With filming well underway on the long awaited 23rd Bond movie Skyfall, Daniel Craig returns as the world’s favorite British spy with a license to kill, and acclaimed director Sam Mendes takes the reigns of what will likely be a fitting addition to the enduring franchise.
Danile Craig Filming Skyfall in London’s Trafalgar Square
While Craig’s first outing as Bond in Casino Royale was well received, Quantum of Solace did not meet expectations. Now the actor talks about the reasons that contributed to the less than stellar results and how he believes the new Bond flick will be his best outing thus far.
‘Yes, there’s definitely some of that, but I’m genuinely really excited because we’ve got a script. The deciding factor for doing “Casino Royale”, even though I was umming and aahhing, going [puts on moody voice] “I don’t know if I want to do it”, was that they showed me the script and I thought: Fuck, I’ve got to do this. And I think this one is better. I really do. It’s a totally original story. I read it and it just works as a story. It sounds like a simplistic thing to say, but you read it and you go: “Oh yeah, I get that, yeah, and oh, yes, yes, okay,” and that’s unusual.’
Yes and you swear that you’ll never get involved with shit like that, and it happens. On “Quantum”, we were fucked. We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, “Never again”, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not.
Craig added that originally Quantum wasn’t meant to be a direct sequel to Casino Royale, and how he took part in writing some scenes with director Marc Forster:
Me and the director were the ones allowed to do it. The rules were that you couldn’t employ anyone as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes together. We were stuffed. We got away with it, but only just. It was never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was, but it ended up being a sequel, starting where the last one finished.
Since Quantum was a massive hit, it wasn’t so much of a failure:
No, quite. Thank God it worked, and it worked like gangbusters. But for me personally, on a level of feeling satisfied, I would want to do better next time. That’s really important to me.
Craig knows how important it is for a film to come together, in terms of both script and performance:
If you’re going to do that sort of stuff, you’ve just got to get it right. You’ve got to give it your best shot. When you’ve got all that talent, everyone gunning to make it good, you’ve got to get it… For fuck’s sake, it’s a Bond movie. You want people to go, “Whooah!” – a sharp intake of breath during a movie is never a bad thing.
He was asked if he had a say in choosing the director, and also described their approach to the material:
I did, yes, I did. He’s English, he’s Cambridge-educated, he’s smart. He’s lived with Bond all his life, he grew up with Bond the way I did. We grew up at exactly the same time, and I said to him, “We have to do this together, we have exactly the same reference points, we both like the same Bond movies and we both like the same bits in the same Bond movies we like.” We sat down and we just rabbited for hours about “Live and Let Die” or “From Russia with Love”, and talked about little scenes that we knew from them. That’s how we started talking about it. That’s what we tried to instill in the script. He’s been working his arse off to tie all these things together so they make sense – in a Bond way.
For Craig, making the next Bond movie the Best – is about people doing their best:
I said from the very beginning to Barbara [Broccoli] and Michael [Wilson, the producers and guardians of the Bond franchise]: “If you give me this responsibility, I can just walk on that set and pretend to be James Bond,” but they allowed me to be involved more. It’s naturally progressed. I don’t want to get in people’s way, I just want to encourage things along. Sam got involved and then we got Roger Deakins [the director of photography], for fuck’s sake, who’s shooting it. The air is rare, and we’ve had the chance to employ some brilliant people. Win or lose, we’ve done the best we can because we’ve put the right people in the job. Pool the best talent you can, give them a good time and do the best we can – now I sound like a fucking politician!’
Last month THR confirmed the internet chatter that Ben Whishaw would be taking over the role of ‘Q’. Desmond Llewelyn played the gadget guru in 17 Bond movies, though the character has not been seen since John Cleese’s quirky portrayal in Die Another Day.
Whishaw will be the first Q who’s younger than Bond and it will be interesting to see if his character is a throwback to the witty, but always stern persona created by Llewelyn, or to reflect the grittier tone of the current flicks, whether he’s a new kind of Q with an intense approach to all things gadgets and weaponized Aston Martins.
The film also stars Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Albert Finney and Judi Dench.
Skyfall opens November 9, 2012.
via: Time Out Screenrant
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