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I forgot to mention, the name of the song is STILL Holding On....it was in fact considered well before SP but for SF. This was dropped due to marketing considerations but also it held more to the Vesper story arch following QoS before the producers went in another direction and SF had its own song correlating to its plot. Just listening to the first few seconds you can see the emotional style of DC's unforgettable Bond moments and story arc come into play. The lyrics incorporate inspiration of the idea of him surviving and continuing his job despite all the heartaches he has gone through. There's still hope in him. This is the original version before all the eventual remixes by various artists who flocked to the song after seeing it as a "reject", which should actually be considered a loss for better potential.
Given the sad beginning and hopeful confident-boosting tone at the end of the song, you can tell that if the third DC movie would have continued the Quantum story arc, it would also have wrapped it up and we wouldn't have had this amazing tribute to what started in CR by the time NTTD came out years later, wouldn't you agree @0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 ?
NTTD was somewhat rushed into production in a sense given that the original director left and made a stink about it. Danny Boyle wanted his own stand alone movie plot-driven with a classic plot but....when producers along with DC didn't see eye to eye with Boyle's vision, what did he do? He spoiled THEIR ending saying that's the reason he left.
The handling of Safin must have suffered at the cost of production changes so a quality actor was brought in board but there just wasn't enough time to focus much on his character both scriptwise and physically. Of course the lesson I think the producers will get is to ditch the whole villain scar thing next time.
Yes, I do get the sense Safin's character was rushed. Heck, Malek and Craig even outright said they were coming up with dialogue during the confrontation between the characters at the end (which might explain the cliched dialogue and muddled world domination motivation). Anyway, I agree, best to shelve the scars and disfigurements in Bond villains going forward. There's little precedent doing so in Fleming and it's been overused. Green is a better template for a Bond villain going forward in that sense. To my mind more Fleming-esque.
Still have no idea what really happened with Boyle. I know a rumour floated about after he left that he did so because of the ending (probably untrue, seems Craig and the producers had this ending in mind early on so Boyle would have been aware of it/incorporated it into his script) but this could have come from anyone and not necessarily Boyle himself. Honestly really want to read his original script. I suspect it's bonkers having seen Trance (2013).
My guess would be that anything written at the request of EON is EON's property. They're quite good at making sure they have the intellectual ownership. They learned it the hard way.
I didn't realise the script wasn't finished. Ah well, I've said it many times, I don't think we'll ever know 100% what went down. For what it's worth Boyle is a very impressionistic director (lots of scenes in Trainspotting, 127 Hours, Trance etc. blur the lines between reality and fantasy, especially from the point of view of certain characters). It's not what you want when it comes to Bond. I said it myself when he was first announced, he wasn't the right fit. I doubt he'll be back or they'll use anything from his script.
Boyle also said "They wanted me to kill James Bond"....he spoiled it because be wasn't getting his way with a fan style 007 movie where the plot is grand and at full front and center of the movie direction, the sets overcompensate for the lack of character development and the plot driven movie is predictable.
So, from what I can tell there were two rumours floating around in 2019. One was that it was Danny Boyle who wanted to kill off Bond and the other (albeit much less popular headline) was that he quit because the producers wanted him to kill off Bond. I can find quite a few articles about these two things from 2019 actually, although I can't see any direct quote from Boyle about it like the one you're referring to (although maybe I'm not looking hard enough, I really don't know). Actually they're rather interesting reading them now, ie. https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/killing-off-james-bond-was-it-director-danny-boyles-idea
I'm going to bet killing Bond had absolutely nothing to do with it, and Hodge's script probably included an ending with Bond dying based on Craig/the producer's request. Again, Boyle's story was probably full of some weird and impressionistic moments that would have been out of place in a Bond film, and the story was most likely too low key or not right.
Agreed. I was disappointed when Boyle was announced as the director and was glad when he left. I know it's subjective, but I honestly can't imagine any aspect of NTTD that would've been better with Boyle at the helm. No offence, DB fans!
Good point, CommanderRoss. I imagine you're spot on with that - makes perfect sense.
Now, Boyle is a better director than Forster, but he's anything but conservative in his filmmaking. Even Cary Fukanaga and Sam Mendes display this more so than the former two.
To each their own. My issue with the editing in those scenes is that it adds nothing and to me feels unnecessarily showy. It's not important for storytelling but is meant to be 'thematic' and yet conveys little. Even emotionally it takes me out of the film/interrupts the tension. Again, that's just me. I'm also not a fan of too much shakey camerawork as it makes action hard to follow and is a bit distracting.
I do like a lot about QOS, but I wish another director had been picked for a more no nonsense stylistic approach.
Shaky, chaotic camerawork with action is always a disappointment to me but I think I'm so biased with this film and have seen it so much that I don't mind it and have no problem following the action now.
Yes, agree totally. As for the crowd in that foot chase scene, am always convinced one guy is pointing at the camera unaware he's on a movie set!!
I will say that I love a lot of elements of QOS's story. For me this is where it succeeds rather than the much of the stylistic choices. Bond going 'rogue' isn't as much him wanting revenge but trying to get to the bottom of what's going on. If anything it's MI6 who think he's become a loose cannon. For me, this is more convincing than Bond doing things like breaking into M's flat in CR (I generally think Bond should be more of a blunt instrument, not a Jack Bauer type constantly disobeying orders etc). It works. Good job film.
I also love Camille and her backstory. I know they actually were considering her coming back for a future Craig film which would have been interesting.
Green is an underrated villain, and to me much more in-keeping with the strange looking sadists of Fleming's novels. I personally think he's more Fleming-esque and less cliched than Le Chiffre in CR.
The scene where Bond and Camille are a moment away from suicide in the burning hotel is one of the highlights of Craig's era for me.
I like Fields. I don't care who knows it.
While I have many problems with this film it does have its moments. I wish we'd have gotten a slightly different version of this film - perhaps with a different director, another draft of the script etc. Ah well...
That's a fun thing to look for in these films, especially the older ones. @Birdleson has a running list somewhere, it's wild how often it happens but I guess it's inevitable with such large scale sequences. Hell, you can see a ton of fans roped off during the TWINE PTS, watching Bond's escape (I believe, and not his entrance) from the bank.
@007HallY, I can agree with you on a lot of that, especially the near-suicide bit. When I saw it in theaters at the time, I genuinely thought for a brief second that it was going to end that way, a sort of murder-suicide for the two of them while in one another's arms. That scene is incredibly effective and powerful.
Eon commissions scripts, so whatever is written under the agreement is owned by Eon, forever. They’re free to do with it whatever they please. They can use characters and ideas, or even have the script re-written, all without fear of being sued.
The only time writers own their work is on spec (they write and submit a script for free). But if the script is optioned, any rewrites will be owned by the purchaser (the studio).
If, after the option expires, the writer is free to take back their original draft, but NOT the rewrites they did under option (those are still owned by the studio).
The action editing in CR was almost as fast paced as in QoS, haters. The Cuba shootout in NTTD was harder to follow despite being “slower”.
I'd argue he should get some of the blame in the sense that as the Director he sets the creative direction of the editing and action sequences. I'm an editor myself and even on short films and music videos the director sits beside the editor after the assembly cut and has a lot of input. Perhaps some leave the first two cuts to the editor before getting involved (as does Ridley Scott) but in this case they would have been told in advance the type of pace, rhythm, ideas etc. they wanted in the sequences and the film as a whole. It's unlikely they just came up with that style without Foster's knowledge or input. Same for the action sequences.
The tight schedule, however, was certainly beyond his control. That and BB and MGW were willing to go with his 'tight and fast as a bullet' vision. I can see why they didn't bring him back, however.
Yes, the studio rushed his crew into the 6 week editing period. Plus, a director is supposed to put their creative touch one way or another on a movie....shaking my head at the haters.
Let's not forget....the production on QoS for most of their night time scenes aside from the Greene Planet party scene was rather lonely....very few crew members were behind the camera as Craig acted out his final scene with Mathis.
Craig began selling his scenes with the facial expressions in that scene and also with the burning hotel near-death and suicide attempt with Camille.
David Arnold picked up and ran off with the idea of how lonely production became. It added to his the air of melancholy on the soundtrack.
However, I do think that they consciously hired Dan Bradley as First Unit director for his own style, not simply to work to Forster's instructions. This aspect of QOS really makes sense when you look at Bradley's own description of his directing style: 'We shouldn’t try and make everything feel perfectly staged. I want to feel like we were lucky to catch a glimpse of some crazy piece of action. I don’t want it to feel like a movie, where everything is perfectly presented to the audience...if it is too easy to see then, to me, it feels staged. I don’t want the audience to have a passive viewing experience.' That explains a lot about QOS, I think!
Bradley also said that he was responsible for the actual action scenes themselves: 'I write most of the action that I shoot, so the first thing I asked Marc is if he minded me taking a pass at the action in this script. Fortunately he really liked what I dreamt up.' Which, in conjunction with Bradley's directing technique, explains why the action scenes in QOS resemble Dan Bradley's previous work far more closely than they do Forster's.
According to Forster, Barbara Broccoli did ask him to come back and make Craig's third Bond film, but he declined. I don't know if BB asked him to direct another one before or after the reviews for QOS came in, though... ;)
A year after QoS came out, BB, MGW, the writers and Marc Forster did a Q&A.....BB stated she had asked Forster to return but he refused. Forster turned toward her and said "really, did I?" and the audience laughed.
The studio rushed the editing.
Has anyone heard this song? The beginning really sounds like the end of a pre title scene where the title credits begin to role about a tragic shot or kill that's affected Bond.
Presumably it would have been EON who had final cut rights. Generally, however, it's the Director who sits with the Editors after an assembly cut for creative input. Producers usually come in for a screening later on in the process to give their own notes before the Editor goes back into the editing room for the final cut. This is, of course, in an ideal world. Sometimes Directors don't want much if anything to do with the editing process but in my (albeit more limited) experience the best projects are fine tuned when the Director has that input at that stage.
Anyway, tight schedule aside I think some of this stems from Forster's approach as a Director. He seems a bit hands off going from the Dan Bradley situation (I can't imagine Cary Fukanaga or even Sam Mendes taking that approach with a First Unit Director, at least not without some sort of consistency with their vision). The editing can certainly be a bit strange in QOS. Cutting to horse races aside, the scene where M, Tanner and Bond are walking through the MI6 building has some very odd cuts - at one point they're walking downstairs and then we cut to a wide shot where it take us a moment to realise we're behind the characters and we've jumped the line. They jump the line again when the round the corner. Very jarring without any sense of orientation to the space. Stuff like that shows to me a lack of cohesion/planning between shooting and editing which is usually the fault of the Director.