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Did Timothy Dalton come along too late in the Bond franchise's timeline?

posted 3 years ago by TMC-4 (20490)
1 reply | jump to latest

I'm aware that he was at the very least considered for the role as far back as when Sean Connery officially vacated it (I don't know for sure if it was for OHMSS or Live and Let Die) but he turned it down on the grounds that he felt that he was still too young and inexperienced as an actor to properly portray it. Plus, he didn't want to deal with the burden of having to immediately succeed Sean Connery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56CdGu1jqks

But one could imagine, that the right time to introduce Timothy Dalton was with For Your Eyes Only. The pre-title credit sequence (where Bond visits his wife's gravesite) in that movie was designed to introduce a new Bond. Plus, he would've had the whole decade of the 1980s by himself.

https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/jrpslo/the_problem_with_timothy_dalton

[–] lordbishop34 (1442) 3 years ago

I think the main issue with Dalton was he was really better suited to a Bond that was simply a harder character. Connery, Moore and Brosnan were guys that worked well with the lighter side of Bond. If he was age appropriate I could have seen him in the part instead of Craig as the series attempted to be more serious.