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That's typical Hollywood and a press that likes rave on about the latest thing. I love her work on Fleabag, but I have no idea what her contributions were to NTTD.
That’s something that seems to ignore the realities of how the business works, for starters. But also perhaps speaks to the fact that things like Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and Doctor Who are long-running cultural icons that everyone thinks they know and telling a story with them is simple. The fact seems to be that it’s anything but simple.
…hey, here I am :D
PM me, EON. I’ll do it for free ;)
BTW, I’m just being rather immodest because this is anonymous.
I am guessing they have a deal with Nolan that he will be officially announced around the release of Oppenheimer to boost its box office.
Don't be modest, you're the greatest writer I've (n)ever heard of! ;)
That's true mate.
I wouldn't say a writer needs to be a fan of the series, sometimes an objective opinion is needed, but I would say it would help to do their "homework" on Daniel's era at least. As NTTD wasn't a new story, it was wrapping up his arc and tying up loose ends
Indeed...I most certainly am ;)
We obviously have to have 3 action sequences one of which a car chase, at least 3 locations plus London, villain, henchman, 2 Bond women, M, Q, Moneypenny, Tanner, the PPK, an Aston (preferably both an old one and a current model), a watch, "shaken not stirred", at least one sex scene, a character twist and a black tie sequence. So what are your ideas, Mr. Screenwriter?
I honestly think the features that make CR and SF stand out is that the first is very stripped down away from many of these elements, while SF cites so many of these tropes while acknowledging them as such and being mindful of that. Just look at the way they used the DB5. CR gives us the origin, but it's not the souped up version we know. It's just a nice oldtimer. SF (somehow) returns the original car, but then uses it because it is old and then blows it up. That's (one of) the disappointing thing about SP and NTTD: They just have these symbols in the film and no subtext to it. "The V8 is cool. Let's have one shot with it..."
I thought there was plenty of subtext for the V-8: Fifteen years ago a young James Bond won an Aston Martin DB5 in a gambling match. He fell in love with this car and , over the years, bought one or two other models, keeping them in storage. The V-8 was one of them.
Re: PWB:
She is one of the most talented writers working at the moment.
Her comments seem more self deprecating and maybe even reverential to Daniel Craig, than anything else...
She actually had a difficult job to do on NTTD: outside of character work (which she excels at), she was also brought on board to work on the depiction and exposition of the Heracles Project. Exposition is deadly, and when it's "on the nose", it's absolutely brutal to listen to in a film.
PWB took a sci-fi concept and made it palatable for worldwide audiences. That is a difficult job, tremendously difficult to simplify it, not make it sound "scripty", and assured that most audiences understood what the concept was.
Do you have a source for PWB's work? I too like her; however, I am curious about her contributions to NTTD.
A quick google search gave me this, @CrabKey :
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/09/phoebe-waller-bridge-shaped-no-time-to-die-plot-1234667662/amp/
I’m in the industry and had access to information that she was on the job and it was far more than anyone was giving credit to.
However, her role went beyond just being a script doctor (that was more Scott Burns’s role and probably why he didn’t get a credit (my understanding is he came in and punched up the action sequences (I’m sure there are reports on this as well)).
I’m on a project at the moment, adapting BA Paris’s novel, The Therapist. It’s been challenging and rewarding, but I can understand a little of what PWB walked into when she took on writing duties for NTTD.
Knowing how much she actually did do on the script, and reading her comments, she was clearly being her usual self deprecating self. And she obviously thinks highly of Craig. But in the end, she was being modest and deflected attention from herself.
Based on what?
I have no doubt she was being modest and self-deprecating. I only ask because there is so much speculation on this site. I appreciate your response.
Thanks for the insight and good luck on your adaptation.
Just my opinion, but I don't think it that way, I mean is Craig really knows the character better than anyone? Sounds to me like an exaggeration.
For me personally, I just don't believe that Craig knows the character better than anyone, he did played the character well, but knows the character better than anyone?
As much as I liked Craig as an actor, but this opinion is a bit too far.
He’s been playing his version for many many years, and has a producing role. Every line and moment *that version* of the character has had, he, by nature of his job has been there for. Since the Craig era is very much a self-contained thing, I think it is very likely he does know it better than anyone, especially since he has had various elements of creative control certainly from QoS onwards. (Writers strike meant him and the director had to make up a fair bit for a start…) There *are* some actors who claim an element of false-knowledge over their characters, or get them changed to suit them as people (step forwards Patrick Stewart) but usually they weren’t so involved in the behind the scenes stuff as Craig was with his interpretation of Bond.
It’s funny, because Craig got what Brosnan had been asking for for a while. And even what Connery would have liked, and got, in NSNA. Moore and Dalton *less* interested in that, but even they had some element of control and voiced their opinions.
The statement isn’t that Craig knows ‘James Bond’ the character that has existed in various forms, literary, cinematic, comic strip, etc etc all different since 53, better than anyone — but he does know ‘James Bond’ the character that existed from 2005 on screen (and the couple of video games he was involved in) better than anyone. Not least because he was given a greater control over the role than was usual, by a series of events and co-incidences. He didn’t do too bad a job, in the end, all things considered. But I don’t think the next actor will have that involvement.
Is it subtext, when we the viewers make up a backstory for some storybeat that isn't explained? I take back my hyperbolic statement that there is no subtext to it, but basically just doing the Skyfall reveal again and then doing nothing else with the car is a bit lame, don't you think? And didn't Fukunaga specifically state something along the lines of "It doesn't have to make sense. Mendes got the DB5. I think the V8 is cooler, so I did a cool reveal scene for it, like he did with the DB5"?
Considering Bond’s history, and this Bond’s history in particular (‘06-21), it’s not hard to imagine what this subtext may be…
And yes, when it comes to subtext, the artist will take the information that he has shared with us within the story and/or the history of the character (whether Bond, or Superman or Hannibal Lecter…) and layer his/her scenes with it.
We will never exactly know what the artist is thinking, and to a degree, subtext IS up to the individuals in an audience. That’s what makes art so subjective….
@peter, you're right. It makes sense that Bond would collect a few cars--I mean he's supposed to die before 40 and what else is he going to spend it on? ;)
We are reading from the same page, @echo !
I look at it as a practical matter. Every actor who played Bond at least a couple of times likely knew the character better than the actor who preceded him. I'm going to assume that they all read the books (Craig said he did). But Craig had 20 films to also work from. By comparison, Brosnan had 16. Dalton only had 14. And so on.
From that standpoint, I expect the next Bond to know the character better than anyone.
I think Dalton was the only actor who really got a grip on the Fleming Bond character. I would argue he knew the character better than anyone, as he researched the Fleming books meticulously.
After that I'd probably say Connery, as he spent time with Fleming, and had to create and adapt the screen character from scratch, as there was nothing before it to compare to.
He understood the essence of the character, and it also helped that he embodied many of the characteristics naturally, without needing to act.
Craig's interpretation was not bad, but I never really saw the Fleming Bond much. In NTTD the exchange two hander scene with Blofeld is probably the most far removed moment from the Fleming Bond that I have ever seen on film. Yes, it is even further removed than all the tongue-in-cheek moments from the Moore era, and the OTT amateur dramatics from the Brosnan era.
That one scene alone in NTTD concluded for me that Craig didn't really understand Bond as much as he claimed he did.
Blofeld is the identity tied to Spectre, and all that entails. So when he dies it is as that identity.
Which of course is something similar to what happens at the end, depending on who is communicating via radio etc. Madeline calls him James, Q tends towards ‘Bond’ and M towards ‘007’ showing the relationships… a shift in naming shows a shift in how the characters are thinking at the time.
Never thought of that, that's interesting.
TLD is one of my favorites, and I love Dalton's portrayal. He had the advantage--as did Craig and Connery--to launch his Bond with a pretty close Fleming adaptation. Strawberry jam and all.
But I never got the impression that Connery was trying to follow Fleming's Bond. It's as if he had his own swagger.
The others (except for Lazenby, who squandered it) never had that Fleming opportunity.
Connery had stated that he found the Bond character in the books dull, so he had to add some swagger in the character, and it's been said that Connery's Bond was actually the wish fulfillment of Terrence Young, it's his version of the character, he had wanted for Connery to play it, and Connery added swagger in it.