...umm...but...the 80s version of Flash Gordon was excellent...and it had Timothy Dalton in it!! And Topol!!! Bond+Tevye...that movie rocked!!
FLASH!! AH-ah!!
I own that DVD. I bought it for $5.00 at Graywhale, and yes, it does feature Dalton as Prince Barin. You also left out Boss Nass (Brian Blessed), who played Zoltan, King of the Hawkmen). It's great fun for it's nostalgic camp value, but certainly not good.
Roger Moore simply bares no resemblance to the actual character of Bond (not just Moore's fault. That was the direction they wanted to take the franchise in at the time.). The indisputable fact is, Dalton was the epitome of Fleming's character on screen. Which version you prefer is up to you, but choosing Moore's films as the best is roughly the same as choosing the Joel Schumacher "Batman" films over "Batman Begins." (which is fine if you feel that way. I myself prefer "Batman Forever" to "Batman Returns.") The fact is, it all comes down to individual taste.
After all, Tom Clancy insists that Ben Affleck is the closest to his vision of Jack Ryan, and I don't think you're going to find a lot of fans who prefer Affleck to Ford or Baldwin.
"Liscence to Kill" is one of my favorites because it broke the mold and did it's own thing, and it has a great, instense score by the late, great composer Michael Kamen. If you watch it on it's own, you will probably be dissapointed by it, because it doesn't habve so many of the signature moments you expect from Bonb. I learned to love the film when I was on a kick of watching as mnay Bond films as I could, and discovered that most of them were pretty much the same. "LTK" was a nice, gritty change of pace.
