Doctor Omega
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Your views on the man who was only Bond twice.....
Dalton as Bond
Unlike Moore, who had played Bond as more of a light-hearted playboy, Dalton's portrayal of Bond was darker and more serious. Dalton pushed for renewed emphasis on the gritty realism of Ian Fleming's novels instead of fantasy plots and humour.
I think Roger was fine as Bond, but the films had become too much techno-pop and had lost track of their sense of story. I mean, every film seemed to have a villain who had to rule or destroy the world. If you want to believe in the fantasy on screen, then you have to believe in the characters and use them as a stepping-stone to lead you into this fantasy world. That's a demand I made, and Albert Broccoli agreed with me.
— Dalton stated in a 1989 interview.
A fan of the literary character, often seen re-reading and referring to the novels on set, Dalton determined to approach the role and play truer to the original character described by Fleming. His 007, therefore, came across as a reluctant agent who did not always enjoy the assignments he was given, something seen on screen before, albeit obliquely, only in George Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. In The Living Daylights, for example, Bond tells a critical colleague, Saunders, "Stuff my orders! ... Tell M what you want. If he fires me, I'll thank him for it." In Licence to Kill, he resigns from the Secret Service in order to pursue his own agenda of revenge.
Unlike Moore, who always seems to be in command, Dalton's Bond sometimes looks like a candidate for the psychiatrist's couch – a burned-out killer who may have just enough energy left for one final mission. That was Fleming's Bond – a man who drank to diminish the poison in his system, the poison of a violent world with impossible demands.... his is the suffering Bond.
— Steven Jay Rubin writes in The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopaedia (1995).
This approach proved to be a double-edged sword. Film critics and fans of Fleming's original novels welcomed a more serious interpretation after more than a decade of Moore's approach.
However, Dalton's films were criticised for their comparative lack of humour.
Dalton's serious interpretation was not only in portraying the character, but also in performing most of the stunts of the action scenes himself.
Some modern critics have compared Dalton favourably to Daniel Craig. Eoghan Lyng, writing for The James Bond Dossier, says "despite chronological placement, it was Dalton, not Brosnan, who proved to be the prototype for the 21st century Bond."