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Comments
I value enterainment value over visual flair, especially in a Bond film. Who wants to sit through two hours of beautifully shot boredom?
Case 1: the statue park scene in GE. Brilliantly directed by Campbell and genuinely atmospheric.
Case 2: the torture scene in CR. See above.
Glen's direction of those scenes would be more mundane and "basic".
I do agree though with the earlier comment that Campbell is only as good as the script allows him to be, as has been demonstrated by his hit-and-miss career outside of Bond (The Mask of Zorro vs The Legend of Zorro for example).
Glen was lucky because he was already established in the Bond family. Otherwise I'd say he's a fairly standard unremarkable director.
Martin Campbell's service to the franchise can't be valued high enough though. No matter if one likes GoldenEye and/or Casino Royale.
Like Brosnan, Campbell continuously guaranteed great success for EON. In both instances at a time when things could have gone terribly wrong.
Mendes on the other hand could have delivered whatever. After QOS it was an easy game.
I realize budgets were cut during his era, but one can still give the film a little bit of that special Bondian essence. That's something Campbell did very well.
And FYEO may just have the best cinematography in all of Bond except for Skyfall and Spectre.
I believe I noted FYEO as an exception above.
I haven't seen a huge number of Hollywood style movies do a better job.
As for Vienna, yes it definitely could have been used better but by the same token Vienna isn't all that anyway IMO. Perectly pleasant Central european city but Prague and Budapest are far more beautiful/cinematic IMO.
Corfu was indeed a very cinematic location for Bond.
I agree on Prague & Budapest. Been to both and they are beautiful cities. Both should be in a Bond film. Vienna is lovely too, and I really think they could have done a much better job of showcasing it in TLD.
Glen didn't really have an eye for it imho, although in FYEO he did use Corfu very well.
Even at 75-6 I think he could do another one, and I think EON would happily have him back. Say what you want about his style, but it's undeniable that he has successful got them out of two potentially dire situations in the past. He has the midas touch when it comes to Bond, and if EON were to completely recast with the next film, they would need a reliable pair of hands to see out another storm.
At that time who had done India better? Frankly, until very recently who has done it better in a big Hollywood type movie?
I quite agree. He's a genius with this stuff, perhaps "audition" was the wrong way to say it. "Statement of intent" is much more accurate. :D
CR is really just note-for-note as close to perfect as a film can get - everything the the photography to the performances to the pacing to the sense of danger/suspense is executed incredibly well. It's incredibly re-watchable.
GE is good too. Campbell got a fantastic round of performances from the well-assembled cast and created a lot of great individual scenes.
I hate the opening to GE however - Bond's introduction is mind-numbing awful. No one could have known that introducing Bond hovering over a bowl of sh!t would turn out to be a pretty good metaphor for the rest of Brosnan's tenure as 007 - but it's certainly not classy. Or funny:
"Beg your pardon, forgot to knock."
Really? Do you usually knock before barging in on a closed stall? And the guard just sits there for a good handful of seconds, letting Bond spew out the first of many stupid jokes from 1995-2002 without immediately jumping or yelling in a spastic reaction to someone suddenly appearing hanging over you with your pants around your ankles?
So it starts bad - and then gets more exciting when Sean Bean and Gottfried John enter the picture - and then deforms back into stupidity as Bond defies all ideas of physics as he jumps off the cliff and actually catches the plane that's falling off the cliff in one of the most fake-looking action scenes in the entire 007 series. It's hard to shake off the PTS for me when looking at GE, even with all of its many other good aspects.