How casting Mel Gibson could have saved James Bond from his early-1990s doldrums
Even though the Timothy Dalton era is considered one of the most unfairly overlooked parts of the James Bond canon, it can’t be overlooked that the actor’s two-film stint coincided with a noticeable dip in popularity for the franchise, which led to the iconic spy’s longest-ever absence from screens.
Of course, 007 was in need of reinvention long before then after Roger Moore’s later outings began brazenly flirting with self-parody, and on paper, Dalton was ideal. Significantly younger and rougher around the edges, his arrival heralded a more grounded, gritty, and realistic take on the secret agent’s ongoing adventures.
Dalton’s debut in The Living Daylights was far from a flop, but it made less money at the box office than Moore’s Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only, while Licence to Kill was only the sixth highest-grossing of the 16 Bond outings to date, hardly stellar returns for a new star’s sophomore stint under the tux.
Not only that, but when adjusted for inflation, Licence to Kill is the worst-performing Bond movie to have ever been released in cinemas, selling fewer tickets than any of the other 24 instalments. Dalton didn’t end up fulfilling his three-film contract, and when the next entry in the series ended up stuck in development hell and entangled in legal issues, he was out, and Pierce Brosnan was in.
The gap between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye remains the longest period there’s ever been between 007 flicks, and such a lengthy sabbatical saw the franchise’s estimation drop in the eyes of audiences. Of course, Martin Campbell’s showstopping reinvention put paid to those notions, but the diminishing returns of both latter-age Moore and Dalton could have been avoided entirely had Mel Gibson not rejected the opportunity to take up the mantle.
“I got offered the James Bond movies when I was like 26,” Gibson explained to JoBlo. “And they said, ‘Hey, we want you to be the next James Bond. And I thought about it. I was in Australia, I was working with Peter Weird. And I did sort of think about it, and I sort of turned it down for that reason.”
Gibson rather unfairly used Sean Connery as justification, even though the original Bond carved out a massively successful career in the decades after he vacated the part. “I thought, look what happened to poor Sean,” he continued. “He got stuck there for like three decades.”
When Gibson was “like 26” and working with Peter Weir in Australia, he’d have been shooting The Year of Living Dangerously. Production took place in early 1982, which means he was offered Bond between the releases of For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy. Hypothetically, that would have negated the final two movies of Moore’s tenure and potentially the entirety of Dalton’s, too, which may have prevented the prestige of the property from gradually sliding downwards throughout the rest of the decade.
With Mad Max, sequel The Road Warrior, Gallipoli, and The Year of Living Dangerously under his belt already at that time, Gibson was still a young star with tremendous upside that had barely even scratched the surface of his potential. Of course, his career blew up in his face following a string of unsavoury incidents, but he was nonetheless one of the biggest stars on the planet from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.
At his peak, Gibson did dangerous charisma and wild-eyed intensity better than almost anyone, something that would have dragged 007 kicking and screaming towards modernity after Moore’s films began planting their tongue too far into the cheek. Not only that but there’s no chance he would have been prevented from seeing out his contract, either, with his decision to knock it back, creating an alternate timeline that would have rewritten a decade and a half of Bond history, almost certainly for the better.
