LTK unpopular???
crawfordboon
Posts: 126MI6 Agent
Having read a lot of the material on these boards, I'm coming to the conclusion that LTK is very low on people's lsit of favourite Bonds, and I can't understand why. I thought it was a rip-roaring adventure that didnt' conciously follow 'the Fleming line' and in fact made Bond relevant for the late 1980s, in a world populated by franchise rivals like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard.
Apart from the Heller/Pam/Stingers sub-plot, it holds together very well indeed - I even liked the charismatic Wayne Newton is a comic 'villain' (thankfully he is allowed to live)
OK so the film was very Miami Vice in its feel, but since the start of the 1970s Bond has always responded to elements of popular culture (Moon landing, DAF) (Blaxploitation, LALD) (Kung Fu, GG), (Jaws, Spy), (Star Wars, MR), so I thought it was more realistic to go for something contemporary rather than a Cold War throwback like TLD, which, I thought, was inferior as a thriller to LTK. Too much Fleming is a bad thing in the real world.
Apart from the Heller/Pam/Stingers sub-plot, it holds together very well indeed - I even liked the charismatic Wayne Newton is a comic 'villain' (thankfully he is allowed to live)
OK so the film was very Miami Vice in its feel, but since the start of the 1970s Bond has always responded to elements of popular culture (Moon landing, DAF) (Blaxploitation, LALD) (Kung Fu, GG), (Jaws, Spy), (Star Wars, MR), so I thought it was more realistic to go for something contemporary rather than a Cold War throwback like TLD, which, I thought, was inferior as a thriller to LTK. Too much Fleming is a bad thing in the real world.
Comments
Of course every movie is going to be dated somehow (GE, Post-War Russia), (TWINE, Y2K, dependence on oil), but that's just how they're made.
However... too much Fleming a bad thing? In a Bond film??!! ?:)
I'm trying to figure out the same thing... Maybe he doesn't like the cold-natured Bond as much as some people do
It's funny because I'm a fan of Marvel Comics and see how they were influenced by Bond in the sixties, with elements of SMERSH and SPECTRE influencing the AIM and HYDRA of Marvel. But then in the seventies and the eighties it almost seems like the other way around, Marvel influencing Bond. LTK is like a Punisher movie. Elements of that remained in the Brosnan era, with the scenes of him spraying a room full of bad guys with lead from an uzi.
Also, though this may be another topic for another time, I would submit that many scenes in Bond movies that men do not like women do. I recently watched LTK with a lady and she loved James and Feliz parachuting to Felix's wedding, though men may not like that sort of touch. Similarly, most women I know name Brosnan as their favourite Bond, while he's close to the bottom for many men. Sorry to get off topic but discussing LTK reminded me of that.
My problem with the film, however, is that the screenplay was extremely messy at times, and Dalton gave IMO the single worst Bond performance of all time. I find Dalton to be dour, boring and just as serious before the attack upon Felix and his wife as afterwards. IMO it is a terrible performance and it is the major reason reason why I am so disappointed with LTK. I think it could have been a great film, and in fact, I wouldn't object to it being remade; assuming of course that the producers can find a suitable actor to play Bond. :v
Davi practically steals the film as Bond's mirror image.
Am I the only one who got a laugh over the fact that Davi played 007 in the ladies screen tests and, according to John Glen, was actually quite impressive as our favorite secret agent.
Mirror image indeed.
"We're not a country club, 007!"
Why do you think the Roger Moore Bonds were such big box office hits? Because they conciously rejected the tone of the novels and became tongue-in-cheek travelogues, with more light-hearted elements, making the franchise accessible to general movie going non-Fleming fans.
What the vast majority (i.e. those who haven't read the novels) of Bond fans and general action junkies expect from Bond is very different to what is contained in the novels, so by rejecting them and playing to popular tastes, the films have become successful in their own right, not just because they were "inspired" by the books.
For me, the films have become a different, more playfal and fantastical, genre than the books, usually featuing a charming, sauve, and unruffable James Bond (Connery, Moore). The Bond of the movies is cool, the one of the novels, like Dalton who tried to ape them, is not.
I had these fond memories of it as being this marvellously brooding, gritty 'realistic' Bond.
Now I think it had a poor script, a ridiculously over the top 'serious' performance by Timothy Dalton and dull locations. I don't think even Fleming would have thout much of it as it is distinctly 'un-exotic'.
All my opinion of course, and I still rate TLD highly, whatever Dan says!
Good for you for rewatching LTK before making a call on it. I saw it in the theater, just once. I distinctly remember walking out of the theater and saying to my friends that the franchise is dead.
I have purchased the Bond collection on DVD. LTK is sitting there in the mix, mocking me, daring me to open it's case and cast my eyes onto it's ugliness. It whispers to me daily, "insult your intelligence Smoke -play me, play me." At least I think it's LTK that's doing the whispering, it could be Octopussy or Moonraker -I'm not entirely sure.
Seriously though, I will watch LTK this very weekend -and respond with something that hopefully carries a little more substance than my 80's take that the 'franchise is dead'.
PS To my dear board members...If my viewing LTK should cause me to fall into a coma or induce a severe stroke , please let my wife and kids know I loved them.
Totally agree with you bigzilcho. I think Davi is a fabulous villain, Bonds true nemesis. I think too much emphasis is placed on the fact he is 'only a drug dealer'. Personally I could imagine Davi as part of Spectre!
LTK is still one of my favourites. I dont think it has aged particularly well but few Bond films really do. As someone has already pointed out they are fairly indicitive of the time in which they were made and as such are a little bit of movie history.
Dalton was fabulous and took Bond back to a
recognisable place and layed the foundations for the next 20 years IMO.
Oh, and my main reason for rating LTK so highly, NOBODY looks as good as Dalton did in a wet suit!
As for the popularity of LTK, who cares. I do not have a high opinion of the general publics intelligence or taste in movies.
Can we agree, though, that LTK, good movie or no, had one of the weaker title songs?
Yes, I find my only problem with the Dalton Bonds is when he uses gadgets, that never seems right. And one thing about LTK, while it is cool to see Q as a field operative, this doesn't seem like the right movie, it deteriorates Bond's outsider status as it is presented in this flick.
Whoever made "If you ask me to" made a great song as well.
So you're the one!
:x
Haha! Good answer Krassno, and 'twas all in fun...frankly I feel kinship with all Bond fans, and I'm glad you like the song, perhaps I shall discover a newfound appreciation next time I listen to my CD, for it will remind me of your wit.{[]
Diane Warren wrote the song; Patti LaBelle did the vocal.
Anyway, this post gave me an idea. I wonder if I'll ever have the free time to do it, but one of these days I'd like to run through a sample of favourite-films on this forum and come up with a statistically representative average.
I'll let you know if I ever get a result.
I agree with you, I hated that song. But I will grant that everybody has different tastes in music. Personally, my favourite style of music is the Big Band type of music (if it ain't got brass, it ain't worth listening to), and as a result I loved the theme from Goldfinger.
"Too much Fleming is a bad thing in the real world", now that sounded funny and false.
One thing though, LTK really did NOT feel like a Bond movie, but I always enjoy watching it.
The only reason I enjoy it is because of Robert Davi though.
"Better make that two."
It's high on my list and probably always will be because Licence To Kill incorporated several elements from Ian Fleming's writings into it's plotline.The very idea of Bond going rogue and avenging his friend Felix comes directly from the Live and Let Die novel-including Felix's being fed to a shark.The only big change in the villains in LTK is that that in this movie the Bad Guy is a Latin drug lord.Pretty much everything else reflects Fleming,including the note on Felix's nearly dead body,the one that reads,"he disagreed with something that ate him".
In looks style and attitude Franz Sanchez is closely modeled on Ian Fleming's version of Francisco Scaramanga.All Sanchez really lacks is a golden gun to make the picture complete.Robert Davi really gives this character a dark and cold-blooded quality perfectly in tune with Fleming's best villains.
I've always thought Dalton was exceptional as James Bond and especially like his performance in this film.Not everyone likes Tim and maybe it's because he isn't similar to Roger or Pierce,but in my opinion he's very much like James Bond as Ian Fleming usually describes him in the novels.That's something I've always appreciated.
Considering the time in which this movie was made,there's really a lot of Ian Fleming on the screen--and I think that's not only a good thing but positively essential for a great James Bond film.The screenplay could've used another polish but just as it was being written, a screenwriter's strike affected the entire industry and what had been started by union member Richard Maibaum was completed by producer Michael Wilson.In those circumstances,I think it came out pretty well.
If it there ever comes a time when Eon decides to completely jettison Fleming from their films,I think it'd be terrible because they'll be destroying their franchise.James Bond films without any trace of Ian Fleming will be little more than expensive James Bond imitations,and I can't see the point in Eon ever making movies like those,not when they have the real thing to work with--the element that makes Eon's motion pictures unique among other adventure films.
Just re-watching LTK i find him wearingly dour and frankly bordering on the psychotic. If that is Fleming then you and I are interpreting the source material quite differently! (which of course is entirely possible
It was so bad -it was almost cult status enjoyable. I would actually watch LTK again because it's so bad it's funny.
I could fill this page with instances of bad acting, cheesey one-liners, physical impossibilites.
Here's what I did like in LTK...
1) The Bond girls..Carey Lowell and Taliso Soto looked great in some scenes. Carey Lowell's acting needed work, but there are worse actresses who have played Bond girls.
2) The scene with Bond on the cocaine conveyor almost getting crushed was pretty good.
3) Robert Davi was a great villain.
I want to set something straight regarding the shark tank scene and it's inspiration being from the Novel 'Live and Let Die.' If you want to say 'Live and Let Die' inspired the afore mentioned scene thats fine. But the scene in LTK came nowhere close to matching the suspense, or capturing the emotion that Fleming painted with his words in the novel with Bond facing off in that warehouse against the Robber.