92 replies to this topic

[iBond]

If Licence to Kill had a better advertising campaign, do you think the film would have done any better than it did? I mean, I understand nothing would have changed with the film other than the titles and all, but at the same time, do you think the advertising campaign would have brought more people to come see the movie? I mean, don't get me wrong, I do like some of the advertisements for the film, but some could have been so much better. My least favorite would have to be this one...I mean, come on! Talk about poor Photoshop! It makes you wish they had stuck with the previous campaign and just changed the title for the film somehow without damaging the Pop Peak artwork. Sucks...

http://img194.images...killver3xlg.jpg

[Byron]

I think the Bob Peak campaign would have definately helped the film do better at the b.o (by how much one can only guess). It was certainly unique, hard edged and eye-catching. In the pre-internet age, it would have generated more interest in the moviegoer than the totally uninspiring campaign LTK ended up with.

I always wonder how the powers that be could have stuffed up so many elements of this film. The change in location from China to Mexico certainly didn't help. Neither did changing the title of the film from Licence Revoked to LTK. Or the problems associated with British and US spelling of Licence. Or the low budget, bland sets and locations. Finally the marketing campaign is probably the worst in the series.

It's like they deliberately wanted Dalton and this film to fail.

[jaguar007]

Back in 89 I only saw 2 TV commercials advertising LTK, and they were aired during BOnd movies that were being shown on ABC. I also never saw the trailer in the theater, it should have been shown with films like Batman, Indy 3 etc.

[Syndicate]

Back in 89 I only saw 2 TV commercials advertising LTK, and they were aired during BOnd movies that were being shown on ABC. I also never saw the trailer in the theater, it should have been shown with films like Batman, Indy 3 etc.

I don't remember did I ever see it during when a Bond movie on ABC. But I remember seeing it one, and it was on a weekday during the late afternoon. That when there was no network stuff on, even for the local station that showed the network stuff.

[iBond]

I think the Bob Peak campaign would have definately helped the film do better at the b.o (by how much one can only guess). It was certainly unique, hard edged and eye-catching. In the pre-internet age, it would have generated more interest in the moviegoer than the totally uninspiring campaign LTK ended up with.

I always wonder how the powers that be could have stuffed up so many elements of this film. The change in location from China to Mexico certainly didn't help. Neither did changing the title of the film from Licence Revoked to LTK. Or the problems associated with British and US spelling of Licence. Or the low budget, bland sets and locations. Finally the marketing campaign is probably the worst in the series.

It's like they deliberately wanted Dalton and this film to fail.

I agree. I mean I'm surprised that Cubby didn't do anything or have any input in the last-minute poster design change. I mean, maybe this was due to his declining health, but still, if I were him and had made 15 previous films, I would say wither the new campaign should change or go. But then again, maybe he just got to the point where he didn't care anymore and just wanted to focus on the film itself. I'm not even sure if Broccoli had a say in any of the poster campaigns, who knows. But yeah, if he did, he really dropped the ball with this one.

And, about deliberately wanting Dalton to fail, I can't say I fully agree with that, but it does make sense what with the spelling of Licence as you said earlier, the poor add campaign and all that, but it was really Dalton who sold the role that most people didn't like. I guess it veered too much into unknown territory for the typical Bond fan to compete with Batman, Leathal Weapon 2, etc. but then again, who knew. But yeah, the problem with society these days, is that people, at least in America, always judge a movie by its poster.

Edited by iBond, 15 April 2011 - 08:54 PM.

[jaguar007]

I realize I'm in the minority, but I prefer this poster to the Bob Peak conceptual art; it's certainly better than the one-sheet the U.S. markets got in the lead-up to the release of the film, though not as good as the teaser poster (which I thought had a classic tagline).

I agree with you, I like the UK far better than the US version but also prefer the teaser poster. However I do think better marketing would have helped the film some, perhaps at least up to TLD box office numbers, but it still would not have done much better. I remember telling my boss in 89 that I was going to see the new Bond film and his response was "there is a new BOnd movie out?"

Bigger and better marketing would have helped a bigger opening weekend and let more people know that Bond was back, but really only better word of mouth would have made a significant difference.

[Royal Dalton]

Timing is everything. The Bond films were already on the decline as summer fare. They would have been better off putting the production of the film on hold for six months and prepping it for a Christmas '89 release instead.

[Royal Dalton]

But anyway, I still don't think a 6 month delay would have meant a better quality product.

I think it would. For one thing, Richard Maibaum would have been back on the film. His and Wilson's story treatment (which is 70-odd pages long) has more of a Bondian feel about it. Better dialogue in places, too.

[00 Brosnan]

However, having just said that, I now realize that for the new fans who came of age around GOLDENEYE, the Holiday Season now equals Bond like summer used to equal Bond for those of us alive in the 70's and 80's. Eh, screw the new generation of Bond fans kids. I want 007 back in the summer.

I learn something new every day. I never knew the Bond movies used to be released during the summer as GE was my first.

Dalton was aces in LICENSE TO KILL REVOKED, but the film just was not very good

The truth in terms of Bond films.

[cpt. sir dominic flandry]

The American poster for LTK was abysmal.

[Donovan Mayne-Nicholls]

If Licence to Kill had a better advertising campaign, do you think the film would have done any better than it did? I mean, I understand nothing would have changed with the film other than the titles and all, but at the same time, do you think the advertising campaign would have brought more people to come see the movie? I mean, don't get me wrong, I do like some of the advertisements for the film, but some could have been so much better. My least favorite would have to be this one...I mean, come on! Talk about poor Photoshop! It makes you wish they had stuck with the previous campaign and just changed the title for the film somehow without damaging the Pop Peak artwork. Sucks...

I realize I'm in the minority, but I prefer this poster to the Bob Peak conceptual art; it's certainly better than the one-sheet the U.S. markets got in the lead-up to the release of the film, though not as good as the teaser poster (which I thought had a classic tagline).

Look, if a poster with Dalton, scowling at the viewer, saying "His bad side is a dangerous place to be" doesn't get you interested in the film, nothing will.

Having said that, I don't believe a different poster or marketing campaign would have made a difference in the box office. There are just too many movies to list that have had significantly less marketing budget or exposure, much less the 27-year/15-film head start that LICENSE TO KILL REVOKED had, and still managed to make a lot of money.

If you take away the controversy of whether or not the marketing was adequate or not, the bottom line is that word-of-mouth on the film was not good enough to keep the film in the Top Five for more than one week in the United States, even after films such as INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE and BATMAN had been out for 4-7 weeks.

My stance on the film is well known, so I wont' go on at length. I think it's extremely weak overall, with only a few places that are really outstanding. We have to accept the public's judgement; sometimes the audience does get it right, and in this case they rendered the correct verdict. John Glen's direction was woeful, the acting was the worst of the series, the titles were lame, the song was uninspired...it was a bad film that came out at a time that could almost not have been worse for the studio. That's actually a hard thing for me to say, because I feel bad for almost everyone involved. They didn't set out to make a bad film, but sometimes bad films happen to good people. It was what it was. Most everyone learned from it and moved on.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it a BAD film but yes, it wasn't memorable in pretty much any department. The Bonds have been at their lowest twice, once with LALD/MWGG, then with LTK and both times it's been due to financial matters. If you're going to make a poor man's Bond film, you might as well not make it at all.
They chose Mexico because it was "cheap" (in the end, Mexican crews' inefficiency meant they ended up spending as much as on previous entries rather than saving money, however, less of that money is evident on screen.
Casting was awful. Thank that to Eon's US casting contacts Jenkins and Hirshenson. When posters complain about the likes of Ms Richards or Ms Berry they should remember there was a Bond film where the whole cast was of that calibre. Funny how any non-native actor from Europe (Mikkelsen, Amalric, etc) can act better in English than American actors. Let's not even mention the Mexican supporting players.
For all those reports that Dick Maibaum's contribution was no longer significant during the eighties, this film should make it plainly obvious it was. Left to his own devices, Mr Wilson's screenwriting is devoid of style. Couldn't they find a decent English screenwriter who wasn't a member of the "American" Writer's Guild to make the thing more palatable? In every aspect they were cheapening it out.

[iBond]

I do get a very American feel about this film, but back to the topic at hand, yeah I think the poster campaign could have been much better than what it ended up to be. Mind you, my first Bond movie I ever saw was GoldenEye and I was about 9 at the time. So, I was technically born during Timothy Dalton's tenure, but not really able to know what the heck was going on around me other than family and traveling. So yeah. However, I must say that I really appreciate the poster below. I remember seeing it in Cubby's office during an interview with him on a special feature on one of the special edition DVDs. The golden gun in Dalton's hands is pretty awesome! And, in addition to it coming out in the summer, as did most action films did and still do, we know Eon was aiming for an American-themed Bond film. Hence it taking place in Florida.

Edited by iBond, 19 April 2011 - 02:14 AM.

[sthgilyadgnivileht]

I think it was the intensity of the campaign more than anything else. The impression I get was that in the states the film just wasn't really sold as it should of been (although not living in America I can't say for sure). Certainly in the UK whilst there was NO DOUBT everyone knew that Dalton's second Bond was around complete with a big change in style and a controversial 15 certificate etc, it was Batman that was the summer film to see in the UK. I remember the Batman black and orange logo was EVERYWHERE. So was Prince's theme, which was radio played to the max (akin to a-ha and Duran Duran's themes for the two preceding films). Broccoli later admitted the intensity of the campaign surprised him, and it must have had some influence on how future blockbusters were marketed generally.

For all those reports that Dick Maibaum's contribution was no longer significant during the eighties, this film should make it plainly obvious it was. Left to his own devices, Mr Wilson's screenwriting is devoid of style. Couldn't they find a decent English screenwriter who wasn't a member of the "American" Writer's Guild to make the thing more palatable? In every aspect they were cheapening it out.

I agree with your comments on Maibuam. I guess it can/could be seen as cheapening by not bringing in another writer and I have thought this myself. However, I think though it would have been slightly uncharacteristic of Broccoli to bring someone new to the film quite late in production. I think Broccoli liked to work with people he could trust not to harm the series or take it too far out the remit of being a Bond film. Whatever opinions people have of the film LTK was very much an Eon Bond movie. Hence it makes sense to me that Wilson would carry on alone.

[Syndicate]

I'll say from some of the stuff I read, Mexico can't be that bad can it. From what I read or heard before, Clear And Present Danger is filmed in Mexico, for the parts that set in Columbia. It not that safe to go film on the streets of Columbia, unless it the very touristy areas right. The UK poster is some what better then the U.S. one. I remember reading somewhere that on the U.S. poster, it not even Dalton's body on it. It one of those where the head is the stars, that happen for the movie Pretty Woman. On the poster it not Richard Gere and Julia Robert's body. Is that the same thing on the UK poster, where Dalton is running.

[Revelator]

The answer to the question posed by this thread is an obvious yes. Take a look at that poster and imagine that you're seeing it in '89, on the outside of a movie theater. Would that poster make you excited about the film, or even curious? Everything about it is maladroit, down to the bland blue background. They even chose the stiffest possible running pose to use for Dalton. And could the tag-line be any more uninspired? A good movie poster either relies on a simple iconic image that has potent symbolic value (like the bat-symbol poster for the '89 Batman) or entices the viewer with splashy, arresting arrangement of detail and color (as in the best Bond posters). That LTK poster fails on the latter level, and the film's other promotional art is just as generic. Effective advertising is worth far more to a blockbuster than word of mouth, and when the advertising lacks confidence and is visually phlegmatic, then the public assumes the same about the film. The failure to mount an even-semi memorable ad campaign was doubly harmful in LTK's case, since the public hadn't taken to Dalton in TLD, the Bond series' grosses on the whole had been sliding downward since '83, and a host of fresher action-hero stars were crowding the marketplace in a volume never seen before. The advertising had to work against all these factors, and it was already feeble to start with. The American public learned to re-appreciate Bond after it had glutted itself on Schwarzenegger/Stallone/Willis films to the point of wanting something different. Unfortunately, that point came too late for Dalton.

[iBond]

I also noticed that they don't even mention Gladys Knight's name on the poster. This is also pretty rare.

Edited by iBond, 19 April 2011 - 10:06 PM.

[jaguar007]

I think it was the intensity of the campaign more than anything else. The impression I get was that in the states the film just wasn't really sold as it should of been (although not living in America I can't say for sure). Certainly in the UK whilst there was NO DOUBT everyone knew that Dalton's second Bond was around complete with a big change in style and a controversial 15 certificate etc, it was Batman that was the summer film to see in the UK. I remember the Batman black and orange logo was EVERYWHERE. So was Prince's theme, which was radio played to the max (akin to a-ha and Duran Duran's themes for the two preceding films). Broccoli later admitted the intensity of the campaign surprised him, and it must have had some influence on how future blockbusters were marketed generally.

Here in the US it was not just the quality of the promotion of the film, but the quantity of the promotion. I remember seeing the teaser poster at the theater in late spring, but it was down by early summer (a month before the film opened) to make room to promote other films. Every movie I went to see in the theater in 89 I had hoped I would see the trailer, I never did. There were not many TV commercials either. It was just not promoted well. However most people I knew who did know there was a new Bond movie coming out, just really didn't care.

For comparasion, here is the lovely US poster

[iBond]

However most people I knew who did know there was a new Bond movie coming out, just really didn't care....

For comparasion, here is the lovely US poster

Curious, but were they fellow Bond fans at the time? I mean, that is if you were a Bond fan just as much as you are today.

[jaguar007]

Curious, but were they fellow Bond fans at the time? I mean, that is if you were a Bond fan just as much as you are today.

Well I was just as big of a Bond fan then as I am now . Most people I knew were not Bond fans but had seen several of the films (average moviegoer). I drug many of my friends to see the film but if I had not, they would never had seen it on their own.

[Syndicate]

I was a Bond fan since 1983 in the fall when I was in 5th grade. I don't care if friends or family members don't want to go want to go see it. That is after I have asked them once already. Don't want to ask again. Before whoever will say it over kill doing that.

[sthgilyadgnivileht]

I think it was the intensity of the campaign more than anything else. The impression I get was that in the states the film just wasn't really sold as it should of been (although not living in America I can't say for sure). Certainly in the UK whilst there was NO DOUBT everyone knew that Dalton's second Bond was around complete with a big change in style and a controversial 15 certificate etc, it was Batman that was the summer film to see in the UK. I remember the Batman black and orange logo was EVERYWHERE. So was Prince's theme, which was radio played to the max (akin to a-ha and Duran Duran's themes for the two preceding films). Broccoli later admitted the intensity of the campaign surprised him, and it must have had some influence on how future blockbusters were marketed generally.

Here in the US it was not just the quality of the promotion of the film, but the quantity of the promotion. I remember seeing the teaser poster at the theater in late spring, but it was down by early summer (a month before the film opened) to make room to promote other films. Every movie I went to see in the theater in 89 I had hoped I would see the trailer, I never did. There were not many TV commercials either. It was just not promoted well. However most people I knew who did know there was a new Bond movie coming out, just really didn't care.

For comparasion, here is the lovely US poster

I've always liked that American poster - much better than what we got in the UK.
It's a pity there was not a greater LTK campaign. Obviously it's too late to know if it would have increased the performance of the film, but It seems in the US the film wasn't given the chances it should have got, which is a shame given the new direction it took. For what it's worth I think they probably did misfire with LTK at the time. Whatever the case though the drop in US box office would be easier to accept knowing the film had been sold to the max.

[iBond]

This is actually my favorite poster for Licence to Kill. I would like to have this up in my room.

[jaguar007]

This is actually my favorite poster for Licence to Kill. I would like to have this up in my room.

I do have this poster, but I don't have it up in my Bond room. I do have the UK version (which I prefer) as well as the teaser poster.

[iBond]

This is actually my favorite poster for Licence to Kill. I would like to have this up in my room.

I do have this poster, but I don't have it up in my Bond room...

Your Bond room? I'd love to see this room! hehe

[jaguar007]

Your Bond room? I'd love to see this room! hehe

This is an older picture so some of the posters have been changed around.


It is hard to tell, but if you look closely, my LTK teaser poster has the original US spelling of "License"

[Byron]

This is actually my favorite poster for Licence to Kill. I would like to have this up in my room.

I do have this poster, but I don't have it up in my Bond room. I do have the UK version (which I prefer) as well as the teaser poster.

In my view both the US & UK versions are rubbish. The teaser was the only decent one.
There was also alternative artwork on a small-sized flyer that i have, which was much better. It has Dalton standing, in a suit but looking slightly disheveled with a weary, tired expression on his face. There is some sort of tag line. It's quite a moody image much better than the final artwork.
Searched but can't find this image online.

And here is an article on the rejected artwork and the reasons why the top brass didn't want them. They stuffed up big time imo. They rejected so much interesting artwork and went ahead with such bland in-house MGM crap.

Attached Files

•  LicenceRevoked.jpg   602.66KB   41 downloads

[00 Brosnan]

This is an older picture so some of the posters have been changed around.


It is hard to tell, but if you look closely, my LTK teaser poster has the original US spelling of "License"

Very impressive!

In my view both the US & UK versions are rubbish. The teaser was the only decent one.
There was also alternative artwork on a small-sized flyer that i have, which was much better. It has Dalton standing, in a suit but looking slightly disheveled with a weary, tired expression on his face. There is some sort of tag line. It's quite a moody image much better than the final artwork.
Searched but can't find this image online.

And here is an article on the rejected artwork and the reasons why the top brass didn't want them. They stuffed up big time imo. They rejected so much interesting artwork and went ahead with such bland in-house MGM crap.

I agree, I think all of those posters minus the second one titled "Elle Bond" (which looks like a cheap photoshop image) are much better than what was actually put out.

[iBond]

This is actually my favorite poster for Licence to Kill. I would like to have this up in my room.

I do have this poster, but I don't have it up in my Bond room. I do have the UK version (which I prefer) as well as the teaser poster.

In my view both the US & UK versions are rubbish. The teaser was the only decent one.
There was also alternative artwork on a small-sized flyer that i have, which was much better. It has Dalton standing, in a suit but looking slightly disheveled with a weary, tired expression on his face. There is some sort of tag line. It's quite a moody image much better than the final artwork.
Searched but can't find this image online.

Oh, I think I know which one you're talking about. And if it's not the one, it sure fits the description of what you just described.

[sthgilyadgnivileht]

I've got that flyer and the above image of Dalton seems to evoke more about the revenge motif the film used than the UK final poster. I also have an accompanying fifteen page booklet to that flyer which was also part of the UK campaign.

[Col. Sun]

Oh, I think I know which one you're talking about. And if it's not the one, it sure fits the description of what you just described.

That pic of Dalton on the flyer was from a one day post production shoot for a trailer which, sadly, never was used as intended.

Mr. Binder shot a trailer sequence in the GSE (General Screen Enterprises) small Uxbridge studio, (about 10 min drive from Pinewood). The trailer was dark and moody - very noir'ish like the flyer image.

If I recall correctly, Bond, shot in deep shadow, is seen angrily stripping off his tie and jacket, then pulling on his shoulder holster, loading his gun and then turning to camera, his expression intense and mean.

However, in the end , all they used was the gun loading part of the trailer and cut it in between action clips from the film for a US trailer.

It's a shame they did not stick to their guns - but on LTK there was a lot of good intentions and good ideas, but they all got watered down. In truth, I believe MGM was not confident enough in Dalton to truly back him up with a darker campaign. And that failure hurt the US box-office.