Dalton looked the part, especialy in promo photo’s before TLD was made, he played it like Fleming wrote it, but… he wasn’t a moviestar, didn’t have the charisma, he wasn’t someone people would pay a ticket for and if also the movie isn’t what people expect of a Bondmovie and they can also choose for buying tickets for the new Indiana Jones or Lethal Weapon movie, or the Batman movie everyone wanted to see that summer…
Granted I was 1 when LTK released, but from what I can gather Bond fatigue was also very real in the late 80s. In the summer of 1989, we had a perfect storm of high profile action films, viewer fatigue, a less popular star, and painfully poor marketing to sink a pretty good film and start the Bond series’s dances with chaos.
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Sigh, I wish super hero fatigue sets in the same way action fatigue did in the 90s and we get done with avengers & co.
More thrillers and cerebral movies from now on please
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Amen to that
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Not going to happen, given how much Marvel’s last two made, you are going to see an influx.
Also; “genre fatigue” is something made up by journalism. In truth, the studio system is only ever going respond to positive reinforcement. Superheroes will stop being pushed at you the second a different genre starts making more money.
You’ll get more cerebral thrillers when the few that are made get more bums in seats.
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I‘m not so sure there; I think it will at least be a difficult stage for Marvel to introduce another iteration of their franchise without their two top players Captain America and Iron Man. If they fail to secure Spider-Man, especially Holland‘s very popular version, then they are going to have to do some significant pushing with a new variant of the X-Men. Marvel is currently on top of the cinema world, but staying there will cost some effort.
It will, but for the next year or 2 we’re going to get many superhero films of varying quality commissioned off the back of Endgame and Far From Home making their respective studios so much money.
Probably.
With regard to genres, the Western positively dominated film and TV in the late 50s and early 60s (30 Western shows aired during prime-time in 1959). And then…
So anything can happen with Superhero films.
Regarding Dalton, I don’t think he had more or less charisma than Brosnan. He just had the misfortune to be hired at the wrong time and in the wrong circumstances.
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I’d say overall that you’re right, “genre fatigue” doesn’t particularly bear out. Franchise fatigue maybe, as “Solo” likely would’ve fared better at the box office if it hadn’t come too soon after “The Last Jedi” (just over 5 months, whereas all the others, including “Rogue One”, were spaced out by approximately a year).
I’ve got a few what-ifs but they mainly relate to casting.
I read on www.imdb.com that Louis Jourdan was originally sought for the role of Hugo Drax. This makes sense, since it was a French co-production and they insisted on having French actors fill out some of the principal roles. I have only seen Jourdan play a villain in OP, in which I didn’t find him too effective, so I wonder how he would have played a genocidal megalomaniac. I can’t really see it, but I’m curious nonetheless.
I do think Moore and Jourdan were decently matched, both being handsome, elegant men in (at that time) their more mature years. That said, if they wanted an elegant older man to play a Middle Eastern villain, I wonder why they didn’t go with (IMO) a more obvious choice: Omar Sharif.
I also read that Kevin Spacey was originally approached by Sam Mendes to play Silva in “Skyfall”. I can’t say that I could see him in the role, at least not with the ethnicity attached, and that I’m glad for other reasons that he didn’t get it. That said, with EON’s past tendencies to re-use actors in different and expanded roles – most notably Charles Gray, Maud Adams, Robert Brown and Joe Don Baker – I half wonder if Benicio Del Toro was ever considered for the part. Not only is he also a native Spanish speaking Supporting Actor Oscar winner like Bardem, but also tall and with a unique look and acting style like Bardem. It’s not too hard to picture Del Toro playing Silva’s introductory scene if you think about it. And Del Toro is no stranger to wigs LOL. Perhaps they can use him in a future main villain role and give him a similarly unique look – maybe red hair with a crew cut and long sideburns a la Fleming’s description of Scaramanga.
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I am so glad the Spacey thing didn’t happen.
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Was Silva originally written as Latin?
I’ve no idea, but it strikes me that, as ex-MI6 Spacey makes more sense to the audience in general (sorry to generalise and patronise).
I imagine he’d have adopted an English accent, playing an older, bitterer version of Bond.
However, I too am glad Spacey didn’t do it. Not because of his acting - he’s a truly amazing actor and would’ve knocked it out of the park. But because Bardem’s presence and performance gave us something just as good if not better. Moreover his approach, which leant heavily upon an oddly mangled ethnicity, has that Fleming eccentricity and Brothers Grimm quality present in Bond’s best foes…
Spacey could bring that in another role, but an ex-MI6 agent wouldn’t have given him the scope to make it unique. Plus, the disgruntled British (as in accent and upbringing) agent-villain has already been done with aplomb by Sean Bean.
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I’m happy he didn’t do it, mostly because of what has come out about Kevin Spacey in recent years. It would make Skyfall a much harder watch with Spacey there knowing what we know now about him.
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Tbh, I don’t think it was anything more than some guy, probably on IMDb, going “hey, he’s in American Beauty”
I doubt it was even suggested, let alone pursued in anyway.
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Mendes and Spacey did a lot stage work together, if I recall correctly. Not sure if it’s a false memory I have of Mendes once saying he’d love to have Spacey as a Bond villain.
Of course the accusations would tarnish SF, but it’s more interesting to put that aside (particularly since I don’t know all the facts and so i’m happy to make no judgements either way) and just consider Spacey the actor when fantasy casting.
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Here’s some more of my what ifs for main title designers:
Saul Bass working on Goldfinger – I just would like to see what the legendary main titles designer would have done on a Bond film and Goldfinger is the best one for him to work on.
Richard Greenberg of then R/Greenberg Associates working on The Living Daylights – While he did the main titles on Never Say Never Again, his creativity was limited by the war games going on on screen. I would like to see what he’d do if he had a whole sequence to himself such as when he did Superman: The Movie. Meanwhile, Maurice Binder, starting with The Living Daylights, was running on the fumes of his creativity.
Pablo Ferro working on Licence To Kill – A renowned main titles designer. Again, see the Binder situation above.
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