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Blanket statement here my friend...there were a lot more people involved with the making of TWINE other than P&W, not withstanding the fact that two additional writers, including Bruce Feirstein did a rewrite.
Actually DAD is a masterpiece next to QOS...
I suppose it really depends what you look for in a Bond movie.
It's quite interesting how Brosnan's films (including GE) underwent fairly heavy re-writes. Going away from P&W I remember reading in Judy Dench's biography about how she had to learn pages and pages of new, re-written, dialogue at very short notice. The atmosphere in that film didn't seem good and obviously that affected the finished product.
Personally I don't mind if P&W stay or go. I don't think they are to blame for the mistakes made during Brosnan's and (part of) Craig's era. The script needs to be solid before shooting begins and, if there are re-writes, they should be done with full co-operation between the director and the script writers. Perhaps most importantly they shouldn't try too hard to pander to what they think the public want - a mistake made during Brosnan's era.
I think the directing has a lot to do with the "fun factor" though, perhaps even more so than the writing. Just look at the Guy Hamilton films: all four of them are full of camp and outrageous characters, or the Gilbert films for that matter: all larger than life over the top world domination plots.
Marc Forster is known more as a serious "art-film" director. I'm not sure if that's the right mix for a Bond film, regardless of the script that is present. So I think the combination comes across as akward, which really diminishes the entertaining value of the film.
I think your right. Bond isn't really meant to be "art" so to speak. With QoS one got the sense that they were trying to make it such. People have already mentioned the "four elements" idea that Forster had. That could work in another film but with Bond it just doesn't fit...at least to me.
Now I've read it all.
Come on think about it
It's got the best and longest pre credits sequence, not too bad a theme tune in Garbage, Robert Carlyle, Robbie Coltrane, the great Llewelyn in his last 007 performance (sniff), Sophie Marceau and, and ....
well it's Brosnans' best and I'm sticking up for it
[-X
Sean Bean, Isabella, Robbie, Godfrey John, Franka Janssen, Bond in a tank.
Maybe not. According to @thelivingroyale, Never Say Never Again is Connery's best.
Nolan is officially done with Batman after Dark Knight Rises, so anything's possible after that...
but if Mendes doesn't come back David Fincher for Bond 24? I need to see Girl with the dragoon tattoo but if it's as good as it looks I'd be fine again I'm probably the only one but still.
The original script for TWINE included this little gem (and you can see it in the deleted scenes) from M: "Despite what you might believe, Double-Oh Seven, the world is not populated by large-breasted women and hollowed-out volcanoes." Blasphemy! Whoever wrote such an awkward, vulgar and heavy-handed reference to the early films should be burned at the stake. The screenplay reads "by Neil Purvis and Robert Wade", so let's go and lynch them.
Except that if you take two minutes to stop and think, you will quickly discover that this particular line was not written by Purvis and Wade. It originally appeared in the first draft of TOMORROW NEVER DIES, which was written by Bruce Feirstein. That draft was two hours of clumsy fan service, and fortunately never saw the light of day. Feirstein evidently carried elements of it over to TWINE when he re-wrote it. And, as has been documented elsewhere, Michael Apted enlisted his wife to re-write parts of the script.
I have read the original draft of TWINE, and it is actually quite good. Much of the original plot line remains in place: Elektra King intends to destroy Istanbul to give her control over oil coming from the Caspian, and her lover, Renard, helps her carry it out. However, there are a few critical changes: the early part of the story really hypes Renard up as the villain, but the focus gradually shifts to Elektra. The infamous shoulder scene never happens, and Bond does not even suspect Elektra until he lets the pipeline blow up (his original intention was to trick Renard into thinking he was dead, but Elektra makes the next move). It was a very solid script that really played up the mystery elements. But then Michael Apted decided that because Bond and Elektra had a relationship, and because Elektra was the first primary female villain in the series, then the relationship needed to be played up, and the mystery was left to stagnate. Mrs. Apted was brought in to write these scenes, and Bruce Feirstein was recruited to add a few more Bondian elements to the story. They never received a screenwriting credit, but they were the most-responsible for butchering the script.
So do you in insisting the original script was 'good'. It is only your opinion that it was good, not a fact.
David Fincher is also out for Bond 24 as he'll be working on The Girl Who Played With Fire.
No one knows yet whether there will be an US version of The Girl Who Played With Fire. Even if The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a success and they decide to make the sequel, it's not decided that David Fincher will be the director. I'm not sure he will want to direct the sequels.
Having said that, I agree that Fincher won't direct Bond 24. He won't direct it, because he's American.
It would be a shame to rule him out because of his nationality, no ?
The script's almost complete, the reviews seem good and it's on target for some good box office takings. Fincher hasn't said no to returning and there's talk of shooting both sequels back to back. They're a shoe in to happen I think.
Any way it's all obviously speculation, but as far as I'm aware no director has returned immediately to the franchise since John Glen. That's a shame, as I think directors need time to build their understanding for the movies. The fact directors changed constantly during the Brosnan era was reflected in the poor quality of the resulting films. The old Bond directors were workmen, rather than 'auteurs' and that was a good thing, as they didn't try and do more than was really required. I think to a certain extent Martin Cambell is from that mould and it might have been nice to see him return for QoS.
That said, I can never forgive Cambell for GoldenEye, which is utter dross. Bond in a tank smashing up St. Petersburg? What is he? A English chav on holiday? Fleming's Bond would have considered this sort of behaviour reprehensible. And all the those machine guns - Bond should generally never be seen spraying the set with bullets. It screams of Stalone or Arnie. Any way, the faults with the Brosnan movies are pretty much endless, so no point pursuing that line otherwise I'll be here all day!
TWINEs premise is fairly original and might have been pretty decent before Apted started tweaking it, DAD the same – started off gritty and original before Tamahori started layering on the CGI like he was slapping on make up for a night out at one of his tranny bars.
That said who was responsible for the woeful dialogue from the likes of Jinx (although to be fair the ‘he knew all about my shoulder’ line cant have looked too bad on the page before Brozza started mangling it)? And as for Mr Kil – that would be embarrassing in a PS2 game circa 1997.
And before we start giving them the benefit of the doubt with CR; that was basically just Flemings work and all they had to do was tag on a few action scenes and tie off the loose ends so that it joined together. I’m pretty confident given the source material as a base that I and half the people on here could have made a decent fist of CR.
The bottom line is that they are journeymen who cannot believe their luck when they should be happy writing Holby City or Eastenders and its utterly mystifying why Babs refuses to axe them.
It reminds me of Chelsea. You can understand why they keep giving Torres another chance because they know that somewhere in there lies a proven world class player. With P&W though its like they’ve signed Michael Ricketts and the manager keeps on giving him another game in the deluded belief hes suddenly going to turn into a goal machine.
Of course in the real world Roman would sack you if you kept playing Michael Ricketts and ended up with results like DAD (in football terms I guess the equivalent of DAD would be getting done 7-0 by Wigan at home) but in Babs tsarist Russia fiefdom where she is accountable to no one its fine to keep extending the contracts of these clowns.
Its doubly confusing when she keeps on trying to hire the best talent in terms of acting (Craig, Dench, Almaric, Fiennes, Bardem) and directing (Forster and Mendes – both directors of Oscar winning films) but shes content to lumber on with this pair of hacks rather than hire the best writers in the business.
Presumably its because they are cheap yes men who do as Babs tells them and don’t ask for the kind of fees an Oscar winner would command.
In fairness to P&W most of the mess that was DAD was what happened after they had turned in the finished script and I don’t think you can hold them responsible for stuff like the invisible car (unless it was their idea in the first place. Actually theres a question who first came up with that gem? Whoever it was should be banned for life from working in the Bond industry), Jinx and the parasurfing. The fact remains however that they have had more than a generous crack at what is a very desirable job in the movie industry and its been time for them to go for some time now. They are currently the Steve Kean of screenwriting.
It's interesting to remember the context of the times that GE was made in. I recently rewatched it for the first since it had come out on video; I was at first surprised at how often Michael Wilson and Campbell kept refering to how important humour is in a Bond film. There were selling the point hard and then I realized that this was a make-or-break moment for the franchise after the disappointing box office results of LTK. So there must have been a lot of pressure to make a more humourous, grander film than had been made than during Dalton's time.
Having said that, Campbell adjusted himself incredibly well to the more serious tone of CR. He's my first choice for a director to helm a Bond film; I'm hoping that he does at least one more.
One last point - at the time of GE True Lies was still fresh in the public's mind, with several critics and people I knew saying that it was ironic that it was the best Bond film ever and that it wasn't even a Bond film! Given that sentiment (and its box office) I'm sure there was a lot of pressure to up the action/machine gun quotient as well...