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They could have waited for him or adjusted the shooting schedule.
I think Dalton was on their radar first but Brosnan was offered the contract first.
It's Ironic that the "buddies turned enemies" device was reused for both their starting movies.
Did he? I thought it was nailed on in 94 mate. I don't Pierce even reshot his screentest
No. It was a different time with a much clearer delineation between film and TV. Brosnan was stuck in his TV contract, and Cubby didn't want his Bond concurrently on TV.
Excuses. They did it with Willis and it wasn't the end of the world.
Cubby just didn't care. Remember they hired Lazenby and didn't bother watching a movie of his. Spoilers, there wasn't one.
Apparently, the real reason was Dalton just didn't like wearing tailored clothes.
I believe one of his dinner suits came from his previous movie, Brenda Starr, which suggests being done in a hurry.
Emma Porteous, the costume designer, was interviewed for this book: https://www.amazon.com.au/Tailors-Love-Evolution-Menswear-Through/dp/1629337145. I'm afraid I can't find an online PDF.
The dinner suit was made for Brenda Starr, but wasn't used in that film.
Incidentally, that isn't the first time clothes, which were made for other productions, were recycled for the Bond films. A couple of Connery's suits and his tweed jacket from GF, were originally made for Woman of Straw.
One example.
Michael J. Fox was another.
Cubby was an old-school producer who thought Bond was the star. He didn't wait for Dalton either if he really was his first choice.
It’s part of the reason why Brosnan couldn’t wear a tuxedo in a film while he was Bond. The viewers will automatically see James Bond where he’s not meant to be (ie. In another film or tv show). May well have been harsh on Cubby’s part tearing up Brosnan’s contract, but I can understand how with a role like Bond it avoided headaches.
Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here.
Well, I think it all turned out ideal, surely? Brosnan got his run of Bond and was even allowed to reintroduce the character/franchise after its hiatus. Dalton was able to make two movies playing the character on his own terms, the latter of which I doubt would have been made at all had he not been Bond.
I don't know. LTK's poor reception meant they didn't try anything similar for years. Pretty much the same thing that happened with OHMSS.
I wouldn't say GE was a course correction film as DAF was to OHMSS though. It embraced a lot of mature ideas (I'd say it's a better thought out film than LTK) and even retained a lot of LTK's violence/edge mixed with a new take on classic Bond film tropes. I'd also say the Brosnan era did give us story/character ideas that could well have been in a future Dalton film - and indeed some of which was readopted in the Craig films. Ie. Bond going rogue after being tortured/imprisoned, a former comrade of Bond's being the villain, a former lover of Bond's returning and the drama around that, Bond getting injured, Bond dealing with being betrayed by the love interest etc.
It probably has something to do with MGW and BB taking creative control around that time too. But I think the Dalton films fed into Brosnan's run, and from there his films fed into Craig's. You can argue in the long run Brosnan may not have been the right actor to deal with those ideas in his later movies. Or that the producers seemed to hold onto very specific ideas of what a Bond movie should be at the expense of more thought out adventures. But I think the creative progression from Dalton to Brosnan is a natural one.
What would have been the result in the long run if Brosnan had played Bond in TLD? I don't know honestly. I think Brosnan - and the franchise - benefitted from getting the role in the 90s though. A case can be made that Bond's popularity was always going to take a hit in the late 80s.
Yeah Jeff Kleeman was explicit about that in Some Kind of Hero: that when they were looking for a Bond in the 90s they didn't even consider actors who were signed on to other series because of the scheduling issues it could create. I think the example was Mel Gibson, who the press talked about a bit, but they didn't even consider because of the ongoing Lethal Weapon films.
I think after LTK you can really tell they were trying to go for different angles with the Bond adventures in terms of story and character. LTK is a pretty unusual Bond film that broke the traditional formula, so in many ways it was probably always going to be more a one off thing. Even if they'd continued with Dalton we would have gotten more of a TSWLM type affair (in fact the original Bond 17 script was less interesting and more 'by the numbers' than GE). But I don't think it poisoned the Bond series in the long run, and I'm not sure if GE would be the film it is without LTK. I don't see it as a course correction film but more a turning point one. In a similar way SF was for Craig's era, or LALD for Moore after DAF (ie. not fundamentally different to what came immediately before, but different enough to stand out).
What do you think we could learn from this?
I hope Wright doesn't go anywhere near Bond. I like a lot of the guy's films, but I think he'd lack something. It'd be a bit like if Mathew Vaughn had been chosen to direct a Bond film - on paper it sounds good. But at the same time it'd be horrifically wrong.
I don't see any reason Villeneuve's film will be a straightforward misfire. I can imagine fans being a bit polarised initially, but so long as its box office numbers and critical reception are good they shouldn't need some drastic course correction this early into an era. Villeneuve will also be the one assisting in developing a new era and picking the next lead, so it won't just be a simple case of switching director and everything changing fundamentally.
Fan reaction is hard to gauge, but luckily with Bond it doesn't mean too much (apart from the silly reaction to Craig's casting I guess) as it's such a mass market product; regardless I think it's likely to go down well just because Villeneuve has had an unbroken streak of quality. He's a really canny choice, after Nolan I think he's the closest thing to a star director nowadays after Dune: if you put 'from the director of Dune' on something, people will automatically be interested and will turn up. I wonder if you also have to make some sort of statement with the casting in order to get the younger dollar even more interested, I don't know. I can still see them going young with it.
Nah! Not current Ritchie.