Martin Campbell - Appreciation Thread

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  • edited January 2023 Posts: 4,409
    Do we want Martin Campbell back for Bond 26?

    I watched his last two films recently and they make for interesting viewing. First up was The Protégé...For what is essentially a B-movie, this is a watchable and entertaining affair. However, the script is really quite ridiculous. Regardless of this, the film is helped along by Campbell's slick direction. He knows where to put the camera in order to give a sense of basic geography and the fight-scene choreography is well staged. I also enjoyed how he really showed the brutality that Maggie Q's character suffers. It goes some way to humanising her character. Though make no mistake, this is routine and generic material. The only thing 'new' is the cringeworthy attempt to craft an adversarial romance between Q and Michael Keaton. Both are rather good in their roles though, especially Keaton who could even have made a good 007 himself....

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    I feel Memory sold me a false bill of goods. The premise is unique: A hired assassin has Alzheimer’s. Could this be a genre film with some thoughtful musings on life and death? Could it employ some inventive methods to place the audience in the disoriented state of the killer? The answer to both questions is a resounding 'nope'. Quite honestly, NOTHING is done with the concept. There is no attempt to impair the audience (like the scenery-switching in The Father) or to make us question what is real and what has been misremembered. Instead, Campbell tries to emulate both Memento and Sicario, not coming close to either. He orchestrates the proceedings with a flat efficacy, stringing together bland action beats and churning up little that rings true. Liam Neeson lacks commitment in the action scenes but does offer unforced glimmers of a soul lost to brutality (there's a great scene where he has to deal with an injury). However, he is perfectly lucid when the plot demands it. Meanwhile, Guy Pearce (get it?) is the strongest and most convincing element of the film.

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  • edited January 2023 Posts: 4,167
    With a solid script Campbell is a safe pair of hands. Remember, GE and CR do have quite solid scripts, arguably the best of the modern Bond films. I’m not sure if he’s necessarily the type of director who can elevate an average script to something great, so I don’t necessarily agree he’d have saved films like TWINE or DAD from their faults if he’d been in the chair. Still, they likely would have been better. Slightly anyway.

    As for Bond 26, I think it depends. My gut instinct is Campbell won’t return and the next director will have more story input than what we’ve seen before, more akin to Fukunaga (or indeed Boyle) during NTTD. Nonetheless, Campbell does understand Bond (or at least how to interpret the character cinematically) so who knows.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited January 2023 Posts: 16,427
    https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/mask-of-zorro-director-on-what-makes-a-great-action-romance.html

    Cool new interview with Martin Campbell that mostly focuses on his Zorro film. However, there are some tasty morsels about Bond.
    ....

    "GoldenEye is more like the Bonds we’ve seen before — not the Roger Moore ones but the Sean Connery ones."

    Just saw this old interview quoted on the previous page. I think I'd disagree with Mr Campbell there- GoldenEye is a lot of fun but I remember my initial reaction was that it didn't really do much but be a sort of updated version of a John Glen Bond film. I don't think it's closer to a Connery at all.



    I feel Memory sold me a false bill of goods. The premise is unique: A hired assassin has Alzheimer’s. Could this be a genre film with some thoughtful musings on life and death? Could it employ some inventive methods to place the audience in the disoriented state of the killer? The answer to both questions is a resounding 'nope'.

    Eek. That film sounds a bit tasteless.
  • talos7talos7 New Orleans
    Posts: 8,217
    matt_u wrote: »
    He said that they offered him the director chair for every Bond film from GE to SF.

    He probably could have improved TWINE. Maybe DAD, too.

    Considering the issues created by the writers strike, his experience would have helped Quantum immensely .
  • Posts: 1,917
    mtm wrote: »
    https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/mask-of-zorro-director-on-what-makes-a-great-action-romance.html

    Cool new interview with Martin Campbell that mostly focuses on his Zorro film. However, there are some tasty morsels about Bond.
    ....

    "GoldenEye is more like the Bonds we’ve seen before — not the Roger Moore ones but the Sean Connery ones."

    Just saw this old interview quoted on the previous page. I think I'd disagree with Mr Campbell there- GoldenEye is a lot of fun but I remember my initial reaction was that it didn't really do much but be a sort of updated version of a John Glen Bond film. I don't think it's closer to a Connery at all.

    No, I'm surprised he said that, especially considering at the time, they seemed focused to try to distance the new era from the Dalton era. They treated that like a stain on franchise and the GE attitude was more like "we're back and picking up where Moore left off."
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,427
    I remember looking forward immensely to GoldenEye; I was a teenager so the perfect age and had been anticipating it for months and months- so when I saw it, although I loved it, I think I was a bit surprised just how much it felt like... a Bond film. Which is good, but, as you say: it felt like a Moore film you'd watch on the telly on the weekend.
    I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but on the other hand perhaps I was expecting something a bit more. With regards to the other conversations we're having on here about the future of Bond, I don't think there's anything wrong with moving things on and giving the audience a bit more than they were expecting. I think that's why CR went down so well.
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    Posts: 13,814
    I greatly enjoyed the Craig era with relish.

    Now pass the ketchup.

  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 8,218
    mtm wrote: »
    I remember looking forward immensely to GoldenEye; I was a teenager so the perfect age and had been anticipating it for months and months- so when I saw it, although I loved it, I think I was a bit surprised just how much it felt like... a Bond film. Which is good, but, as you say: it felt like a Moore film you'd watch on the telly on the weekend.
    I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but on the other hand perhaps I was expecting something a bit more. With regards to the other conversations we're having on here about the future of Bond, I don't think there's anything wrong with moving things on and giving the audience a bit more than they were expecting. I think that's why CR went down so well.

    I think tonally there's a fair bit of the Connery-era in there. And in GoldenEye I'd say Brosnan was closer to Connery than Moore, but the film itself is offset by a lot of the grander action (especially in the vehicular sense) that Glen injected into a lot of his films. The supporting characters (Xenia, mainly) also felt more like the larger than life counterparts that we got in the Moore era. So there's a nice cocktail of both in there, and that's probably why it's still so revered so highly. It hits quite a lot of marks.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,427
    Yes, and Pierce said in that excruciating GE watchalong that he intentionally pitched somewhere between Roger and Sean, and that was noticeable. And it worked, to be fair to him.
    Out of interest, where do you see the Connery tone?
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,188
    BT3366 wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »
    https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/mask-of-zorro-director-on-what-makes-a-great-action-romance.html

    Cool new interview with Martin Campbell that mostly focuses on his Zorro film. However, there are some tasty morsels about Bond.
    ....

    "GoldenEye is more like the Bonds we’ve seen before — not the Roger Moore ones but the Sean Connery ones."

    Just saw this old interview quoted on the previous page. I think I'd disagree with Mr Campbell there- GoldenEye is a lot of fun but I remember my initial reaction was that it didn't really do much but be a sort of updated version of a John Glen Bond film. I don't think it's closer to a Connery at all.

    No, I'm surprised he said that, especially considering at the time, they seemed focused to try to distance the new era from the Dalton era. They treated that like a stain on franchise and the GE attitude was more like "we're back and picking up where Moore left off."

    This is inaccurate. Eon was still trying to keep the flag up for the Dalton films even though Dalton was no longer around. There was a 1995 special that was leading up to GoldenEye and they kept highlighting Dalton’s run like name dropping Sanchez as one of the best and memorable villains, giving Robert Davi a bit interview in it too.

    And yeah, they were mostly focusing on trying to recapture the Connery era rather than Moore. If there’s anything in GE that resembles Moore then it’s Brosnan trying to keep that tongue in cheek element. Even then, they were still trying to give Brosnan the kind of pathos that Dalton got. So they were not trying to totally distance from Dalton.
  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 8,218
    mtm wrote: »
    Yes, and Pierce said in that excruciating GE watchalong that he intentionally pitched somewhere between Roger and Sean, and that was noticeable. And it worked, to be fair to him.
    Out of interest, where do you see the Connery tone?

    I should probably have stressed "early Connery" as obviously that era shifted quite a bit towards its end. However, it mainly comes from the self-seriousness/straight faced nature that breaks through at times. If I had to pick one, I'd probably say Thunderball is the Connery film it most feels like even though visually they don't have a lot in common. A lot of the MI6-based scenes evoke similar scenes in TB to me. A lot of that could be structural, too; GoldenEye's plot kicks into gear a lot later than other Bond films do, similar to TB.

    And obviously the Russian-set scenes have shades of FRWL to them, specifically the earlier moments; but that's arguably natural rather than creatively determined considering the setting. And even that is capped off with wonderful Moore-esque action.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,427
    Okay yeah, I can sort of see what you mean with the MI6 bits. Definitely moving away from the lighter tone of the Rog ones there.
  • slide_99slide_99 USA
    Posts: 693
    chrisisall wrote: »
    Tuck91 wrote: »
    Campbell turned down TND & QOS.
    He didn't turn down QoS. He just wasn't offered.
    WTF???
    Someone I know on FB, @chrisisall, attended the DGA screening for The Foreigner and struck a conversation with Campbell about Casino Royale. Apparently, according to him, the reason Campbell wasn't asked back was Craig. They didn't get on too well on the set of Craig's debut and that Campbell pushed him too hard into the role, forcing him to some of the difficult stunts and acted very tough on them all.

    This doesn't surprise me. Almost everything I dislike about the Craig era came from Craig himself, from firing Lindy Hemming to hiring Sam Mendes to the whole NTTD fiasco. Babs and Michael should have put him in his place. It's telling that the only Bond movie he did that's universally-praised is the one he had little or no input in.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,188
    I’m actually glad he got rid of Lindy Hemming and consequently those Brioni suits. They made Bond look too posh, and Craig didn’t really suit to that style as well as Brosnan.

    And if Craig is the reason we got Mendes, THANK GOODNESS.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,427
    I’m actually glad he got rid of Lindy Hemming and consequently those Brioni suits. They made Bond look too posh, and Craig didn’t really suit to that style as well as Brosnan.

    And if Craig is the reason we got Mendes, THANK GOODNESS.

    Yes, totally agree there. The things I enjoy least about CR are probably the hangovers from Brosnan’s time (Dame Judi excepted, natch).
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,188
    I would have gotten rid of Dench and Arnold. Thank goodness they didn’t bring back Vic Armstrong.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 16,427
    Judi was the best M, no way I’m getting rid of her.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,188
    Lee is still tops for me. But Dench is good, and they eventually made better use of her in SF.
  • slide_99slide_99 USA
    edited January 2023 Posts: 693
    I’m actually glad he got rid of Lindy Hemming and consequently those Brioni suits. They made Bond look too posh, and Craig didn’t really suit to that style as well as Brosnan.

    Hemming's work was very understated and traditional without looking dated. I thought it complemented Craig-Bond perfectly. After she left, his wardrobe started becoming increasingly garish and overdone, like the peacoat/jumper/tie getup in SF and his mafioso funeral attire in SP.

    On a side note, Hemming is also the reason why Christian Bale looked more Bondian (and ironically more British) in The Dark Knight movies than Craig did during the same era.

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  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    edited January 2023 Posts: 8,188
    Nah, Craig looked more badass in SP, especially during the scene with him killing those assassins for Lucia.

    But I’ll say Bale is well suited there because his Bruce Wayne persona is supposed to be insufferably posh for appearance’s sake.
  • edited January 2023 Posts: 784
    That peacoat was horrible and the tie was too black
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,188
    Nah, Craig looked more badass in SP, especially during the scene with him killing those assassins for Lucia.

    That peacoat was horrible and the tie was too black

    Reread my post. I was talking about this suit.

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    And shout out to his vest.

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  • Nah, Craig looked more badass in SP, especially during the scene with him killing those assassins for Lucia.

    That peacoat was horrible and the tie was too black

    Reread my post. I was talking about this suit.

    Spectre-0405.jpg

    Spectre-0450.jpg

    And shout out to his vest.

    Spectre-0441.jpg

    The vest is nice, but in full suit that collar pin and the handkerchief ruin it for me.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,188
    Fair enough. Go watch Remington Steel if it hurts your eyes that much.
  • edited January 2023 Posts: 784
    Fair enough. Go watch Remington Steel if it hurts your eyes that much.

    On a second note, the coat in the previous scene wasn’t terrible at all. I very much like it.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,188
    When he was chatting with Tanner? Yeah, spiffy attire. Dig the gloves. Overall I do think SP is Craig’s best dressing across his run. Makes sense, given that his Bond in SP is the closest we get to the traditional cool as a cucumber Bond in his run. He’s not an upstart like in CR/QOS, not weathered like in SF, and not retired like in NTTD. He’s in full Bond mode throughout that film with no chip on his shoulder.


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    I WISH we had more of this confident Bond in his run.
  • edited January 2023 Posts: 784
    Dunno if it’s the same one

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  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    edited January 2023 Posts: 8,188
    Definitely different.

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  • edited January 2023 Posts: 784
    He looks a bit like a mainstream rock singer in the double breasted one.
  • VenutiusVenutius Yorkshire
    edited January 2023 Posts: 3,152
    Yeah, the double-breasted coat didn't do it for me either. Liked the one he wore on the Thames with Tanner and when Moneypenny caught him up in the courtyard, though. At least there weren't any lightweight brown dusters in SP...
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