Most people would agree that A View to a Kill is one of the lesser entries in the James Bond movie series. I quite like it myself, but that might have more to do with nostalgia than anything the movie actually does well. Objectively though, from a critical standpoint, it is not a very good Bond film. Roger Moore was probably too old in 1985 to play Bond, the story is meandering and the tone of the movie is a little too light, even for Moore, who’s niche in the Bond series has become the more lighthearted and humourous entries. But I have speculated to myself on numerous occasions that the bones of a better James Bond movie are present in the movie, and with some re-tooling and re-imagining, A View to a Kill could have been one of the higher echelon, more entertaining Bond films. Allow me to paint the picture of the version of the film I would have loved to see.
One of the key criticisms of the movie is that Roger Moore, aged 56, may have overstayed his welcome in his portrayal of James Bond, it greatly detracts from the action and is just uncomfortable when he seduces much younger women. I have no problem with a middle age James Bond personally, it would open up some very interesting story and thematic possibilities, IF you address his age within the story. A View to a Kill simply ignores Moore’s age and tells us, no, this is the exact same James Bond you’ve known since Moore debuted in the role. You really don’t believe that a 56 year old Moore is going to win any fights, run, jump kick, any of that. Timothy Dalton, however, at the time was a crisp and fresh 39 years old, right in the prime wheelhouse for any James Bond actor. What if they had retained his services 2 years earlier than they did with 1987’s The Living Daylights.
To most casual viewers Timothy Dalton was just that guy who might’ve done one or two Bond movies between Moore and Brosnan, and was largely forgettable. Bond purists know the truth, however, that Dalton is a dark horse contender for one of the best characterizations of Bond. He was well ahead of his time, a precursor to Daniel Craig’s acclaimed darker and grittier portrayal of Bond. Dalton was much closer to the literary character in Fleming’s novels than any actor before him. He was much more the damaged paid assassin than the invincible superhero of previous incarnations. At 39 he would have been much more believable as an action hero than Moore at this point, and right in the prime age for the character, who should traditionally be in his late 30’s to late 40’s. His Bond emphasized the deadly serious size of the character and all but eliminated the glib humour that audiences had become accustomed to with Moore. He still had a dry and sardonic sense of humour, but it was a far cry even from the Connery days of the character.
Now that we’ve replaced Moore with Dalton, installing a more believable action hero as Bond at the heart of A View to a Kill, we just need to give the movie a tonal overhaul. Though the lighter tonal approach had served the Roger Moore Bond movies well in his previous entries, like 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me and a few others, it had gone a little too far in that direction his last few entries, with a little too much schtick. In the pre-credit scene in A View to a Kill, he takes the front ski from a wrecked snowmobile and snowboards down the hill to a Beach Boys song, which undermines any suspense or stakes the scene might have had going for it. You would just have to go through and re-write or replace scenes that played to Moore’s lighter and schtickier sensibilities and alter them to play more to Dalton’s more serious and dramatic tone.
Now we get to what separates the good Bond films from the great ones: the villain. I have felt for a long time that Christopher Walken is criminally underutilized in A View to a Kill. He plays Max Zorin, a crazy, menacing sociopathic megalomaniac so well, but isn’t given room to breath, much to do or the chance to be truly menacing in the movie. The same goes for Grace Jones, who plays the memorable May Day, who never gets to be quite as menacing or scary, or really get to flex her henchman muscles. I might also scale back Zorin’s plan to destroy Silicon Valley and make the stakes a little more grounded in reality to suit Dalton’s more realistic take on Bond.
A substantial part of my reasoning for re-imagining A View to a Kill with Timothy Dalton as James Bond is really that I wish Dalton had done a few more Bond films. With the same writers and directors working on A View to a Kill as later Dalton entries, it is perfectly conceivable that they would have been more than capable of re-tooling and overhauling the tone of the movie and some of the scenes to fit Dalton’s grittier, more realistic take on the character. To think of the showdown we might have had between Walken’s more fleshed out and menacing Max Zorin and Dalton’s hard edged Bond makes me think we might have missed out on pretty spectacular Bond flick. But alas it was not to be. But a man can dream, can’t he?