A good read.
Just out of interest, which lines are these? I can’t recall much of MR’s dialogue off-hand.
That’s exactly what this line is supposed to convey.
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“Bollinger, if it’s '69 you were expecting me.”
“A woman?” he says upon meeting Holly, whose surname sailed over my head as an 11 year old. It dawned on me sometime in college.
His seduction of Manuela is off putting. It is Brazil, but …
He also says, and I’m not sure it’s sexual given it’s an action scene, after exploding the cage to escape the rocket launch, “Bang on time.”
Then Q’s line about “re entry” and Holly’s “take me around the world one more time.” The whole film is filled with dialogue more akin to an adult film. It really pushes the limits and I don’t think any actor other than Moore could get away with most of them. And it’s in one of the most kid friendly Bond film ever made.
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As a kid I had absolutely no clue what those were alluding to - and that’s the wonderful thing about Bond, you can enjoy them anyway!
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It’s only very recently that I’ve realized myself - and I’m 31!
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The important thing: it’s a fantasy; a dream the dreamer has total control about. They can decide what happens with whom, how far things go, how they feel - and ultimately how they stop. Subject and cast of such a fantasy are not so important. What is is that the dreamer can play different roles and explore angles they couldn’t or wouldn’t in real life.
In a way remarks like the above and Bond in general are closely related, different aspects of the same human brain function.
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Lovely 
I meant that in a friendly, casual way. The thing with writing on forums is it can’t properly convey the way something is said.
I remember somebody, maybe on here, saying he believed that Dalton gave two different types of performances in his pair of films. Would anyone agree with that?
I wouldn’t say different.
He developed the portrayal he gave in TLD and went one step further in LTK. The “let him fire me, I will thank him for it” became “let him fire me, I know I have to do this”, and the revenge story demanded him to become even more ruthless.
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Yes, I think you’re right.
Both his films are some of my favourites. Easily top six.
I agree. The characterisation was very consistent.
That’s the brooding element I’m talking about.
Another good example is immediately after Saunders’ death.The anger of popping the balloon, and pulling out the gun in front of the mother and child, having to restrain himself before losing control. Check out his face when he says “Yes. I got the message.” That whole conversation with Kara is a brooding masterclass. Dalton’s 007 was professional but always on that edge.
I’ve always like this exchange from YOLT, which I think captures Dalton rather well.
Bunt: “But be careful. This animal is dangerous.”
Blofeld: “You forget, mein Liebchen. Since last January he has ceased to be an animal. By a simple stroke of surgery on the woman he loved, I reduced him to human dimensions. Let me show you.”
Dalton managed to portray a tightly wound weapon and also be relatable/believable as a person.
They’re right up there
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I think Dalton was the best and most nuanced actor we got as Bond so far.
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Easily.
It really would have been interesting to see what would have happened with the films if Dalton had been given the kind of control that Craig has been given.
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Definitely. Craig gets so much more of a fuss, though I much prefer Dalton. I wonder if people/PR are more impressed by dramatic acting these days than in past decades - surprised, almost, and therefore likely to praise it loudly.
One of my favourite moments in the whole series. Also, when you consider that a balloon can represent childhood and innocence and good-natured fun, and he destroys it - calls an end to the Roger era right there!
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You’re on to something here.
In the late 80´s serious actors were mostly judged by their movie choices. To appear in a genre piece, especially an action adventure like Bond automatically diminished their status. These days, genre pieces are almost the only movies which still get green lighted with decent to stellar budgets. Hence, actors who would never have considered something like Bond have to choose these roles. (The same dynamic applies to directors.)
Imagine Dalton (someone like him) take over Bond now and he would be celebrated.
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I’m a big fan of DC’s portrayal (in that conventional opinion is that TD and DC are in the same interpretative division, so to speak!) - but I’d offer that TD’s work is the more impressive, in that it has to work within films that are in all honesty, built to a different blueprint.
DC has had the advantage of having the series re-set itself and be clear as to what it wants to be; TD inherited a script from the Sir Rog era, reconfigured for a Remington Steel Brozza. 80s EON was still unabashed “family-viewing” PG entertainment, full of “He’s in a hurry to get home” and SP-car chases, and the odd double-take here and there.
I don’t deny many of the criticisms that are thrown around re: LTK, but it’s biggest fault is just not being of it’s time, which is a very different sin to not being a good film.
While I’m not a proponent of the (rumored) offer of the role to TD prior to OHMSS, the thought of him working with that “honest” a script is enough to make me drool! And I’m always curious as to stories of TLD being a re-boot ahead of it’s time. If the CR reset had happened for TD…
(honest as in honest to the source material/atmosphere, not to EON’s interpretation of it)
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I don’t think there has ever been, or ever will be, two consecutive Bond films which are quite as different as TLD and LTK.
Of course, we know those differences like the back of our hands:
The first is a nuanced, Cold War thriller (perhaps we could even call it character-driven?), the most consistently serious and espionage-oriented Bond film since FRWL, which moves between three or four countries, all of which are quite grim, and hews closer to the books than the films (and the early books at that).
LTD, on the other hand, is a violent film which only moves between sunny Florida and the Bahamas, and sheds every bit of espionage in favour of an American-style drug-bust story, making it closer to Lethal Weapon, Dirty Harry, and, in particular, Miami Vice than anything from previous Bond films, let alone the books.
Yet, as said by others above, the character is consistent in both, and identifiable as Fleming’s character. Eon obviously liked the “if he fires me I’ll think him for it” line, and the anger following Saunder’s death, as they based the next film entirely around it. Not even Marvel and DC haven’t given a single utterance in a film it’s own spin-off (though LucasFilms did), and yet it happened here.
Usually, I’m quite aware of a film’s flaws, but I must be looking less closely at LTK, as I think it’s great, and certainly in my Top 5 or 7. In some ways, it loses the series’ identity, but then, ironically, it has more Q than any other film.
Despite liking things which call back to an earlier era, I also like it when things move with the times, and they certainly did it with this one. Someone will have to tell me whether or not Miami Vice is old hate by the time of release ( I know it had been running almost five years).
I think the film would have succeeded had it came out at any other time, but its profile was low (particularly in the face of the aggressive Batman marketing), and I suspect most Americans had more loyalty or interest in their own films at that moment in time (neither a good or bad thing).
If Dalton had gotten the kind of scripts that Craig has gotten, as well as the support of true A-listers in every facet of the production like we see today, then I can only imagine how great his tenure could have been.
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Completely agreed. TD will forever be the right guy at the wrong time. The series had been on creative cruise control for best part of the decade, and had found itself going from the big boy, no, the only boy on the block, to having to re-carve its place in the market. If you are of a certain age, the late 80s into the 90s, was a golden era for the kind of “tentpole” films that previously been the sole domain of Bond.
I know Babs and Mike’s tenure has sparked numerous debates over time, but I commend the decisions of '02-'06 in gambling with what had been EON’s commercial golden age (Brozza’s films were monsters financially).
I’m of the opinion that the franchise’s dip in financial form (plus the legal difficulties) would have occurred even if Brozza had been Bond in '87. He too would’ve been the victim of the lack of vision that the franchise had. And while that’s a harsh statement - I don’t mean it as a criticism. LTK was an acknowledgement that the franchise had to take a look at its creative self but to be fair, it’s easier to “re-boot” now, when it’s the norm, than it was then.
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