not such a big story; many fans, including me, didn’t even know about it at the time.
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LTK is in my Top 5. A great film, in my view.
As for the third Dalton film, as planned, with the whole China and Denholm Crisp thing - am I right in saying that this story mutated into Goldeneye, with Crisp replaced with Alec?
Thanks for the correction - indeed, a 12.
My point was winky about the new team behind GE being key to its success (not to diminish Brossa who was fantastic and I wouldn’t change - just fun hypothesising)
TLD is actually a 007 movie I enjoy even if it has got that annoying Dutch actor in it, Jeroen krabbe he was the major downfall for me.
LTK had great Fleming set-pieces but it was a lesser production than I enjoyed in Miami Vice the TV show and was just not as great as the TV series. If they had put the drugs in Asia it might have gotten an more expensive feeling.
Dalton was never getting his third movie as the studios involved would have stopped this, Cubby was more or less forced to accept Brosnan who was another choice of his nonetheless.
As for the grittiness in LTK, really there was not a lot of that imho.
Dalton is the reason he’s not in Goldeneye. Cubby asked him back, but insisted it be for multiple films. Dalton refused, so they went with Brosnan. Cubby took a firmer stand against studios than most would even consider…but then his budgets were slashed to the bone throughout the 80’s. In a lot of ways For Your Eyes Only until Goldeneye is one very long argument between between Cubby and MGM.
The fact that MGM need Bond now, just to stay afloat, is ironic on a comedic level.
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