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Roger Moore in LICENCE TO KILL


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#1 coco1997

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 03:31 PM

What if?
 

We know the TLD script was written before Dalton had been cast, though it's safe to assume EON knew Moore wouldn't be returning for an eighth film. Still, there are echoes of the Moore era in TLD--namely the cello chase and the deleted "flying carpet" sequence. It's difficult but not impossible to picture Sir Roger returning once again in 1987.

 

There's also David Hedison as Felix Leiter. By 1989, Hedison hadn't appeared in a Bond film in sixteen (!) years, at which time Moore was Bond. I never felt any chemistry between Dalton and Hedison; EON should have gone with the more familiar though admittedly less charismatic John Terry, who at the very least had shared the screen with Dalton two years prior.

 

We know Sir Roger had a problem with the gratuitous violence in AVTAK, however the violence in LTK is much more severe. The violence in LTK might have completely turned him off from the Bond franchise.

 

What if Dalton had been so poorly received in TLD that EON decided to pull a DAF and immediately recast him with his predecessor?

 

How would the film have been different? LTK is very much a Dalton Bond film, much more so than TLD, in my opinion. With Moore as the lead, would the story be the same? The cast? The characters? The locations?



#2 Dustin

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 04:02 PM

Though question, almost impossible to imagine. The entire revenge motif doesn't sit well with Moore's Bond. He lectured Melina very sensibly and convincing about the consequences of going on the war path for just this reason. Ironically it was in the very same film where he indeed had his most vengeful scene himself. But overall Moore wasn't the Bond to throw all caution to the wind and start a private war. His character to me suggests his comment to most of the sacrificial lambs would be M's lines, that they knew what they were in for.

I think if at all the plot would have seen Bond lend to the CIA, maybe because he had a valuable contact - a la his friend from schooldays in TSWLM - in South America. No Die-Hard violence, instead a remake of LALD's drug plot, maybe how to grow indoor plants with opium or something similar. Gadgets aplenty, can't have Bond risking too much in terms of physical danger without some help. Could be he's breaking the Sanchez' casino and bank with a device from Q, then flirts with his girlfriend and makes her spy on Sanchez. Secret gene laboratory and heroin rubber fig plant detected with girlfriend's help, destroyed, Bond escapes, only to learn she's still in Sanchez hands. He sets out and rescues her. End credits, so on.

#3 plankattack

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 04:07 PM

Story would have been completely different. As for the cast, they could have realistically gone in any direction. Would you surround Sir Rog with a younger adversary, perhaps cowtowing to studio pressure to "attract a wide demographic"? Do you go with a more mature Bond-girl, again to hide the age issues? (doubt that - again studio pressure would be the reason!).

 

I think we would have got another TLD-type film - a plot with "Cold War-spy thriller" intent, but heavily leavened with Sir Rog throwaway lines and moments.

 

Would it have performed any better than LTK did (at least in the US market)? That I'm not so sure about. The late 80s was really when the summer movie season became what it is and I do suspect any Bond film was going to struggle in a market-place dominated by Lethal Weapons, Die Hards, and Arnold-movies. The competition was new and fresh, while Bond was a known commodity.

 

The Bond film went unchanged in style and tone through Sir Rog's tenure. There's no reason for me to think that LTK, or Sir Rog #8, would have been any different from the seven others he starred in. 



#4 coco1997

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 04:21 PM

I think if at all the plot would have seen Bond lend to the CIA, maybe because he had a valuable contact - a la his friend from schooldays in TSWLM - in South America. No Die-Hard violence, instead a remake of LALD's drug plot, maybe how to grow indoor plants with opium or something similar.

 

And following LALD in terms of story (at least loosely) would make it feasible to include the Felix storyline.



#5 Dustin

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 04:37 PM

It would probably turn out as a remake, minus Bond in black polo neck and revolver or it would just turn out too obvious. But with some stunt work shot from afar and some local colour and atmosphere it might pull the YOLT/TSWLM trick one more time.

#6 David_M

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 04:51 PM

 

 

It's difficult but not impossible to picture Sir Roger returning once again in 1987.

 

For me, it is impossible, and I say that as Roger's number 1 fan.

 

Personally, I think "License To Kill" was conceived and produced specifically with Dalton in mind, and engineered to play to his strengths, just as "The Spy Who Loved Me" was the first Moore film that felt like it was written especially for Roger.

 

I think with TLD we saw Dalton's Bond "under construction," with a "kitchen sink" approach that gave us the expected one-liners, upper-crust sophistication (the opera and symphony scenes) and gadgets, but also dipped a toe into more rough-and-tumble stunts and the hard-edged scenes like Bond as the anti-sniper sniper. (And we now know that other changes, like trimmed dialog and the excising of the flying carpet scene, were also part of the "figuring it out" process). Then I think when the dust settled, the producers looked at the whole thing and said, "What worked here and what didn't?"  And at the end of the day, Dalton was competent at the comedy but not as comfy with it as Roger, and while he had nice clothes he didn't wear them with the panache of his predecessors (or successors).  But what he DID do remarkably well was the "hard-edged" stuff...the "You should've brought lilies" scene with Pushkin, the "strawberry jam" line in Bratislava, the "If he fires me, I thank him for it" line, the unusually abrasive exchange with M over Pushkin's "kill" order (by this point, we'd forgotten that Bond and M used to have friction).

 

And then, there's that scene where Saunders is killed, and the balloon rolls up to Bond, and he reads it and pops it with a look of flat-out rage.  And if you saw it with a cinema audience, you know this is when it all clicked into place.  THIS is the moment when I think it sinks in that the old order hath changed, and there's a new sheriff in town.  When was the last time we saw Bond as a truly bad-ass, threatening figure, someone it would be scary to be on the bad side of?  I really think someone in the front office looked at that scene and said, "There! THAT'S what our guy gives us that we haven't had.  Go out and write me a script with more of that!"

 

And so they found a way for Dalton to hit that note again early in LTK and keep a mad on for the entire rest of the film (until the end, when he gets all happy and swims around in his tux with a winking fish).  Personally, I think that was a mistake, as I find the film very one-note and unrelentingly grim, when Dalton was capable of much greater range than the "one-track vengeful killing machine" we usually associate with inferior actors like Steven Seagal, but different strokes for different folks, I guess.

 

Anyway, I don't think Roger would've been playing Bond at age 62 regardless, but if by some wild stretch he HAD, we would not have gotten the same film, as this one was written for what the powers-that-were thought were Dalton's strengths. 



#7 Dustin

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 05:51 PM

Very sensible post there, David. I agree with all the points about TLD and LTK. Same with your points, plankattack. Seeing Moore return to the role is downright impossible to imagine today. Though I must admit I used to have a colleague in 91, an almost blind guy but a genius with certain computer skills my branch needed back then, who kept arguing Moore must return to the screen as 007 and all would be well again. As I said, nearly blind...

Edited by Dustin, 17 December 2014 - 05:56 PM.


#8 coco1997

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 06:11 PM

Great points, David. Every single one.

 

And Dustin, Bond may have warned Melina against seeking revenge in FYEO, but he does that very thing in OP--"And that's for 009." Granted, it's not something that drives the film, but you can tell he enjoys getting retribution for his fellow agent.



#9 seawolfnyy

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 06:49 PM

Great points, David. Every single one.

 

And Dustin, Bond may have warned Melina against seeking revenge in FYEO, but he does that very thing in OP--"And that's for 009." Granted, it's not something that drives the film, but you can tell he enjoys getting retribution for his fellow agent.

That's true, but he wasn't really seeking revenge. He more happened upon it. It's far different in Licence to Kill. Too bad Trevelyan didn't heed Moore's advice.



#10 Dustin

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 06:54 PM


Great points, David. Every single one.

And Dustin, Bond may have warned Melina against seeking revenge in FYEO, but he does that very thing in OP--"And that's for 009." Granted, it's not something that drives the film, but you can tell he enjoys getting retribution for his fellow agent.

That's true, but he wasn't really seeking revenge. He more happened upon it. It's far different in Licence to Kill. Too bad Trevelyan didn't heed Moore's advice.

Exactly. In Moore's world the bad guys sooner or later just happened to end up in front of the wrong end of his Walther. After Moore Bond made an effort to see to this end.

#11 Grard Bond

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 12:18 AM

I went for a second time to the Designing 007 exibition last sunday and  what was striking is that all the images of Bond in the storyboards of TLD look like Roger Moore, not Dalton.



#12 David_M

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 12:24 AM

 

 

Exactly. In Moore's world the bad guys sooner or later just happened to end up in front of the wrong end of his Walther. After Moore Bond made an effort to see to this end. 

 

Yes, but now we have the opposite extreme; every mission somehow ends up entangling Bond on a personal level.  It started with Felix's mangling in LTK, but then we had Alec's betrayal in GE, the reunion with and subsequent loss of old flame Paris in TND, the girlfriend-turned-enemy Elektra in TWINE, the abandonment by M herself in DAD, then Vesper in CR, "still not over Vesper" in QoS and pretty much everything about SF.  You can't even say, "this time it's personal" these days because the obvious response is, "When the Hell is it NOT?" These days it sometimes seems like MI-6 is there to serve Bond's agendas and not the other way around.

 

Am I the only one who misses the days when Bond was all business?  When he killed because that was his job and not to settle a score?  How can people say "modern" Bond is so much more of a "cold and hard" character when every script keeps amping up the emotional stakes?  

 

Revenge is nothing new for the series, going all the way back to the beginning, when in "Dr No" Bond says that if he joins SPECTRE, he'll want assignment to the "Revenge" section to even the score for Strangways.  He wants to pay back Goldfinger for Jill's murder, he says in TB he wishes he killed Bouvard for murdering "three of my colleagues" and so on.  We know Bond is interested in settling scores because he tells us so, even if on the outside he's as calm and disaffected as ever.  The difference is that classic Bond is able to compartmentalize his feelings, to keep a lid on his anger and focus on the job.  He's a professional.  And yes, if circumstances arise where he can pay back old debts, he'll take that opportunity.  But he won't endanger or indeed redefine his mission to settle a personal score.

 

That's why, I think, it works so well when Dalton sees red over Saunder's murder.  Roger covered Vijay's body with sad resignation; Dalton reacts to pretty much the same scenario with barely controlled rage.  But it's the fact that it IS controlled that makes it so effective.  We know Bond is normally imperturbable, so to see him flash such anger briefly, only to push it down inside again, is thrilling.  Similarly, in FYEO Roger goes to a great deal more trouble than usual by running up endless flights of stairs to catch the fleeing Locque, so we know he's finally been pushed too far.  (I like to think when he kicks the car off the cliff, he's thinking, "That's for making me run up all those damn stairs.  There's sweat stains on my outfit!")  These moments were great because they were few and far between, not an everyday thing.

 

I enjoyed LTK for what it was in 89, but I worried even then that it was a wrong turn for Bond.  If I'd known the "personal stakes" gag would be retread ad nauseum for the next 25 years, I'd have enjoyed it a lot less.



#13 Trevelyan 006

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 12:40 AM

I always believed Moore should have been done with For Your Eyes Only. He was visibly old by then and the film made enough references to Moore's Bond being ready to pass the shoe. This would have left Dalton to do Octopussy (darker tone, similar plot), A View To A Kill (darker tone, more believable plot), The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill. The Octopussy and The Living Daylights short stories are even often packaged together in one novel, so imagine if Dalton would've been able to do both! Both films would've had the dark seriousness and hard-edged feel Dalton brought to the table. They probably would have ended up far better than they did (and I like both films as they are, mind you). 



#14 plankattack

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 02:04 AM

[quote 
 

I enjoyed LTK for what it was in 89, but I worried even then that it was a wrong turn for Bond.  If I'd known the "personal stakes" gag would be retread ad nauseum for the next 25 years, I'd have enjoyed it a lot less.

Great post David M.

I do think there are "business" reasons why this is the way the series has gone. Brozza himself (and rightly to) demanded that Bond be more as a character than the tailor's dummy he could easily end up as. And if you're a writer creating an action story about a secret agent, "revenge" as motivation is the easiest, and perhaps most plausible way to go when creating an arc for the central character.

With TD, EON had realized the need to start making their hero more three-dimensional, something that hadn't really happened since OHMSS. With Brozza they tried to get to grips with it, and now with DC they seem to have mastered it.

Bond has to be a difficult character for a writer to make interesting - no-one wants a "depressed" hero, no-one wants a psychopathic hero, so you're left with revenge as the plausible way to "excuse" the amount of violence dished out by the lead. Look at Sir Rog's era - there were always a good number of sacrificial lambs around (Corinne, Dimitri, Vijay, Hip) just to make sure that our hero was still in the moral right.

Action heroes by their very nature have to be "avengers" - otherwise they're just serial killers. And that wouldn't go down well with the censors at all. It's a dramatic decision, it's a business decision. Think of any other action movie where the hero is responsible for racking up a body count - it's always about either personal revenge, or avenging to right injustice.

#15 Guy Haines

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 07:42 AM

LTK with Roger Moore as Bond? Well, it would have been a lot less violent, simply because Sir Roger was never comfortable with the kind of killing scenes such as the mass murder of the mineworkers in AVTAK, and had to be persuaded to kick the Mercedes over the cliff in FYEO.

 

Age issues aside -he would have been 62 years old in 1989 - as a storyline I just don't think it would have worked for Roger Moore's Bond. His Bond could express outrage - remember his remarks to General Orlov in OP when the real reason for the visit to that air base is revealed? - but he never struck me as a Bond who was motivated by revenge. As he said in FYEO, when you set out on revenge you must first dig two graves.



#16 coco1997

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 03:09 PM

I suppose my original idea behind this thread was spurred by the thought of reuniting Moore with Hedison. Even if the rest of the film had been significantly different, the Felix storyline could have carried more weight since those two actors had previously worked together on screen.



#17 Dustin

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 03:58 PM

The film to do that would perhaps best have been AVTAK. Though of course it might have made the age thing more obvious. Not that Hedison looked too bad in LTK but it would have come down to the impression these two had come quite some way.

#18 tdalton

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 09:17 PM

Perhaps not the exact point of the thread, but I think Moore could have done rather well in Licence to Kill as it ended up being made with Dalton in the picture.  He's a capable enough actor to pull it off and the prior relationship with Hedison would have made the revenge factor a bit more poignant than it is with Dalton.  Plus, I think the overall tone and direction of the film would have been more shocking with Moore in the lead, which would have been interesting.

 

All that said, I know it wouldn't have happened because Moore wouldn't have signed up to play Bond in such a film, but nevertheless I think it would have been a memorable film for the franchise, and I do think that Moore would have been up to the task.



#19 seawolfnyy

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 10:41 PM

Perhaps not the exact point of the thread, but I think Moore could have done rather well in Licence to Kill as it ended up being made with Dalton in the picture.  He's a capable enough actor to pull it off and the prior relationship with Hedison would have made the revenge factor a bit more poignant than it is with Dalton.  Plus, I think the overall tone and direction of the film would have been more shocking with Moore in the lead, which would have been interesting.

 

All that said, I know it wouldn't have happened because Moore wouldn't have signed up to play Bond in such a film, but nevertheless I think it would have been a memorable film for the franchise, and I do think that Moore would have been up to the task.

I do think it could've worked with Moore, but not in 1989. Had Licence to Kill been made in say 1979 in place of Moonraker, then yes. Regardless, a 62 year old Moore would be uncredible in the role even with an equally old David Hedison. Also, the tone of the film still would've been different. Something more akin to For Your Eyes Only, but far less violent than the actual Licence to Kill.



#20 tdalton

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Posted 18 December 2014 - 11:39 PM

Agreed, it couldn't have worked in 1989.  I wasn't really suggesting that Moore could have hung on for a ninth outing through The Living Daylights and then to Licence to Kill after A View to a KIll.  Still, I think that he could have done well in a film that's more or less similar to Dalton's Licence to Kill, although obviously much earlier than 1989.

 

Granted, it couldn't have happened anyway because Moore would have never gone for it, but the character arc with Moore in the role would have been great, giving the film even more of an edge than it already had.



#21 glidrose

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Posted 19 December 2014 - 12:07 AM

A sequel to this thread no doubt http://debrief.comma...d-do-tld/page-1

 

A prequel to this http://debrief.comma...ed-roger-moore/



#22 coco1997

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Posted 19 December 2014 - 12:17 AM

Those are some truly ancient threads, gildrose!



#23 Guy Haines

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Posted 19 December 2014 - 06:46 AM

I agree that the Bond/Leiter relationship would have worked better with Roger Moore and David Hedison in the roles respectively. It sometimes helps when the actors involved are old pals in real life. I also agree that AVTAK would have been the movie to re-establish that relationship -like bookends, Moore started with Hedison and could have ended his tenure with him. It would have been nice but it didn't happen.

 

There was a considerable age gap between Timothy Dalton and David Hedison, not far short of twenty years, and to me it showed. Perhaps a younger actor, one nearer Dalton's age should have been cast.

 

I maintain that Sir Roger wouldn't have been comfortable appearing in a film like LTK. My guess is that even if revenge remained a motive, there would have been extensive re-writes to tone down the violence. Bond spends some of the film disposing of villains and traitors violently or getting them to turn on themselves and kill each other violently. I couldn't see Roger Moore being happy with that.



#24 hilly

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Posted 19 December 2014 - 04:00 PM

"EON should have gone with the more familiar though admittedly less charismatic John Terry, who at the very least had shared the screen with Dalton two years prior."

I'm very glad they didn't. John Terry was so bland, he was virtually invisible..



#25 coco1997

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Posted 20 December 2014 - 03:17 PM

"EON should have gone with the more familiar though admittedly less charismatic John Terry, who at the very least had shared the screen with Dalton two years prior."

I'm very glad they didn't. John Terry was so bland, he was virtually invisible..

Ideally, EON would have cast Patrick Swayze as Felix in TLD and used him again in LTK.



#26 AgenttiNollaNollaSeitsemän

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Posted 22 December 2014 - 03:53 PM

Sorry, I just cannot form any kind of coherent mental image how it would've been.

#27 Guy Haines

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Posted 22 December 2014 - 11:44 PM

I'd go further and say that if Sir Roger Moore had starred in TLD and then continued beyond, his next film would not have been LTK. I doubt that such a movie would have been made on his watch. Violent revenge just would not have suited his Bond as a theme for an adventure - as I've pointed out above, he disliked the mass shootings in AVTAK and had to be persuaded that Bond would have killed Locque the way he did in FYEO.

 

I'm not saying he wouldn't have taken on Latin American drug types in a future film, just not in the way that Timothy Dalton did. Felix Leiter. might also have come a cropper, but I think it would have happened as part of a mission both were involved in - as in the novel Live And Let Die - and Moore's Bond would have dealt with the villain(s) concerned in one scene then got back to the mission in hand, rather than spend an entire movie fixated on revenge.



#28 iBond

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Posted 24 December 2014 - 01:46 AM

Moore should have quit before FYEO, but that is my true opinion. I'm not saying this because I disliked him, or anything like that, he just started to get a little long in the tooth. He is not my favorite actor to play the role, Tim in fact is. But, to voice my opinion on this particular thread, I just think Moore would have been too old for the part. Now, I know we're speaking theoretically here, but even so, regardless of age or looks, his Bond just wouldn't fit this story. Licence to Kill was the only solo made-for-Dalton Bond film, just as The Spy Who Loved Me or Moonraker was specifically made for Moore's standards. The only Bond films that were garnered towards something out of the norm in my opinion, was FYEO for Moore and TLD for Dalton. But at the same time, those films showed both the strenghts and weaknesses of the actors in the part. Roger Moore in LTK? Um...I just can't see it though.


Edited by iBond, 24 December 2014 - 01:46 AM.