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Michael Apted could have been considered a "prestige filmmaker", depending on how you choose to define the term. So could Lewis Gilbert. Danny Boyle, Sam Mendes etc are all very different filmmakers. It's a meaningless label. All that matters is that the directors are good and can bring something to the script that's developed.
Yes 💯
Yes, I think this is the point of the Bond films. Connery, Barry, Ken Adam; all of them went on to win Oscars because they were extraordinarily good (Gilbert nominated for one, and won a BAFTA) - Bond films are absolute hokum made by people extremely overqualified for the job, always have been. That's why they're wonderful.
I don't get why fans would want just any old jobbing filmmakers working on them.
I don't think they were overqualified. I mean Gilbert or Apted were not David Lean or Spielberg. They weren't even Ridley Scott.
I don't think that impulse is wrong. A couple of things to consider:
1) Bond has been around long enough to be treated like wine, not cold beer; and like all wine, it becomes more "prestigious" with age. A series that has been around for over six decades, has transcended the generational barriers of pop culture, and has film historians writing essays about its roots while new instalments are still being propelled in movie theatres, inevitably draws a different kind of attention than your standard action flick of the week.
2) These films cost a lot of money. (They always have.) Yet the sixteen-to-twenty crowd isn't going to pay for them. You have to draw in the moms and dads, the hardworking busybodies, and the retired as well. A prestige Bond will, in my estimation, have an easier time doing that than a 'dirty' flick of little reputation.
3) Whatever separates "prestige filmmakers" from others, I think the important part is that these people are experienced, can work with actors, can be trusted to handle a big project and have ideas of their own. I honestly don't think that it's about their prestige, but rather about their inherent qualities. Also, Campbell doesn't exactly qualify as a "prestige" director in my opinion. When they hired him, he had mainly made raunchy comedies and low-level action flicks.
Sam Mendes isn't David Lean, Spielberg or Ridley Scott either.
As I said, it depends on what you view as "prestige". Both Gilbert and Apted directed multi-Academy award nominated dramas prior to doing Bond films, and that seems to be where people's point of contention lies.
Yes. I think it's a bit of a myth with Bond fans that Bond directors prior to, say, Marc Forster and Sam Mendes had little level of acclaim and made only certain types of films. Lewis Gilbert as you said was a critically acclaimed director who had won awards at Cannes prior to Bond. Guy Hamilton did a fair number of critically acclaimed dramas, as well as comedies etc, prior to GF.
I think there's a story about Terence Young and Ian Fleming's first meeting (I might be misremembering so take with a pinch of salt). Fleming jokingly said to Young, 'so you're the director who's going to ruin my book?' Young proceeded to rattle off how many international films he'd done, which ones had played at whichever film festivals etc. and said to Fleming 'your book will be fine'.
But ultimately, yes, 'prestige' isn't a very useful label.
I think it's half and half with Campbell. He had made some fairly trashy stuff, but he had also made, and was probably best-known for, a multiple BAFTA-winning, extremely acclaimed -and very filmic- drama series. Kind of not dissimilar to Fukunaga's situation before NTTD, really. And he'd also made some other, what some might call 'artsy' stuff too. He was no slouch. Kind of reminds me of Ian McKellen in a way: was he a trashy actor in the 90s because he made The Shadow? He had, and has, a pretty great reputation as one of the best stage actors of his generation- he did The Shadow because he wanted movie experience. Might well have been the same with Campbell's early movie efforts.
Your point about experience and money is a good one too: these films do cost a lot so they need someone who has proven themselves to be pretty great as they don't have time to nurture a new talent or anything like that: they need an expert. If expertise is seen as 'prestige', so be it.
And that applies to the guy who's going to play 007 too I would think: they didn't pick Brosnan or Craig because they hadn't done anything before- they need people who know their way around a movie set and can handle a movie of this size.
The point seems generally to be: if it happened when Connery was Bond it's fine, if it happened when Craig was Bond then it's terrible.
It wasn’t supposed to be so much a criticism as an observation.
Excellent point about the actor playing Bond. I hadn't thought about that, but you're absolutely right. Seeing how exhausted Craig was after filming a Bond film, they don't want an actor who walks off the set midway over "creative differences" i.e. it's not all fun and games doing a Bond.
And yes, Ian McKellen. Apart from your correct remark, and completely off-topic, I'd like to add how sad I am that he has never gotten a chance to be in a Bond film. Yet. One can only hope...
Even at that level I suppose they have to know they have the right pick. Obviously you can have someone like Danny Boyle who could come along with potentially good ideas for a film, but that relationship could fall apart with the way that director works (in this case due to Boyle wanting that more singular control over the script without input from other writers, which for Bond isn't feasible). But Boyle's probably a bit of an outlier.
True to some extent. I don't think there's anything unusual with Forster, Mendes, and Fukunaga as Bond directors. They're more or less in the ballpark of Gilbert, Young, and Hamilton in terms of prior experience I'd say, albeit perhaps more on the independent film side in terms of career beginnings than the studio based one you saw more in the past (but even that's a bit of a contextual difference, and their later films/ones prior to Bond aren't dissimilar).
Maybe "prestige" is not the word. Drama directors.
But then again, Mendes is not Marc Forster either
It's also hard to make such comparisons, I think. The film industry has changed a lot. But I generally agree that Forster, Mendes and Fukunaga aren't necessarily so different from Gilbert, Young and Hamilton.
Neither am I.
Most of the Bond directors have been 'drama' directors of some sort, or at least had drama films in their filmographies. Gilbert was actually more known for doing smaller, more character based films prior to Bond. Young and Hamilton certainly made their share of smaller dramas.
Forster had 'Stranger Than Fiction' before QOS which is a comedy drama (actually a really great film in my opinion). It's not a million miles away from having something like Alfie under your belt prior to Bond.
Yes, there are things like Hamilton starting as an Assistant Director for studio films which is a pretty obsolete career pathway for a director today (I'm sure there are exceptions but it's rare). That said Gilbert did start off making low budget documentaries and shorts, and then of course features. It's a bit more 'self made' than Fukunaga and Forster who went to film school, but all of three began their careers in more or less that arena. All the directors had a mixture of genre films under their belts, all had critical acclaim to some extent, and all had helmed with medium to larger budgeted films.
Thank God.
It’s an important point. I find there’s a good system to tell: if people have different names then they’re probably separate people. I reckon Deke’s got this for us.
Which makes sense if you have a second unit handling the action (not that it’s quite that simple of course).
Hell, even Lee Tamahori made the excellent Once Were Warriors before he gave us Die Another Day.
Yeah, very weirdly. I guess he did a bunch of 90s thriller films too. Odd director.
There's a Roger Corman quote where he talked about his method for making low budget genre movies (a lot of which were the early efforts of great directors like Demme, Scorsese, Coppola etc). His method amounted to getting a director who had aspirations to be the next Fellini, giving them a few thousand dollars, and telling them they needed to make an exploitation film set in a strip club or whatever.
It's a very broad parallel to Bond's method. Get a director who's made some character based, critically acclaimed films, and have them make a Bond movie with all its spectacle, escapism, humour etc.
It's funny because both series were quite old in 1995.
is Michael Cuesta available? ;)
Essentially the horse has to start pulling the cart again, and not the other way around.
I think Skyfall just about gets away with it (even if Silvas villainous scheme dissipates into nothing more than revenge against M by the end, again more personal stakes), but if you look at the 2 films released since 2012, they both suffer from the same chronic problem. You could say that EON saw the widespread acclaim that Skyfall had and took the lesson that from now on Bond films have to first and foremost be about Bond and what he is dealing with emotionally before they're about the earthly danger hes intent on preventing. Rather than resulting from a confluence of the right director coming along and having the right story to tell, now exploring Bond's emotional journey is a MUST. The problem is not every film needs that, indeed some films are better off without it. Imagine Live And Let Die in 1973, but it needed a tortured, uncertain Bond at the centre. It would ruin the lighthearted, funky tone of the adventure entirely. Imagine if during The Spy Who Loved Me Bond is still mourning Tracy and drinking himself into a stupor everynight, it would completely clash with the Jaws ripping doors off vans and underwater car antics the rest of the film going for. And that's essentially what has happened with the last 2 Craig films in my view, which are perfectly competent romp adventure films that are held captive to an unwelcome air of angst and unease which doesn't appear to improve the stories much at all. SP could be a straightforward Bond adventure where through following up a lead Bond comes across Mr White, who agrees to give Bond information about SPECTRE in exchange that he keeps his daughter safe, then the two fall in love and ride off together, the end. Technically speaking ofcourse all of that does happen, but it is weighted down by so much extraneous stuff which seems not to add much of anything except put a dampener on things. Bond's backstory with Blofeld is obvious, staring at a photo, cuckoo, but also theres commentary on government bureaucracy and the surveillance state between M and Denbigh, Madeline lay on a bed drunk taunting Bond, just lots of stuff to give the impression that there's more going on than there actually is. By the end of the film it's a standard bond blows up the villains base, beats the ticking clock type of story, so why not at least be up front about it, and take that approach from the beginning?
Another practice that needs to end. Nolan for example never uses second unit and the results speak for themselves.
I don't see the Craig films (or Craig's Bond) being as depressing or angst ridden as you're trying to see them as. We get moments like Bond drinking heavily on the plane in QOS while thinking of Vesper, him struggling with the idea he's lost a step in SF/not engaging with any sort of psychological evaluation of his past (he never does throughout the entire film incidentally, and it's not directly part of what he needs to overcome in the film). But ultimately he's still James Bond - a man who sleeps around, has a dark witty sense of humour, a swagger, charisma, and even a sense of mystery to him.
As for SP, one thing I actually like about it is Bond's newfound lease on life after SF. He's much more humorous and relaxed. There's surprisingly little Bond himself actually has to overcome in the film. His past with Blofeld amounts to a couple of months when he was 11/12 (it's Blofeld who has the chip on his shoulder to some extent. Bond himself doesn't seem particularly interested in him beyond any immediate threat).
As for those individual gripes with SP, I'd say some of those things add good texture that a Bond film needs. Bond drunkenly aiming his gun at the mouse (which actually I think is quite funny), or Madeline drunkenly telling Bond to watch over her aren't dissimilar to moments like Bond and Natalya on the beach in GE talking about his profession, or Bond drinking vodka alone/keeping watch before Paris arrives in TND. They're little insights into the danger of Bond's job and how he deals with them. Being able to have those moments is part of what makes Bond great. Commentary on government bureaucracy isn't unusual for Bond, and I'm not quite sure what it has to do directly with what you're saying. I don't see anything wrong with a Bond film being... well, a Bond film. It will have things like the action, perhaps the ticking clock finale etc.
Not saying SP is my favourite Bond movie, but I don't quite understand the need to suck any sense of character from it for it to be a more interesting film. I don't think any Bond film would be improved by that, whether it's TSWLM or SP.
To be fair, I'd say some of Nolan's work would have been improved with a 2nd Unit Team. The truck chase in TDK I think was botched a bit, and it wasn't salvaged in the edit (very odd scene to watch for me personally. Way too many changes in direction and lags in movement from cut to cut. Very sloppy for such an established filmmaker).
All Bond films are basically about Bond- he's very much the main character, and the character which all of them are celebrating. By which I mean every action scene is kind of character piece for him: showing us how cool and inventive he is. If you compare with the somewhat similar Mission Impossible films: they're not about Ethan Hunt to the same extent that the Bond films are focused on this one man. And if the Bond films can celebrate this character, his abilities, his sexiness, his expensive tastes, his sense of humour etc. then they can be about his emotional experiences.
That's a different film doing different things, it's pointless to imagine it doing something else and then say it would be weaker for it, of course it would. Casino Royale wouldn't be as good if there was gondola which turned into a hovercraft in it- proves nothing.
I watched Batman Begins for the first time in a decade or so recently: it has not aged as well as CR and felt a bit uninvolving and flat to me, which I really wasn't expecting.
A good director without an excellent star and a great script isn't going to produce a great film.
Craig made for a very good Bond, but it's time to move on. Shed the angst and psychology and focus on what made Bond films enjoyable from the start.
For me, broadly speaking there's two types of Bond films:
Type A: films which by and large follow the formula that was cemented with Goldfinger, updating the style to fit the times, ebbing and flowing between darker and lighter tones, but sticking true to a fundamental set of rules, rarely making exceptions. These films are usually plot-focused, and work in character and drama where it is appropriate for the story. Examples of this include Thunderball, Live And Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me, Octopussy, The Living Daylights and Goldeneye.
Type B: Are films which break from the formula, where they have a specific story which doesn't include so many of the typical tropes and plot beats, and instead are more character-driven. Examples include On Her Majestys Secret Service, Casino Royale, Skyfall.
Additionally there's two sub-categories:
Films which think they belong in Type A but actually belong in Type B e.g. License To Kill
and films which think they belong in Type B but actually belong in Type A e.g. SPECTRE, B25.
When I say I want Bond 26 to be a fun romp, or a classic bond adventure, I mean I want a film that KNOWS its a Type A film and is not trying to be anything else, and is sure-footed enough to make no excuses. That doesn't mean that there's no character development whatsoever, but the character and drama happen where appropriate to suit the story, like in the other type A Bond films mentioned above. This also doesn't mean that we would see a return of slide whistles, gondolas, double taking pigeons and such like. Obviously humour is updated all the time, so say "she always did enjoy a good squeeze" might seem a bit too 90's cheese now, but it doesn't mean that 2020's bond can't find its own kind of irreverent, zany feel that does feel appropriate for the 2020's. Basically there's no need to shy away from jokes, just because it's "less realistic".