|
|
|
 |
| |
Timothy Dalton has spoken about the current James
Bond movie hiatus, Daniel Craig's tenure so far and
getting 007 back to his brutal roots...
|
|
Dalton On Craig
2nd November 2010
Entertainment Weekly interviewed two-time James Bond star Timothy
Dalton this week about his role on the spy-fi NBC television
series "Chuck", where is is guest-starring as an MI6 handler.
Dalton was asked what he thought about how the
end of his tenure as 007 echoes the current situation that has
the 23rd James
Bond film on indefinite
hold until
MGM's dire financial situation is resolved (since the time of
the interview, MGM
debt-holders agreed to a pre-packaged bankruptcy
plan to swap debt for equity with Spyglass taking control of
the studio). "I’m not speaking as a spokesman for
them, of course", Dalton said, "but I have to believe that Bond,
a big moneymaker for so many years, will get back on its feet.
Someone
will give
it a platform, a foundation on which it can be made again, because
it will be in everybody’s interest. It will make money,
they do make money, they always make money, and of course, they
provide tremendous entertainment for so many people."
Above: Timothy Dalton guest-stars
in Season 4 of "Chuck" on NBC.
|
"It’s
a horrible situation for everybody, but by the time the lawsuit
that stopped the last Bond movie that I was going to make was
resolved, five years had passed. I think I was starting what
would have been my third Bond film in ’89 or ’90.
It had been written, we were talking directors, and then the
lawsuit came. It held for
five years, and I certainly didn’t want to carry on after
having been associated with Bond
for almost 10 years at that
point. It brings a big hole into that universe. It’s sad
that there’s another hiatus, because I thought the first
25 minutes of Daniel Craig’s first movie [Casino
Royale]
was the best 25 minutes I’ve seen in any Bond movie. I
thought it was a fantastic opening."
|
Another similarity between Dalton and
Craig's run as Bond is the grittier, harder-edge to the
character that both actors brought to the screen following
a popular run by another actor with a heavier fantasy element
to their films. When asked if he thought his taking Bond
back to his literary roots was perhaps ahead of its time,
Dalton said: "I
agree with you. Cubby
Broccoli, who was producing the movies,
said to me then that that’s what he wanted, and I
agreed wholeheartedly. Roger
Moore was marvelous at what
he did, and his films were successful, so you can’t
say a word against him. But Sean
Connery was shocking.
And his movies were shocking. You had never seen women
in bikinis
in films in those days, and heroes did not shoot unarmed
people. But Connery did, and he was tough."
"The fight in the train with Robert
Shaw [in From
Russia With Love] was one of the great Bond sequences.
Incidentally, those two sequences, the fight in the train
and the shooting of the unarmed man, were reprised in the
opening of Casino Royale. The fight in the toilet downstairs
was vicious and mean and really tough, and of course, Daniel
shoots a man who’s run out of bullets. But Connery
was very tough. And I think Moore, when he first took it
over was tough, as well, but then he moved into that area
that he was probably most comfortable with, having done
The Saint." |
|
Above: Dalton draws the comparison
of brutal action between "From Russia With Love" and
the opening of "Casino Royale" .
|
"We wanted to take it back to that earlier toughness.
But, of course, it’s got to be funny. It should be
funny. Out of great danger often comes great humor. But
when we made The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill,
everybody by then was so used to something else. I
think people like to stay with what they’re comfortable.
So I think Cubby and I were fairly lonely voices!""
|
|
|
