1 reply to this topic

[brendan007]

As most of us know Licence To Kill had the highest test screening scores of all the Bond films, but turned out to be the lowest attended Bond film. So if it was so well liked why did people stay away in droves?
My personal opinion is the problem with test screenings themselves.
As far as i know people are chosen at random for these things, with little regard to whether they are the target audience for the type of film or not.
So if this group of people attending the screening are just regular movie goers, they might not necessarily be bond fans, and therefore have no set expectations of what to expect from a Bond movie.
If that is true it ties in with my opinion of Licence To Kill; its a fairly good action adventure, but it's just not Bond.
So while the film might have pleased regular audiences back then, it wasnt what Bond fans were looking for, and they stayed away because of it.
Anyone think that makes sense, or am i talking dribble?

[Jaelle]

Originally posted by brendan007
As most of us know Licence To Kill had the highest test screening scores of all the Bond films, but turned out to be the lowest attended Bond film. So if it was so well liked why did people stay away in droves?
My personal opinion is the problem with test screenings themselves.  
As far as i know people are chosen at random for these things, with little regard to whether they are the target audience for the type of film or not.
So if this group of people attending the screening are just regular movie goers, they might not necessarily be bond fans, and therefore have no set expectations of what to expect from a Bond movie.
If that is true it ties in with my opinion of Licence To Kill; its a fairly good action adventure, but it's just not Bond.
So while the film might have pleased regular audiences back then, it wasnt what Bond fans were looking for, and they stayed away because of it.
Anyone think that makes sense, or am i talking dribble?

I'm not dismissing your point but one must ask: what about the test screenings for all previous Bond films (and subsequent ones)? See, this is the problem if you focus too much of the fault on the test audience for LTK. There was nothing particularly novel about the makeup of those audiences when compared to the audiences rounded up for, say, FYEO, TSWLM, MR, OP, TLD, GE and so on.

For the record I've gone to two test screenings here in NYC. Both times I was waiting to meet a friend in front of a big movie theater on the upper west side here in NYC. There were a couple of young people handing out passes to free test screenings of two unnamed films. My friend and I decided to go for it. (Both these screenings took place months apart in the year 2000). The first was for the remake of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST and the second was for THE SHIPPING NEWS. In both cases, the print we were shown had no musical score yet and no opening or closing credits.

At the end, we were asked to write down our impressions. And then one of the studio staff people asked for specific types of people in the audience to stay a little longer for further questioning (mostly younger people).