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Comments
True to an extent. But Paul Haggis (at the time of CR) was a big name.
It's quite different with a novel of course, where everything is just read on the written page.
A fitting director will manipulate the audience in a positive manner to overlook script weaknesses. A good script is not worth much if the director doesn´t know what he´s doing. As Cubby said: The film has to be so tight that the audience doesn´t think at all about analizing plot holes and the like.
I think a lot of drama is theoretically possible if the film as a whole is handled properly.
I absolutely agree with you.
Soft continuity in the old style would be a nice way for Craig to finish IMO.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2018/02/22/bond-25-may-have-director-danny-boyle-trainspotting-writer-john/amp/
Prioritise plot over continuity, which is what they should have done with SP.
This looks promising...fingers crossed.
Open to be pointed towards examples of where a good director has produced a good movie from a poor script. Poor characters, poor themes, poor plot, poor sub plot, poor dialogue, poor tone, poor pacing etc. How does a Director deal with those and produce something decent? I don't think you can.
Replace "poor" with "fantastic" and a jouneyman Director will produce something watchable IMHO.
I had assumed they just had more in place than we realized, but now I'm starting to think that isn't the case. Would be funny if they announced a date two years out and somehow manage to miss it.
But then this comes back to the issue that most people here seem unable to grasp. There’s no such thing as being given a ‘script’, that the director then goes and works from and everything is hunky-dory.
Because so much is at stake with these movies, there’s a deluge of input from all angles, everyone scrambling to have their say and put their small stamp on proceedings.
A writer will generally offer a piece of work that strives to maintain consistency of tone, that is internally logical, that develops character... the director, execs, even financiers step in and have their say and you’re then essentially playing Jenga. Once you start adjusting, removing, reworking it becomes a seriously tricky task to keep the tower stable.
It doesn't bode well if they don't a director yet because it suggests things could be rushed, and we know the worst films come out of that. Keep in mind that they have to lock down premium (and in demand) cast too.
Happened with Quantum (original release date announced while Casino was finishing production) and SPECTRE (release date was announced in July 2013, Logan didn't submit his first draft script until March 2014).
Interesting, wasn't there some rumour a while ago that there was another script in the offing other than P&W's that they may go in favour of? Maybe P&W are out of the picture.
They started work on the QoS script whilst CR was in production.
True enough, though Roger Michell (when approached about the job) didn't feel the story was developed enough. Marc Forster later said he decided to toss the P&W work and start from scratch.
Another example of the complexity of the process. Accommodating creative egos is something of a challenge.
I don't blame Forster. I remember reading that because of the writer's strike, they had to go back to much of the previous script. Forster did not want a sequel to CR; but it ended up being so. Because they had a mish-mash of two scripts, he and DC were revising the story and script as they went along. No writers were allowed to do it.
Given the issues they had with QoS, it's quite an accomplishment that Forster was able to pull off what he did. My ONLY beef with the (re)writing was the plane scene with Bond and Camille which really, really needed to breathe. Their conversation was going somewhere and than WHAM! here come bullets and the fighter planes.
My point wasn’t to apportion blame, but to highlight the fact the process can become protracted when egos clash. The power shift from Producer to Director has changed the way these films are made.
The producers are going to have their hands full over the next set of months, and they probably need someone with experience making a large scale film.
There were at least three separate stories: 1) Whatever P&W put together 2) Bond looks for Vesper's kid (rejected) 3) The script we got.
Also, once the strike was over (and it didn't last the entire production), Joshua Zetumer was brought on to do polishes. Stories written *during production* mention him, including this website, MI6. But he's been forgotten because the "Forster and Craig had to rewrite the movie themselves" narrative took hold from 2011 onwards.
Here it is called an upjake.