Despite being a fantastic Bond, Timothy Dalton's James Bond movies never succeeded in the way that the studio had hoped for. 41-year-old Timothy Dalton succeeded the 58-year-old Roger Moore as 007 in 1987's The Living Daylights, which felt like a revitalization of the franchise after the aging Moore's Bond movies had bordered on self-parody. To counteract the overt comic tone of the later Moore movies, Dalton brought a degree of grit to the role that returned the character to his darker roots in the original Ian Fleming novels.
Unfortunately, Dalton only had one more outing after The Living Daylights, 1989's License to Kill, when legal issues between MGM Studios and EON Productions derailed future entries for his incarnation. However, while the circumstances of Dalton's departure from Bond were largely out of his hands, his Bond movies are two of the lowest performing franchise entries. 1989's License to Kill is the lowest-performing official Bond movie ever, grossing $156.22 million at the time of release. It's clear from the positive response to the later Daniel Craig movies that audiences weren't quite ready for a darker, harder-edged 007, leading to the poor performance of Dalton's underrated Bond movies.
Why Timothy Dalton's James Bond Movies Are So Good
Timothy Dalton's Bond movies restored an edge to the character that had been missing from Roger Moore's portrayal. The Living Daylights firmly repositioned the franchise in a recognizable real world, taking place in the closing stages of the Cold War. The climax of the movie sees Dalton's James Bond team up with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to defeat a Soviet plot, mirroring real-world political events as British and American intelligence services armed and trained the Mujahideen to drive Soviet forces out of the Middle East.
However, while Daylights was more rooted in reality than recent Bond movies, it also knew how to have fun. One of the best action set-pieces is when Bond and Kara escape from the KGB on a cello case, a chase sequence that could be ridiculous, but actually emphasizes Bond's ability to improvise without the need for outlandish gadgets as in the Moore era. However, LIcense to Kill pushes the harder, grittier material too far. Again, Bond relies less on the gadgets provided by Q and defeats the villain by setting him alight with a cigarette lighter - one of the James Bond franchise's darkest kills.
In a James Bond revenge movie that precedes Daniel Craig's Quantum of Solace, Bond is suspended from MI6 for going rogue in avenging his friend Felix Leiter, following the death and implied sexual assault of his wife. 007's revenge mission against drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) brings the franchise into the 1980s by placing the character of James Bond in a gangster movie which is clearly more inspired by the success of Brian De Palma's Scarface remake from 1983 or Charles Bronson's Death Wish than it is by the work of Ian Fleming.
In attempting to stay true to the franchise while also making the character of James Bond relevant again, License to Kill is a failure. However, it's a fascinating failure, as it does predict the Daniel Craig Bond movies and their harder edge. The Dalton Bond movies are much better than the actor's short tenure suggests, and despite the poor box office performance, the studio were still keen for more from Timothy Dalton.
Why Timothy Dalton's James Bond Movies Underperformed
On release in 1987, The Living Daylights was the 15th consecutive official James Bond film since 1962. It's entirely likely that audiences were experiencing franchise fatigue, especially as 58-year-old Roger Moore was no match for 1980s action stars like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Action movies had moved on considerably in the 1980s, they were more muscular, more brutal, and the mannered, debonair James Bond didn't fit in alongside John Rambo or the Terminator.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2020, Dalton reflected on how the franchise tried to keep up with the action icons of the 1980s by going back to basics. "Connery was shocking. And his movies were shocking. [...] heroes did not shoot unarmed people. But Connery did, and he was tough." However, he soon realized that audiences were comfortable with the humor of the Roger Moore movies and were left cold by Dalton's more grounded performance. Therefore, the Bond franchise didn't do enough to win over action fans at the box office and, in the process, alienated long-term Bond audiences, leading to the poor performance of Dalton's two movies.
Why Timothy Dalton Didn't Make A Third James Bond Movie
The poor performance of License to Kill at the box office had nothing to do with Dalton being replaced by the original fourth Bond, Pierce Brosnan in 1995. Dalton's third Bond movie, and the 17th overall, was announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990, but pre-production was soon derailed by a legal dispute that would halt future Bond projects until a settlement was reached. The legal dispute was between Danjaq - the company that owned the rights to the franchise - and MGM - the parent company of the Bond movies' distributor United Artists.
When MGM and United Artists were bought as part of a merger by Pathé Entertainment, the CEO Giancarlo Parretti looked to the Bond franchise as a way to fund a buyout of the company. This involved selling international broadcasting rights at a low-price, in breach of their contract with Danjaq and 's producers. The legal wrangling between the two companies was finally resolved in 1992, by which time Timothy Dalton's seven-year contract had expired. Declining to return for more than one movie after such a long gap in production, he was replaced by Pierce Brosnan in 1995's GoldenEye.
Daniel Craig's Bond Is What Timothy Dalton Could've Been
From Casino Royale onward, Daniel Craig picked up where Timothy Dalton left off in taking the franchise back to the brutality and danger of Sean Connery's 007. In SPECTRE, Craig and Dave Bautista essentially recreate the train fight between Connery and Robert Shaw that had wowed Dalton when he saw From Russia With Love. As with Dalton, Daniel Craig's Bond inherited a franchise that had become tired and, thanks to Mike Myers' Austin Powers character, had become a bit of a joke.
If things had been different, Timothy Dalton could have been allowed to reinvent the franchise in the way that Craig was. Like Craig, Dalton had the of his producer Cubby Broccoli in pursuing a darker, edgier version of the character, but wasn't able to properly pursue it due to circumstances out of his control. Daniel Craig had a similarly bumpy start to the role, with the lauded Casino Royale being followed by the derided Quantum of Solace, but there were no legal obstacles in the way to prevent the Craig Bond from progressing to his memorable No Time to Die ending.
However, the disappointing box office takings for The Living Daylights and License to Kill suggest that, had there been no legal dispute between Danjaq and MGM, Bond 17 would have still struggled. It's clear from the response to GoldenEye after the 6-year hiatus that franchise fatigue played a role in the failure of Timothy Dalton's James Bond movies. It's ironic and disappointing that Dalton's brilliant efforts to revitalize the franchise happened at a time when nobody was paying attention. However, it should never be forgotten that he laid the groundwork for Daniel Craig's iconic era as 007.
