Dalton versus Brosnan

After an appearance in the 1993 film Naked in New York, Timothy Dalton made a TV movie called Red Eagle (aka Lie Down with Lions). Red Eagle (which also featured Jürgen Prochnow and Omar Sharif) was a spy drama based on a book by Ken Follett. It was a strangely jarring experience to see Timothy Dalton in such a cheapjack spy film after Daylights and Licence To Kill. Dalton then signed to play Rhett Butler in Scarlett - a TV miniseries sequel to Gone with the Wind. The cast of Scarlett included Sean Bean. Unknown to anyone at the time, Bean was soon to become one of the actors vying to replace Dalton as 007. While on the set of Scarlett, Timothy Dalton read the Michael France Bond 17 draft called Goldeneye. Dalton enjoyed the script and thought it would make a good film. He knew that he needed to make a decision regarding his participation in Bond 17. Things were moving fast and they needed to know if he was in or out.

Timothy Dalton now made the decision not to return as James Bond. Many years later he said that his decision was prompted by the fact that he only wanted to come back and make one more film whereas EON didn't see the point of this. "Cubby Broccoli asked if I would come back," said Dalton, "and I said, 'Well, I've actually changed my mind a little bit. I think that I'd love to do one. Try and take the best of the two that I have done, and consolidate them into a third.' And he said, quite rightly, 'Look, Tim. You can't do one. There's no way, after a five-year gap between movies that you can come back and just do one. You'd have to plan on four or five.' And I thought, oh, no, that would be the rest of my life. Too much. Too long. So I respectfully declined."

In April 1994, Timothy Dalton released a statement confirming the end of his tenure as Bond. 'Even though the producers have always made it clear to me that they want me to resume my role in their next James Bond feature, I have now made this difficult decision. As an actor, I believe it is now time to leave that wonderful image behind and accept the challenge of new ones. The Broccolis have been good to me as producers. They have been more special as friends.' EON released their own statement in which they said - 'We have never thought of anyone but Timothy as the star of the 17th James Bond film. We understand his reasons and we will honor his decision.'

MGM's John Calley was straight out of the gate with his own statement about Timothy Dalton's resignation from the most famous role in cinema. 'While we were sorry to learn of Timothy Dalton’s decision regarding the role of James Bond, we are proceeding with the project as planned and will meet our targeted summer 1995 release date.' One could be forgiven for suspecting that Calley was less than sincere when he said MGM were sorry to learn of Dalton's departure! The obvious question, still debated by Bond fans to this day, is the question of whether Dalton jumped of his own free will or was pushed overboard by studio pressure. It's hard to say with absolute certainty one way or the other.

Some have alleged that Dalton was fired but then allowed to release a statement saying he left of his own free will as a courtesy. That though doesn't sound like something Cubby Broccoli would allow to happen. The evidence for this conspiracy theory is sometimes cited as the fact that Dalton was a pallbearer at Cubby's funeral a few years later but never signed any Bond merchandise with an MGM logo. The alleged subtext is presumably that Dalton was loyal to the Broccoli family but had a grudge against MGM. If Dalton was actually fired at the behest of MGM you'd imagine he probably would have spoken about it by now though. Enough time has passed and Dalton is not exactly a shrinking violet.

Another conspiracy that has been floated is the allegation that MGM told EON they would not allocate a third Dalton film a high budget but WOULD sanction a big budget with a new actor. In some versions of this story, MGM pull the nuclear option and say they will not fund a new James Bond film at all if Dalton is involved! While it is true that in such a scenario EON's hands would have been tied (they were obviously in no position to fund and distribute a Bond film on their own) it still doesn't seem very likely that Cubby Broccoli and EON would have participated in any move to throw Timothy Dalton to the sharks.

Most people seem to think that Timothy Dalton's decision to leave was simply a mutual agreement. Dalton felt too much time had passed since Licence To Kill and he didn't want to be tied down to another Bond contract. He was in his late forties now and probably had little desire to throw himself back into the Bond circus again. EON would almost certainly have allowed him to come back if he'd wanted to but perhaps in the end EON, like MGM, were happy to have a fresh slate for was clearly going to be a pivotal film in the franchise. Goldeneye was going to be the first Bond film for six years. The franchise had never endured such a long gap between movies. Would anyone still care about Bond when the new film came out? That was the question EON and MGM must have asked themselves.

In 1994 a $100 million James Cameron action spy film called True Lies was released. True Lies starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Harry Tasker, a secret agent for a U.S. intelligence agency named Omega Sector. The opening of True Lies has Schwarzenegger emerging from a pond in scuba gear to reveal a white tuxedo underneath like Sean Connery in the Goldfinger PTS. True Lies (though it seems rather dated nowadays and has a draggy subplot involving Jamie Lee Curtis, grating comic relief from Tom Arnold, and some distinctly un-PC elements that wouldn't fly today) was rather alarming to MGM and EON when it appeared because it was a reminder of the sort of competition they would face. True Lies had spectacular action sequences including a nuclear explosion, Harrier Jump Jet shenanigans, and skyscraper chases on horseback.

The latest draft of the Goldeneye script actually had to be rewritten because of certain similarities to True Lies. It is believed that these changes made Goldeneye leaner and lighter than it had been before. This was not only to avoid story comparisons to True Lies but also to transition the script from Dalton's Bond to a new Bond. The Bond team also decided to make the action bigger in the Goldeneye script for fear of falling behind the times and not competing with movies like True Lies. Goldeneye was not a film that could afford to pussyfoot around or be experimental. It had to hit those classic Bond 'bumps' (as Cubby would say) and hit them with all the force it could muster.

The search for Timothy Dalton's replacement quickly began but it was not to prove the most complex or lengthy task EON had ever faced when it came to finding a new James Bond actor. As ever, a revolving door of young British actors were interviewed or tested. Jason Isaacs, Mark Frankel, Greg Wise, Colin Wells, Jeremy Northam, James Purefoy, Sean Bean, Paul McGann, and Nathaniel Parker were all names mulled over by EON. Another actor on the mind of EON (and also MGM) was Ralph Fiennes - though nothing came of this. "There was a conversation that was great and a meeting with Cubby Broccoli, that was terrific," said Fiennes. "I think that’s all I can say, except that it didn’t lead to anything on both sides. I don’t think I felt ready to commit and I think they were looking at Pierce [Brosnan]." Fiennes would later play M in the Daniel Craig Bond films.

Despite all the interviews and casting calls, a familiar name was always the red hot favourite to take the 007 mantle from Timothy Dalton. Step forward Pierce Brosnan - still only 41 years-old and (here was the REALLY crucial part) acceptable to both EON and MGM. Brosnan didn't even have to audition for the part because EON obviously still had his 1986 screen test in the vault. There was something inevitable about Pierce Brosnan becoming James Bond. It was just something that always seemed destined to happen one day. In May 1994, Brosnan dodged questions linking him to the part of Bond but this was simply misdirection before an official announcement. Brosnan already knew he had the part in the bag.

Pierce Brosnan's only mildly serious rival for Timothy Dalton's tux was said to be Liam Neeson but Neeson wasn't very enthusiastic at all. Neeson said he was heavily 'courted' but ruled himself out of the running. Neeson was about to get married and didn't want to become involved in something as time consuming as making James Bond films. He also had little interest in making action films at the time. Neeson's attitude to appearing in action films would obviously change many years later in the veteran phase of his career. These days Liam Neeson seems to make nothing but action films! I must confess that I never quite understood why Liam Neeson always seemed to be so high on studio lists when it came to Bond. Sure, he's a very fine actor but Neeson never personally struck me as very James Bondish.

In the summer of 1994, in one of the worst kept secrets in the world, Pierce Brosnan was officially announced as the new James Bond. The night before the press conference to announce the new James Bond, Brosnan had been spotted by the media dining in a London restaurant. You probably didn't have to be Hercule Poirot to deduce that Brosnan was in town for the Bond press conference. Brosnan had finally won the part he seemed destined to play from the moment he met Cubby Broccoli on the set of For Your Eyes Only all those years ago. The Bond series had come full circle. Dalton replaced Brosnan and now Brosnan was replacing Dalton.

Believe it or not, there was actually a lot of scepticism regarding Goldeneye before it was released. When the cast was unveiled, the British press noted the abscence of big stars and even suspected that this film was maybe being made on the cheap or something. Nothing could have been further from the actual truth. Goldeneye had a budget of $60 million and was fully commited to reviving the fortunes of the mothballed Bond franchise. Far from hammering the final nail into 007's coffin, Goldeneye sparked a revival in the franchise and made James Bond feel bigger than it had been since the halycon days of Roger Moore battling Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

Goldeneye (with the advantage of a fantastic marketing campaign and a november release) was a huge financial success and ensured that the Bond series would survive and be around for many more years to come. That said though, I must confess to a slight tinge of disappointment after I viewed Goldeneye for the first time. I couldn't help thinking that the two Timothy Dalton films were much more interesting and, well, simply better. I remember being disappointed that the end of the PTS had obvious CGI when Bond is in freefall chasing after the plane. It was a sharp contrast to Timothy Dalton doing real stunts. Still, despite my own personal preference for the Dalton era, Goldeneye made much more money than Daylights or Licence To Kill and got better reviews. An obvious question to ask, and it is one that Bond fans still discuss on forums, is what would Goldeneye have been like with Timothy Dalton? Would it have worked with Dalton?

Not all of Goldeneye would have suited Timothy Dalton but the general story and many parts of the film might have served him very well. You can't really imagine Dalton hanging upside down in the toilet during the PTS to deliver a quip like Brosnan does and you can't really see Dalton's Bond suggestively wrestling with Xenia in the sauna. Scenes like this were fine for Brosnan's Bond and he made them funny but you can't see them working for Dalton. The PTS in Goldeneye with the 'nine years later' caption after the titles would have made more sense with Timothy Dalton because we had seen Dalton's Bond in a Cold War adventure back in the 1980s in The Living Daylights.

Dalton would have been fine I think in the playful Aston Martin chase which begins Goldeneye. As for casting in the film, it's debatable that Sean Bean could have played Trevelyan in a Dalton version of Goldeneye. Bean is twelve years younger than Dalton so Trevelyan might have needed to be a little older if Timothy had made the film. You believe that Brosnan's Bond and Bean's 006 are contemporaries of similar age who have been on many missions together but it would have been more difficult to convey this with Dalton and Bean. It's interesting that EON apparently wanted Alan Rickman to play Trevelyan. Rickman would have made a terrific Trevelyan in a Dalton version of Goldeneye.

If Dalton had made Goldeneye it seems logical to presume that Caroline Bliss would have been back as Moneypenny - which would have been fine. I suspect that even if Dalton had come back, EON would still have cast Judi Dench as the new M. What a prospect that would have been. Dalton and Judi Dench together! It would have been like being at the Old Vic. Michael Kitchen as Tanner would have worked very well with Dalton too in Goldeneye. The Russian scenes would, I feel, have served Dalton very well in Goldeneye. One can easily imagine Dalton's Bond in the errie statue park. Generally, not an awful would have had to change to make Goldeneye a Dalton film rather than a Brosnan film.

There are certainly things Brosnan did better than Dalton - like delivering quips and visual humour. I love the moment in Goldeneye where Brosnan's Bond takes out the assailant on the yacht with precise economy and minimal effort and then nonchalantly dabs at his forehead with a towel. This is the sort of thing that Brosnan would always do better than Dalton. It's a very nice little 'Brosnan Bond' moment. However, there are of course things that Dalton does better than Brosnan. I think Dalton probably would have sold the betrayal by Trevelyan better than Brosnan and given this drama in the story more authenticity and impact.

Even though Goldeneye could plausibly have been an excellent film with Timothy Dalton and a profitable hit (I can't believe that with the 'Bond is Back' novelty of the first film in six years, a november release, and a HUGE marketing blitz that a Timothy Dalton led Goldeneye wouldn't have been anything other than a success at the box-office!) one can still understand why the studio were keen to have a new actor playing James Bond by the time the film neared production. The stars just seemed to align for Brosnan in 1995 in a way that they never quite did for Timothy Dalton. Goldeneye even spawned one of the most famous video games of all time with 1997's classic first person shooter Goldeneye 007. This was a wonderful turn of events for EON because it made James Bond a much more visible brand to young people.

After the release of Goldeneye in 1995, the 007 franchise had a 41 year-old Pierce Brosnan ready, willing, and able to make as many Bond films as they wanted him to do. Brosnan absolutely loved playing James Bond. He'd still be making Bond films today if they'd let him! The conclusion of an alternate universe Timothy Dalton version of Goldeneye though would have left the franchise with a 49 year-old leading man who may or may not have wanted to make the next film. While a Timothy Dalton version of Goldeneye would have been a terrific bonus for Dalton Bond fans it clearly made more commercial and forward thinking sense to begin a new era.

In a perfect world without litigation, Goldeneye would have been Dalton's fourth or fifth and final film rather than his mythical never to happen third movie. There are just times in the Bond franchise where the producers must make changes and look to the future. This was why some Bond fans were frustrated when Barbara Broccoli waited around forever for Daniel Craig to decide if he wanted to make a fifth film. It basically meant we had to wait years for a film featuring a reluctant fiftysomething actor who wouldn't be returning again. It would have made more sense to get the cameras rolling again right after Spectre by launching a new era with a younger actor. You could argue though that Barbara was just being loyal to Craig in the fashion that her father Cubby had been loyal to Dalton all those years ago. She didn't want to make the next film with anyone else.

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