I should add that, like Connery and Brosnan, Dalton's had a really fun post-Bond career, which started almost immediately in THE ROCKETEER where he played an Errol Flynn-like Nazi collaborator. (Flynn almost certainly wasn't a Nazi collaborator, but the stories endured anyway.) He's really fun in HOT FUZZ!, too. (And I keep meaning to check out DOOM PATROL. I hear good things.)
I think a film that has extensive contact with Soviet agents, including someone who is apparently sort of a Russian James Bond (John Rhys-Davies adding to his collection of accents) is not ignoring the new world order at all. It's manifestly admitting that the world is changing. It just doesn't know what to do with that, and it would take years and years for the series to finally figure out what to do with a post-Cold War world (and you could argue that there is still something missing from the films).
My first Bond was Moore as well, but those films are just silly, a trend that started with You Only Live Twice and didn't really end for good till Casino Royale but that was at its worst in Moore's run. I feel no nostalgia for them, though I suspect that the meanness and misogyny of Connery's Bond won't be there in Moore's. (I don't think we've had a single bad James Bond, even Lazenby.)
View To Kill not only first Bond movie me saw in theaters (although me had been raised on steady diet of Sunday afternoon Connery/Moore bond films), me remember it feeling like first movie me saw that was for grown-ups. Sure, there was controversy about Gremlins and Temple of Doom being inappropriate for kids (and leading to PG-13 rating), but those movies were clearly fun adventures for kids. Bond felt more serious (or maybe it just that Papa Cookie loved those movies and had several of books too, so it seem like thing from his world).
Anyway, me counting down minutes to No Time To Die, less because me think it going to be good movie, and more because, while me have been in movie theater since pandemic, me not really will feel like movies are back until me hear that brassy horn burst of Bond theme with bucket of popcorn and package of Chips Ahoy me smuggled into theater.
I turned 13 in 1996, so Goldeneye indeed was (and is) a delight, but I was already a Licence To Kill fan by then - grungy, sweaty 80s action movies are right in my wheelhouse, and in the early 90s they were pretty much the whole wheel and the entirety of the house. (Benicio Del Toro's "we gave her a nice.... honeyMOOOOOOON" puts it above at least half the Connerys and Craigs by itself.)
I never really warmed to The Living Daylights, but The Pretenders' 'Where Has Everybody Gone?' is *the* great lost Bond tune.
I'm a Gen Xer and a huge Bond fan, but Dalton never did it for me, for whatever reason. I can't even say I've seen his films since they were released, which is why I would have sworn he had 3 films... maybe I need to give them another shot?
Hope you'll do a piece like this on Brosnan, Keith
Octopussy was also my intro to Bond (we had a copy of it in my house on the defunct RCA home video CED format...I must have watched it a million times). My older brother was a big Bond fan, and so it wasn't long before I had watched the whole series as a kid. Even then, I knew the Moore stuff was perhaps a bit iffy when compared to the the first handful of Connery films, but I loved them all the same.
But I was there for Dalton too, and he was the first Bond I saw in theatres. I remember liking The Living Daylights a lot, but but being less into License To Kill. For me, Dalton made a much larger impression in The Rocketeer, which was and is one of my favourite adventure movies. I also loved him as Prince Barin in Flash Gordon. While I wasn't all in on Dalton as Bond, I did like the fact that he seemed like more of a precursor to what Daniel Craig's bond would have more of an opportunity to flesh out: a harder edged, post-Cold War Bond. It's a much better take on the character than Brosnan picking up the cartoonish excess of the Moore films, without the specific Moore charm to elevate the hijinks.
Sure, License To Kill plays like lower-grade Joel Silver (or maybe higher-grade Golan/Globus), but it still feels like the last real Bond movie: The final production personally overseen by Albert Broccoli, the final Richard Maibaum script, the final Maurice Binder title sequence. And the last one to primarily rely on the breathtaking real-life stuntwork that had always defined the series. There would be good and bad movies to follow, but they'd have a lot less personality, and look a whole lot more like every other big ticket blockbuster.
License to Kill is among my favorite Bond films, but I was 8 when it came out and not much older when I saw it, so its level of action thriller mayhem was very much in line with the plotlines to which I subjected my GI Joes at the time. Even when I watch it now, though, I think your assessment of it sounds crazy--bad Bond, maybe, but an abscess? Anthony Zerbe explodes like Thunder at the end of Big Trouble in Little China! Everett McGill gets eaten by sharks! Frank McRae comes out from behind his usual spot at a Captain's desk to mix it up! Robert Davi does Robert Davi things! Wayne Newton, for some reason! I find it all completely fun despite the grim plot and even grimmer deaths. It also features Carey Lowell as my favorite Bond girl, though as a CIA agent she's only sort of that, and some field work for my boy Q. And Dalton is the only Bond before Craig to come across as legitimately dangerous, something that even Sean Connery could never fully pull off for me. I sometimes wonder how much more successful he would have been if he had shown up in 1980 and started with For Your Eyes Only instead, but then of course maybe we never get the Miami Vice/John Wick hybrid that is my beloved License to Kill.
I'm older than you guys, and had tired of Bond long before Moore did. (Moonraker was _my_ first Bond on the big screen.) I really liked Dalton's harder edge, but then i stopped watching the series again after they put Remington Steele in. I loved the visceral action of Casino Royale, and Bond & Vesper had real emotional depth, but the Craig Bonds have steadily moved into the campier world that turned me off to the series. (Still love Connery, Lazenby, & Live & Let Die, though)
I must confess that I really, really like The Living Daylights. Part of that is it was the first Bond I saw in the theater. But also it has a grittiness (I love the pre-credits sequence) and Moore-era silliness (the cello chase) that mix well together. Throw in a creepy henchman (the new-wave-loving milkman killer haunted my dreams) and great practical stunts and setpieces (the cargo net sequence) and you have one of the most underrated Bond movies.
Nice writeup on the all-too-brief Dalton era. I suppose nostalgia may color my take on the subject (I saw "The Living Daylights" at the theater a week before starting my senior year of high school), but "Daylights" has always been one of my favorite Bonds, and partially because Dalton's my favorite 007 save Connery himself.
Whereas Connery's 007 was an amoral thug with a misogynist streak, Lazenby's tenure all-too-brief to make an impact, and Moore's version a sexist, wisecracking, vapid empty suit (at least, compared to Connery), Dalton's Bond was the first that felt like an actual HERO rather than simply a protagonist. Chivalrous, loyal to his friends (General Pushkin in "Daylights", Felix Leiter in "Licence to Kill"), and contemptuous of bureaucratic BS ("Stuff my orders! I only kill professionals. ... Go ahead and tell M -- if he fires me, I'll thank him for it!"), Dalton's version was the first I felt I could actually root for. As a viewer, you got the sense that if you earned the respect of Dalton's James Bond, then you'd really achieved something, and that his 007 was one that, in a crisis, could truly be counted on.
"Daylights" also has some of my favorite moments in the whole almost-60-year-long series, like the superb Gibraltar opening sequence, as well as 007's moment of rage at the horrible death of the British agent who'd placed his trust in him and earned Bond's respect. And I still enjoy the atmospheric and suspenseful mano-a-mano final fight between Bond and Joe Don Baker's arms dealer (which was especially refreshing in 1987 after all those over-the-top wrapups in the Moore films). And of all John Barry's 007 scores, "Daylights" is probably my favorite (and the first Bond soundtrack I ever bought).
That said, your take on "Licence to Kill" touches on my issues with that film. While it's not a bad movie, or even a bad Bond flick (certainly not on the level of "View to a Kill"), I really don't ENJOY it due to the grimness and nastiness you also noted. As another Internet writer put it, "the end result doesn't FEEL like a Bond film", and that's pretty much the crux of the matter. Even so, I feel Dalton's Bond is due a rediscovery, and I've always been happy that his approach to the character has been at least somewhat vindicated by the Daniel Craig era, which has been on the whole a stirring success.
I should add that, like Connery and Brosnan, Dalton's had a really fun post-Bond career, which started almost immediately in THE ROCKETEER where he played an Errol Flynn-like Nazi collaborator. (Flynn almost certainly wasn't a Nazi collaborator, but the stories endured anyway.) He's really fun in HOT FUZZ!, too. (And I keep meaning to check out DOOM PATROL. I hear good things.)
I think a film that has extensive contact with Soviet agents, including someone who is apparently sort of a Russian James Bond (John Rhys-Davies adding to his collection of accents) is not ignoring the new world order at all. It's manifestly admitting that the world is changing. It just doesn't know what to do with that, and it would take years and years for the series to finally figure out what to do with a post-Cold War world (and you could argue that there is still something missing from the films).
My first Bond was Moore as well, but those films are just silly, a trend that started with You Only Live Twice and didn't really end for good till Casino Royale but that was at its worst in Moore's run. I feel no nostalgia for them, though I suspect that the meanness and misogyny of Connery's Bond won't be there in Moore's. (I don't think we've had a single bad James Bond, even Lazenby.)
View To Kill not only first Bond movie me saw in theaters (although me had been raised on steady diet of Sunday afternoon Connery/Moore bond films), me remember it feeling like first movie me saw that was for grown-ups. Sure, there was controversy about Gremlins and Temple of Doom being inappropriate for kids (and leading to PG-13 rating), but those movies were clearly fun adventures for kids. Bond felt more serious (or maybe it just that Papa Cookie loved those movies and had several of books too, so it seem like thing from his world).
Anyway, me counting down minutes to No Time To Die, less because me think it going to be good movie, and more because, while me have been in movie theater since pandemic, me not really will feel like movies are back until me hear that brassy horn burst of Bond theme with bucket of popcorn and package of Chips Ahoy me smuggled into theater.
I turned 13 in 1996, so Goldeneye indeed was (and is) a delight, but I was already a Licence To Kill fan by then - grungy, sweaty 80s action movies are right in my wheelhouse, and in the early 90s they were pretty much the whole wheel and the entirety of the house. (Benicio Del Toro's "we gave her a nice.... honeyMOOOOOOON" puts it above at least half the Connerys and Craigs by itself.)
I never really warmed to The Living Daylights, but The Pretenders' 'Where Has Everybody Gone?' is *the* great lost Bond tune.
I'm a Gen Xer and a huge Bond fan, but Dalton never did it for me, for whatever reason. I can't even say I've seen his films since they were released, which is why I would have sworn he had 3 films... maybe I need to give them another shot?
Hope you'll do a piece like this on Brosnan, Keith
Octopussy was also my intro to Bond (we had a copy of it in my house on the defunct RCA home video CED format...I must have watched it a million times). My older brother was a big Bond fan, and so it wasn't long before I had watched the whole series as a kid. Even then, I knew the Moore stuff was perhaps a bit iffy when compared to the the first handful of Connery films, but I loved them all the same.
But I was there for Dalton too, and he was the first Bond I saw in theatres. I remember liking The Living Daylights a lot, but but being less into License To Kill. For me, Dalton made a much larger impression in The Rocketeer, which was and is one of my favourite adventure movies. I also loved him as Prince Barin in Flash Gordon. While I wasn't all in on Dalton as Bond, I did like the fact that he seemed like more of a precursor to what Daniel Craig's bond would have more of an opportunity to flesh out: a harder edged, post-Cold War Bond. It's a much better take on the character than Brosnan picking up the cartoonish excess of the Moore films, without the specific Moore charm to elevate the hijinks.
Sure, License To Kill plays like lower-grade Joel Silver (or maybe higher-grade Golan/Globus), but it still feels like the last real Bond movie: The final production personally overseen by Albert Broccoli, the final Richard Maibaum script, the final Maurice Binder title sequence. And the last one to primarily rely on the breathtaking real-life stuntwork that had always defined the series. There would be good and bad movies to follow, but they'd have a lot less personality, and look a whole lot more like every other big ticket blockbuster.
License to Kill is among my favorite Bond films, but I was 8 when it came out and not much older when I saw it, so its level of action thriller mayhem was very much in line with the plotlines to which I subjected my GI Joes at the time. Even when I watch it now, though, I think your assessment of it sounds crazy--bad Bond, maybe, but an abscess? Anthony Zerbe explodes like Thunder at the end of Big Trouble in Little China! Everett McGill gets eaten by sharks! Frank McRae comes out from behind his usual spot at a Captain's desk to mix it up! Robert Davi does Robert Davi things! Wayne Newton, for some reason! I find it all completely fun despite the grim plot and even grimmer deaths. It also features Carey Lowell as my favorite Bond girl, though as a CIA agent she's only sort of that, and some field work for my boy Q. And Dalton is the only Bond before Craig to come across as legitimately dangerous, something that even Sean Connery could never fully pull off for me. I sometimes wonder how much more successful he would have been if he had shown up in 1980 and started with For Your Eyes Only instead, but then of course maybe we never get the Miami Vice/John Wick hybrid that is my beloved License to Kill.
So is it true? Do Americans not know what revoked means?
I'm older than you guys, and had tired of Bond long before Moore did. (Moonraker was _my_ first Bond on the big screen.) I really liked Dalton's harder edge, but then i stopped watching the series again after they put Remington Steele in. I loved the visceral action of Casino Royale, and Bond & Vesper had real emotional depth, but the Craig Bonds have steadily moved into the campier world that turned me off to the series. (Still love Connery, Lazenby, & Live & Let Die, though)
I must confess that I really, really like The Living Daylights. Part of that is it was the first Bond I saw in the theater. But also it has a grittiness (I love the pre-credits sequence) and Moore-era silliness (the cello chase) that mix well together. Throw in a creepy henchman (the new-wave-loving milkman killer haunted my dreams) and great practical stunts and setpieces (the cargo net sequence) and you have one of the most underrated Bond movies.
Nice writeup on the all-too-brief Dalton era. I suppose nostalgia may color my take on the subject (I saw "The Living Daylights" at the theater a week before starting my senior year of high school), but "Daylights" has always been one of my favorite Bonds, and partially because Dalton's my favorite 007 save Connery himself.
Whereas Connery's 007 was an amoral thug with a misogynist streak, Lazenby's tenure all-too-brief to make an impact, and Moore's version a sexist, wisecracking, vapid empty suit (at least, compared to Connery), Dalton's Bond was the first that felt like an actual HERO rather than simply a protagonist. Chivalrous, loyal to his friends (General Pushkin in "Daylights", Felix Leiter in "Licence to Kill"), and contemptuous of bureaucratic BS ("Stuff my orders! I only kill professionals. ... Go ahead and tell M -- if he fires me, I'll thank him for it!"), Dalton's version was the first I felt I could actually root for. As a viewer, you got the sense that if you earned the respect of Dalton's James Bond, then you'd really achieved something, and that his 007 was one that, in a crisis, could truly be counted on.
"Daylights" also has some of my favorite moments in the whole almost-60-year-long series, like the superb Gibraltar opening sequence, as well as 007's moment of rage at the horrible death of the British agent who'd placed his trust in him and earned Bond's respect. And I still enjoy the atmospheric and suspenseful mano-a-mano final fight between Bond and Joe Don Baker's arms dealer (which was especially refreshing in 1987 after all those over-the-top wrapups in the Moore films). And of all John Barry's 007 scores, "Daylights" is probably my favorite (and the first Bond soundtrack I ever bought).
That said, your take on "Licence to Kill" touches on my issues with that film. While it's not a bad movie, or even a bad Bond flick (certainly not on the level of "View to a Kill"), I really don't ENJOY it due to the grimness and nastiness you also noted. As another Internet writer put it, "the end result doesn't FEEL like a Bond film", and that's pretty much the crux of the matter. Even so, I feel Dalton's Bond is due a rediscovery, and I've always been happy that his approach to the character has been at least somewhat vindicated by the Daniel Craig era, which has been on the whole a stirring success.