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Hmm... I'm not sure that's entirely fair to be honest with you, at least when comparing Craig's career to Glen's. If we're talking strictly about the, as of now, relatively short period after his Bond era, he's starred in a highly praised sequel to what was already a successful whodunnit film and was the stand out in it. It's quite significant in itself that he's gone on to portray a recurring character outside of Bond who is distinctive in their own right. I'm not a fan of his films, but Luca Guadagnino is a very well respected director and Craig was praised for his role in Queer (I think he deserved an Oscar nomination frankly and I wasn't even a fan of the film). Overall though he's starred in some pretty great films other than Bond I'd say - Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Layer Cake, Logan Lucky, Knives Out...
I mean, strictly speaking he has an extraordinarily strong career compared to 99.9% of actors! Even in terms of Bond actors and their careers outside of Bond/on the tail end of their era and after, I'd say he's much more comparable to Sean Connery at the current time than, say, Roger Moore or even Brosnan at that stage of their careers. To be honest with you Timothy Dalton in that way has had a relatively successful career outside of Bond (maybe not quite on Craig or Connery's level I suppose and more a character/supporting actor than a lead, but that's not a bad thing).
2 of the 3 examples you give aren't even relevant to the discussion of Craig's post bond career, and the other is the aforementioned who-dunnit. I just don't think that justifies saying he's had a strong post bond career, and I don't even think Glass Onion was recieved anywhere near as well as the first Knives Out.
Well, like I said in that sentence that's in regards to his overall career (I may not have been clear on that to be fair, but in my mind at least there was a distinction).
But fine, we'll stick to his post-Bond career very specifically :) On that basis Craig is three and a half years outside of his Bond tenure, going from when his last 007 film was released. That's an incredibly short amount of time anyway, but as of now he's portrayed another distinctive and popular character, essentially leading another (and very different) recurring film series outside of Bond. It's not just a minor whodunnit but very popular movies. Glass Onion was successful despite Netflix giving it a limited theatrical release (which was a mistake in my opinion) - its critical ratings were very strong and even with a limited release it made some money, and moreover people seemed excited to see it based on the strength of the first one. The fact is it did well. Then we have Queer - again, a very different role to Bond by a very respected director which Craig got great reviews for. Not financially successful (Guadagnino's films rarely are, and even then it's worth saying Sean Connery in his initial post Bond career starred in The Offence which he himself was praised for, but was overall a complete financial failure to the point UA tore up Connery's film deal contract! Craig's not had a setback like that).
I mean, the fact that Craig has not been typecast and has the freedom to be selective about his roles is already a major indication his career is strong. As much as it's easy to be hypercritical and hold major actors to an impossibly high standard, I think objectively he's had a good run so far, even though it's way too early to view his post-Bond tenure as a whole.
In my perception Glass Onion was recieved favourably but a substantial drop-off from the first in terms of quality. Queer I don't think quite had the effect it was supposed to for Craig. Clearly it's a big swing from the actor to mark a transition back to more serious awards fare, but he didn't even recieve a BAFTA nomination which is really strange because native awards bodies tend to reward this sort of turn (like, say Robert Downey and Oppenhiemer). Apart from that, Craig was recently passed over from playing the lead in a DC film, a role which looks it could go to Colin Farrell. So, while I don't think Craig is in any need to be worried (he obviously never has to work again regardless), I don't think it's accurate to say he's going from strength to strength.
They put their faces and names in front of 25 million viewers, and built or continued to develop their relationship with a studio they've now done multiple projects for. That's keeping a job, that's a career, that's what you asked. I also know MBB from Godzilla and that Sherlock spinoff she did. She's been working. So has Craig. Craig was in Oscar conversations... he didn't get nominated, but he was considered! And he clearly has his choice for a next project with Sgt. Rock calling (and him turning it down) and now, again, Golden Compass courting him. You are just wrong to say Craig's career is not developing post-Bond, when he's headlined several major projects since 2021.
Weird way of putting it - he was passed over for Sgt. Rock. I've seen reports say he exited it (it seems like he was never formally connected so likely neither is fully true. For all we know he had other stuff he wanted to do or just wasn't interested).
Fair enough if you feel that way about Glass Onion, but it was successful as you said. That's pretty good as a start to a post Bond career, no?
It's worth saying as well that plenty of great performances have not even been nominated for awards and many well respected films have not met award or financial expectations. But Queer is far from a disaster or wholly applicable here. Craig was nominated for several awards (not an Oscar obviously, but many other critical awards).
It's also worth saying few actors truly go from strength to strength in that consistent way at every point in their careers. Every actor has an ebb and flow, even if it's just in a financial sense. But they can still have a strong career, and nor would I say 'going from strength to strength' in a very short term is the strictest definition of one. I think it's fair to say Craig has a strong career. And honestly, we're talking about 3.5 years after Bond! Like I said look at Connery's early post Bond career and some of the financial disasters he starred in! Worth saying Connery's post Bond career was on the whole pretty amazing even with weaker films in mind. Regardless though, Craig's doing well and is more successful than we picking apart his career will likely ever be.
Dalton didn’t even have a “strong” career as Bond. He thrived more as a character actor rather than as a leading man.
Besides, I wasn’t even talking about Dalton, I was talking about the director that let down Dalton and saw the decline of Bond’s popularity throughout the 80s that ended with LTK becoming the worst performing Bond film in the franchise.
As for Martin Campbell, I don’t even rate him that highly either, at least in the larger sense of his career. For Bond he’s been great. Outside of Bond? Not so. He had THE MASK OF ZORRO, and everything else looked unremarkable. Seems Campbell just lucked out with having good material for GE and CR.
But Glen wisely set up the camera with his wide shots. Campbell was a TV director with his close-ups.
I tend to agree actually. There's great dimensionality and scope to Glen's direction. I love the Afghanistan sequence in TLD where Necros is in the back of the jeep in a nice wide with the compound moving by in the background, or the great low angle shot of them striding across the runway with the rising sun.
For me though GE feels much more cinematic on the whole.
Contrast that to the action Glen personally shot and edited himself like these…
And we’d see that kind of action more in the 80s films when shot at Pinewood. I’d be surprised if this set piece was lensed by Arthur Wooster.
Maybe that’s all because of Moore’s limited physicality, because Glen didn’t seem to have that issue here just one film later.
The only amateurish bit from that was the silly crash zoom when we see an exterior shot of an explosion like at 1:45. Can’t understand the purpose of that, it doesn’t really enhance the sequence.
LTK gets a lot of flack for allegedly looking like a tv movie, but when we did the 'Best Shot per Decade' game, almost all participants agreed LTK deserves more credit in that regard. There are some genuinely superb shots in that film, yet there's this persistent perceived wisdom that it looks terrible. I disagree entirely.
Furthermore, OP and TLD both look good too, imo. Both have an exotic location mixed with Central European stuff and I think both of them manage to provide a different tone for these vastly different atmospheres very well.
As far as FYEO is concerned, the locations are excellent but the image seems to be a bit unfocussed at times, so I get the criticism there. Although I do love the cinematography underwater.
AVTAK I think only looks good in the pts and France, but once it goes to Frisco I do get a bit of a cheap tv feeling. AVTAK can feel a bit lethargic in places and maybe the pedestrian cinematography also doesn't contribute too much either. Almost like everyone was a bit tired.
All in all though, I'd say three of the five Glen films look really good. One, FYEO, is okay, and only one, AVTAK, leaves a bit too be desired.
I know movies have to look "pretty" these days, but they don't always have to. The old grittiness is just fine.
The “grittiness” of the picture quality wasn’t really intentional, so I can’t blame the filmmakers for how LTK looks in that regard. The results were due to having the film negatives being developed at a local film lab in Mexico, rather than the labs they typically developed over in the UK.
That’s of course a very different matter from how the DP actually lights the indoor sets, which is where “cheap” springs out to me. That’s all on Alec Mills never seeming to have learned how movies after the 1960s were lit indoors. It’s there in TLD, but just even more evident in LTK.
One moment that comes to mind is when Bond tells Saunders to turn off the lights in the hotel room. Saunders turns off the hotel room lamps, but you can see another set of lights being switched on a second later illuminating the room, as if they didn’t synchronize the switching of lights just right. It just comes off as sloppy and obvious. As bad as shooting day for night.
What I'm saying is that not all movies have to look pretty.
I suppose by that logic while a relatively small amount of the best things in films are unintentional, pretty much all of weaker things are unintentional.
Ironically I’d also describe GE as a films that not necessarily pretty but much more cinematic 😉
I don't think GE is particularly cinematic. It feels like a '90s movie, just like LTK feels like an '80s movie. It has a lot of close-ups, and overall, it's not exactly The Spy Who Loved Me either.
I’d say they’re different Bond films tonally and obviously cinematography wise. And of course there’s a whole argument about what exactly ‘cinematic’ means as you yourself hinted (as you said it doesn’t need to be pretty and there are different opinions on the look of these films regardless of which one is a majority). And of course there were 90s movies with great cinematography and every film will look of its time to some extent, so I’m unsure what you mean.
I do think GE was a major step up in terms of cinematography for Bond at any rate, and how they approached in storytelling terms was kind of a precursor to the later Craig films which had very accomplished cinematography.
By the way, GE and Under siegel 2 make an interesting double bill. Both are from 1995 and they have the satellite plot!
GE reminds me a lot of Broken Arrow and The Saint, but they are later movies.
I suppose every movie is outdated in some way (beautifully shot black and white movies or technicolour ones are, for example). GE’s lighting alone for me makes it very cinematic (very purposeful during scenes such as Alec’s introduction and the graveyard scene - again such an improvement over LTK).
Actually never seen that movie! Love an action 90s flick though, especially if they’re a bit cheesy.
GE:
I agree. GE looks great too. It actually won our 'Best Shot of the Bond Films' competiton with this one:
On that subject, here are a few shots of LTK that I think don't look like a tv movie either:
Every writer of all Bond media. Purvis and Wade are of course the most mentioned. Even Richard Maibaum has gotten some (sometimes fair, due to his ego), criticism. The continuation novel writers get it bad, as a lot of them are open on social media about their Bond time. Thankfully, most have been nice to me. Sebastian Faulks and Charlie Higson have been a bit rude.
PB was let go because his films were so bad. His movies have their fair share of good and bad moments, but his legacy will always be respected.
Barbara loves Daniel story. They are both to blame for the Amazon takeover. These two get mentioned a lot.
There are a number of similar arguments. That’s also general fandom. I like to think we are more respectful of each other here.