Timothy Dalton’s Scrapped Third James Bond Movie With Terminator-Style Robots Just Might Have Been the Best — or Worst — Thing To Happen to the Franchise

Long before Daniel Craig gave audiences an honest depiction of James Bond, Timothy Dalton tried and fell short of reinventing Bond during his tenure. After seven fantastical entries in the series starring Roger Moore, fans of Agent 007 struggled to embrace Dalton’s no-nonsense approach to the iconic role, beginning with 1987’s The Living Daylights, which tried to return to the pulp spy thriller tone of Ian Fleming’s novels. Then the underwhelming box office of 1989’s Licence to Kill put the franchise on ice for six years.

Dalton’s short-lived run as James Bond was greatly misunderstood by audiences during his tenure. In the late ‘80s, when the likes of Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis were adding wisecracks to their action-hero personas, the stoic tone of Dalton’s 007 was ahead of its time until Craig’s take on Casino Royale met the moment when audiences were interested in ground-level action heroes. But what if Dalton had one more movie to prove to everyone he could carry the tux and Walther PPK for a longer tenure? As author Mark Edlitz reveals in his book The Lost Adventures of James Bond, the actor was not only contracted for a third Bond picture, but we almost saw him face his most lethal adversary ever in the franchise.

What Was Supposed To Happen in Timothy Dalton’s Unproduced James Bond Movie?

In 1990, screenwriters Michael G. Wilson and former Miami Vice staff writer Alfonse Ruggiero developed a treatment for Bond 17 that combined Dalton’s deadly serious assassin-for-hire tone with the fun of peak 007 adventures. In an interview for the Edlitz book, Ruggiero recalls pitching a concept for Dalton’s third Bond entry in which 007 is assigned to investigate an explosion involving maniacal robots in a Scotland weapons lab. The mission sends Bond to Hong Kong before the mastermind behind the attack strikes again using “a lethal security robot” called Nan. The film was to reflect the global politics of the time when the villain, described by Ruggiero as a British-Chinese entrepreneur, plans to threaten military units worldwide with a computer virus if the United Kingdom does not withdraw from China.

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The Bond franchise was pushing 30 years old at the time when the third Dalton installment was put into development. The winning formula of spectacular action, global locations, hi-tech gadgets, and beautiful women appeared to grow stale as the marketplace for the action-adventure genre leaned towards special effects-heavy films. Bond was desperately in need of a refreshing direction as frequent Bond director John Glen stuck with a made-for-television style of filmmaking throughout the ‘80s. Though the Cold War spy thriller aspect of The Living Daylights was a nice break from the comic book feel of the Moore era, Licence to Kill went harder in the violent drug trade angle that virtually every action movie and television show had already explored before 1989. Bringing Bond into the ’90s with a stylish direction and a timely topic like robotics could have inspired a new generation of fans.

Timothy Dalton Did Not Want To Play James Bond Past Three Movies

At a moment in cinema when Robocop, Total Recall, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day were exploring the dangers of advancing technology within a sci-fi context, Dalton’s unproduced Bond film would lean heavily on the use of hi-tech weaponry, Terminator-like robotic designs, and a Wargames-like hacker threat to the globe. Had it been made, the film could have been Dalton’s equivalent of Craig’s Skyfall by retaining the grounded tone while bringing back the fun of the more fantastical Bond entries. Ruggiero’s idea featured some dazzling action sequences, including an opening teaser featuring 007 dropping from a glider onto a munitions factory guarded by robots. Additionally, the main villain had a hi-tech lair that floods as Bond battles robots one level at a time.

Ruggiero’s script was eventually rewritten by multiple writers before the concept for Goldeneye was chosen by EON Productions as the 17th Bond film. The years of lawsuits over the Bond rights along with Dalton’s refusal to go beyond three movies prevented his final Bond outing from getting in front of the cameras. He revealed to Vanity Fair that he feels content with never getting that last chance at the role by explaining how “everyone’s trapped by it in a way. I never really wanted to do more than three.” Ironically, the next Bond installment with Goldeneye, starring Pierce Brosnan in 1995, would retain aspects of the technological threat angle intended for Dalton, including the use of a Soviet-era satellite that causes an international incident by firing an electromagnetic pulse from space. As Bond’s creative future under Amazon remains a hot-button topic, fans are back to wondering how they will advance 007’s adventures, where advancements in technology that Ruggiero’s idea teased are getting more frightening by the day.

The Living Daylights

Release Date

July 31, 1987

Runtime

130 minutes

Director

John Glen

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  Jeroen Krabbé

  General Georgi Koskov

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  Joe Don Baker

  Brad Whitaker

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