The best humor with Dalton isn’t the quips. It’s in the exchanges. “Don’t worry, our technicians have spent months perfecting this.” “How many times have you done this?” “You’re the first.” “I must get my cello!” “No way!” *hard cut to an annoyed Dalton waiting in his AM* Also, I wouldn’t say Dalton was too PC compared to Brosnan. There’s a lot of sexism in his treatment of Pam in LTK to the point that she has to take the initiative. Even when she saves his ass he’s trying to lecture her about how unfit she is. “It’s a tough business you picked, Miss Bouvier. Leave it to the professionals.” Then’s remarks like telling her “it’s a man’s world”. But he’s not a total buffoon about it, once he realizes the scope of it all is when he accepts her as his equal.
I've always been forgiving of the 'It's a man's world' comment given he caveats it by saying they're south of the border. Isthmus City is a man's world, the only women with any notable role or visibility are Lupe and the female Hong Kong narcotics agent. The only other women we see are the hookers arranged for Franz's clients.
Not just that, but the whole interplay in that scene between Bond, Koskov, and Rosika Miklos is priceless. "Pigs! Borscht! Cake!" But the best exchange in the whole film belongs to John Rhys-Davies: "Put him on the next plane to Moscow..." "Oh, thank you, General! Thank you so much—" "...in the diplomatic bag."
I'm glad TLD gave us one last appearance of General Gogol before the actor died and the series moved away from the Cold War. Six appearances has to remain the record for recurring antagonist/troublemaker if we don't count a lead villain like Blofeld.
Yep. His stand-in for A View to a Kill in the scene where Gogol picks up Pola Ivanova and they think they have the right audio cassette recording is atrocious but by 1985 the producers honestly weren't even trying with stunt doubles and stand-ins.
And Freddie Grey, who appeared in the same films. It’s like after TSWLM that Cubby wanted to keep as much of the supporting cast as long as possible even in cameos that don’t serve any other function. It’s only LTK where that streak was broken. I imagine Freddie would have had a bigger panic attack than usual. “Bond did what?! The PM won’t like this!”
I love that their presence maintained in-universe continuity even when previous films weren't referenced.
I think a lot of that was MGW's doing. Just by going off of things I've heard him say over the years, he seems to appreciate good world-building.
Yeah, even the most ardent defenders of the recasting(which I have no problems with, either) just say something like: "Hey, Dench is a fabulous actress and we all loved her in the Brosnan films so why not? Just go with it."
Then you have to get brain ache trying to work out if she's the same M or a different one? (I mean obviously a different one but you know what I mean!) In Goldeneye you get the impressions of her as an accountant, a bean counter as she describes herself, a bureaucrat, whereas Skyfall indicates a woman with significant history in espionage. Having a painting of Robert Brown's M in NTTD just increases the headaches!
Yeah, all I can say about that is that in this timeline Admiral Hargreaves was also the head of MI-6 before Dench's M, or at least someone who looked very much like him.
And didn’t Skyfall also establish that she was MI5’s head of division in the Far East in the 1990s, which would mean that she couldn’t have been bossing Brosnan-Bond around in London during that time?
He’d been a better Tony Stark too. Walter Gotel was the man with the cap in the boat chase in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE if memory serves. Speaking of which, I hope the next film is a period piece. No SPECTRE, at least not right away.
We'll probably get a streaming series set in the present but with less flash and fewer over-the-top plots. I get the feeling they'll keep Bond in the 21st century storywise but make him more down-to-Earth with more grounded plots possibly written as a season-long arc on a streaming service.
I don’t see that happening, unless Eon make a big u-turn https://www.slashfilm.com/581324/bond-movies-streaming/
A lot of streaming content tends to be. But if it ever goes that route I hope they have better ideas than a lot of the one-hour action dramas out there.