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I wouldn't like that development very much. He is an excellent looking man, but he has no charisma whatsoever. Still, I'm very mutch for someone taking over from Cruise as its new Center point.
His name is Daniel Craig, we've had him for a while now. ;)
In all seriousness, I hope Tom keeps safe. I respect him for his commitments the way I do Dan for Bond, but there's always a worry when he does these stunts, wires or not. Nobody could accuse him of half-assing it.
I agree as well. Seeing Dan do his stunts in the Bond films just adds so much momentum, and the same with Tom. Mendes commented around SF's shoot that when the team saw Dan up there on that train, they knew they couldn't give anything less than 110% when the lead was willing to go so far. I am sure it's true with the MI films too, where everybody knows the game is on when Tom saddles up.
He's honestly a manager's nightmare.
"Tom, do you really have to do a jump from the world's tallest building?"
"Well, I think it's important for the audience to see me up there, knowing we're doing it for real. So, yes."
"Tom, must you learn to breathe underwater for 6 minutes just for a random stunt?"
"I want the audience to believe Hunt is in the water there struggling for his life. So, yes."
"Tom, do you really need to get on that bike and weave between cars beyond a reasonable speed?"
"I think we both know the answer to that."
I don't really think you can compare the stunts Craig has done with what Cruise achieves in his movies. Come to think about it - not at all indeed!
I'm not making a direct comparison, quite obviously. Someone wanted a Bond actor that went at the stunts, and that's been Dan. He's done things I know most would shy away from. As EON's meal ticket I know they restrict him and obviously won't let him do the car chases and other vehicular stunts that are reserved for trained drivers/pilots to avoid major injury, but he'll do anything they throw at him and that's impressive to me. Inside the Bond franchise not many actors have his clout with stunts, and Dalton was given smaller chances to do the same thing in his day.
Don't worry, I don't mean to take anything away from Almighty Tom. He's got a team that are crazy enough not to hold him back, and his inner adrenaline junkie takes advantage. More power to him.
Pardon my lack of knowledge but could you point out a few of those stunts for me?
Thanks in advance.
Of Dan's or Tim's?
Yes, I heard on a documentary feature that he had a tongue phobia, and that stipulation had to be written into all of his contracts. The more you know.
I wasn't even aware that Tim was part of the discussion, to be honest.
What I find ridiculous is how actors like Cruise get so much publicity for putting the graft in and doing their own stunts (not saying it isn't very impressive), but stuntmen do stunts like this all the time and they get no recognition at all (the fact that there's an Oscar for visual effects, which has basically become people sitting at a computer, and not for the men and women who do these death defying stunts for our entertainment, is shocking imo). One actually died on the set of Expendables 3 iirc. And it's not just the guys who put their lives on the line, there's also the coordinators and the rest of the stunt teams who make it all possible. I think it's about time these guys get the recognition they deserve. Even Cruise has a whole team of people helping him make these stunts possible and it'd be nice for him to acknowledge that more instead of bragging about how he insists on doing it all for real (saw him on Graham Norton last night and it left a sour taste in my mouth, I'm really not a fan). I mean, Jackie Chan is pretty much the king of stunts and everyone knows about his team who helps make it all possible. But do we ever hear about the Tom Cruise team (or whatever his equivalent is on the various movies he does)? No. What we do get though is a bunch of widely publicised stories about him strolling up to the producers and blowing them away with his insistence that they do it all for real. Gives off the impression that if's a one man effort imo which I find distasteful, especially since incidents like this
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.gamespot.com/amp-articles/resident-evil-stuntwoman-to-have-arm-amputated-fol/1100-6433288/
Seem to get a lot less coverage.
Well, in his films Tim did some stunt work that was, for the time, pretty unprecedented in the series, that's all.
When it comes to what Dan has done, it's almost easier to go into what he hasn't done. All of the fighting you see him do, from CR to SP is him for real, with the Obanno fight of CR using some stunt men for the tumbles and jumps so that Dan wouldn't break his neck. Everything else in CR is the real deal from him, though, as is the Slate and Greene fights in QoS, and all the bits of action in between, like the Siena chase that Dan did a massive amount of, including roof jumps and wire work, and the whole of the finale amid the flames and explosions, including that great jump and slide Bond does over an SUV. At times doubles were used when Bond and Mitchell smash through the glass on the ropes, to again avoid major injuries to Dan.
In CR much of the opening chase was Dan, minus the crane jump and fight, again to avoid massive injury of the new Bond. The airport bit was the same, with Dan doing most of it and the stunt drivers coming in when explosions were used.
In SF and SP Dan did basically everything that wouldn't be lethal, though the team did force him not to do some of the falls and jumps, and of course he didn't do the plane piloting in the Austria bit of SP. But it's really him for the entire duration of the train sequence in SF, which you can see from around 5 minutes on in this video, including the fight with Patrice and all the shooting and combat in between:
Only he and Bautista filmed the train fight of SP as well, which resulted in him having to get surgery for his knee after he took a critical hit to it. And as with all the other films, all the combat and shooting is Dan.
So he essentially has thrown himself at all the stuff that wouldn't kill him, or that EON won't let him do, for obvious reasons to his health. He wouldn't have gotten away with things like the car chase in QoS for the high risk ratio, or the helicopter fight in SP where he'd risk tumbling out, for example. But he has done some amazing things when they give him the go ahead, and throws himself at it with all he has. He's gotten a lot of severe injuries from it, but that shows how committed he is to doing as much as he possibly can, which is the most of any Bond actor to this point, not to discount some of the great work of the other actors who did some amazing and daring stuff too (like Tim in the tanker chase, for example).
Regarding using stunt doubles vs. the actors doing it themselves. I'm neither here nor there on it. The only thing I insist on is that it looks as believable and real as possible. I think Cruise's dedication is impressive, and he gets a lot of free publicity for the film via the stunt work too. So there's a lot of marketing at work here. The MI-GP Dubai stunt was something else, but the plane in MI-RN wasn't quite as impressive ultimately, because we've seen stuntmen do just as much (and much more) in the old Bond films.
When I say I'm neither here nor there about it, I use CR as an example. It's clear to me in the stairwell fight and on the crane that it's not Craig in places. However, the sequences are so well choreographed and directed that I am able to suspend disbelief and believe it's him (at least it's a real person up there in the case of the crane). That's good enough for me, and just as good as if it was him, or even Cruise dangling from the Burj.
However, in SP there are sequences that look cartoonishly bad due to the injection of CGI covering that is apparent to me (particularly in the helicopter sequence in the PTS). That is what I never want to see again in a Bond film. Same goes for the CGI face on the bike in the SF PTS. There's something about visible CGI that just 'stinks' for lack of a better word.
Well, there you have it. They don t want people risking their lives for a prize.
Well, it doesn't seem any more asinine to me to award stunt teams for their hard work with logistics, risk management and the actual performance of feats on set when actors who starve themselves for roles get trophies thrown at them with praise.
The stunts are a vital part of much filmmaking, on par with any of the other departments. The Academy usually don't go for action fare-they prefer wrist slashing drama or social commentary pieces-but the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road and the feats accomplished in that film alone speak to the need for there to be a proper category for stunt work.
Craig running up the crane in CR is obviously visible, so that would have been awkward with only a stuntman.
Craig jumping over the car in QoS is an interesting example. Many people complain that due to the frenetic editing you don´t see what happens on screen anyway. I love the editing, and I claim that I have no problem following all the action. Yet I can´t really see if it´s Craig or not in that scene. I know he did it from screenshots and slo-mos, but I don´t see it in the film, and I´ve seen that one numerous times.
The same goes for Bond jumping on a bus roof in Siena. I believe there is a moment when Craig´s face is CG´d onto a stuntman. I don´t recognize it, even though I watch the film regularly.
Craig´s CG face on the bike rider in SF and the helicopter fight in SP are produced very hammy, the latter sequence possibly on purpose. In any case, regardless of who was in the shots, Craig or a stunman, those scenes could have been done much more realistic. Think for example the helicopter sequence in Terminator Genesis.
Re the believability: Yes, if I see a guy with different physique, I can assume it was done with a stuntman, which could disturb my suspension of disbelief.
However, my suspension of disbelief is hampered even more if I think the actor did it himself, because then it´s obvious that it´s rigged somehow and they didn´t go full throttle, Cruise being the singular exception going full throttle, but no doubt with a team massively icreased over a mere stunt team.
For me it comes down entirely to how well it´s shot. I was shocked to see at which slow speed some chase scenes in Ronin were shot (others apparently not, with Frankenheimer impressing upon his drivers that he wants to see no breaklights), yet even after having seen how they shot those scenes, I still get the same adrenalin kick when I watch the finished product.
Similarly, I have no trouble watching the cable car scene from MR (even though there the green screen is so obvious nowadays, but the differing physique of the stuntmen is still impressively overlookable). Or the in-flight fight near the end of TLD, which is one of the greatest action scenes in any action movie. The fight on top of the tanker truck in LTK may have been done with a lot of stuntman work, and scenes shot with the truck driving much slower than it appears, yet it is one of the most intense stunt scenes I know.
Agreed. On most levels Craig's commitment to the role has been outstanding - he's trained himself into great shape, worked through long shoots, worked with injuries, taken on duties behind the camera, and so on.
But damn, Cruise is a hell of a huckster. He's just as committed to the shoot as Craig is, but infinitely better at getting out shaking hands and kissing babies afterward.
I realize that it's just salesmanship, and maybe some people don't care much about it, but I think it's something that's been missing from EON lately. I'd really love for more people involved in the productions to come out and say, "we're so excited to film all the great ideas we've got for Bond 25! It's going to be great!"
Stuntmen have no Academy Awards indeed, but do you notice you probably can't even name who is doint the stunt in many cases ? The case where the stuntman or stuntwoman is named and credited for such and such action scene is rare. It's a part of Hollywood magic that is still a bit taboo. Everyone is ok with using CGI when you have to make someone fly and so on. But CGI face during a fight because the person doing the fight is not the lead actor ? Hm, many people don't even know it exists... With SF they used Bond CG faces a bit too much IMO, in SF they were back to elaborate prostethics.
I've read above many comments about "it's really him for the whole scene" that are totally wrong. It just shows how much a taboo it is. For instace, try to find an image showing the real stuntman doing the shadow fight with Patrice, there's only one I saw and it was a capture from a video found by one of our best informed fan here...
Some rare photos of stunt doubles :
In Paris MI6 shooting, you can't find a photo of Cruise's stunt double actually close to him...
@dragonsky, I wish it was fake. You can see the truth sprinkled throughout Moore's entire era, though, like how he never kisses women except with an extremely closed mouth, to avoid any tongue contact with them. A strange phobia, but an interesting part of the Bond mythos nonetheless.
I'm sure it was purely out of respect for his wife, whom he would introduce to every woman he had to be engaged with romantically onscreen. "Tongue phobia" must have been the Roger Moore-ian way of putting the matter delicately. ;)
Early on Moore was actually very apprehensive about all that, which is why he kissed the belly dancer on the stomach in TMWTGG instead of the mouth. The bullet was originally going to be something the woman had on her dresser and stuck in her mouth to hide it from Bond as he came in to confront her, something he'd then sneak with a passionately played kiss, but after seeing Roger in LALD getting sweet with the much younger Jane Seymour, his wife Luisa Mattioli didn't approve of another sexually laced scene. Mattioli and Roger had only just gotten married a few years before, so the actor was clearly trying to avoid crossing her so early in their relationship. Roger apparently had a heart to heart with Hamilton about the issue after a fight with the wife, and the director had the script altered where the dancer had the bullet as a ring instead, which Bond could sneak without getting intimate with her in the way Roger's wife disapproved of.
It's very hush-hush info that very few seem to know about.