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I agree this started early, @NoWiseman …
But NTTD happened after many, many, many spitballing sessions, and was not due to an actor and his ego. If it was decided the idea was terrible, the creative team (including the distributors, producers, writers, director…..), wouldn’t have done it. Why? because a crappy idea is worse business than the re-casting of James Bond!
Sorry, that was only directed to myself. I just don't want to be the broken record here ;)
I think my point is making a film is an incredibly tough task. If it was easy we’d all be doing it.
Making a blockbuster is nuts. And although Variety has simplified how the ideas of NTTD came about, making a global film on the whim of an actor, is not the way the business is run.
Craig had an idea, but it would have had to go through many many many stages of development to see if his suggestion was a commercially viable one.
And then from there, they still had to write a story around this. Every step of the way, this process (based off this idea), would have had to be vetted by the studios and the distributors (if Universal thought that they had a crappy idea on their hands, they would have dissolved their relationship with EoN and MGM right there; Universal is in the business of making and being a part of the blockbuster world).
So I can empathize that this film wasn’t to your tastes, my only issue is when people assume Craig has this hypnotic power over EoN. Does he have the same power over the distributors? And the general audience?
He does have a very warm relationship with Barbara Broccoli; he is a supremely talented actor; he’s been very popular in the role with the general audience and I do believe when he suggests ideas, the team will prick up their ears. Saying that, a crap idea is a crap idea, and if Craig’s suggestion was crap they would not have risked 250 million - 300 million dollars on developing and releasing crap just because Daniel Craig said make it so!
And knowing Craig has many many many ideas (as he admitted in Being James Bond), how many of those suggestions of his got flushed down the toilet? That’s the spitballing process…. And that’s the filmmaking business: it’s done as one, huge team.
Ding ding ding ding ding!!!
I am not picky. As long as it's crispy and salty it can't go wrong ;)
Of course the subversion of that same, essentially-unchanging Bond archetype that we all thought we knew so well has made the actor himself a very rich man, and influential within the film industry, but maybe we should find no more than a kind of dramatic irony in this and not take it too much to heart.
After all, the commercial success of Craig's take on the character well reflects the iconoclasm of our own age, so it's not his doing alone, clearly .... just as his Bond is as much a man of his own era as Connery's was in '62 or Fleming's ten years before that.
No, he hasn't. A few quotes have been taken out of context and blown out of proportion, that's all.
There were a lot of things said in the Being James Bond documentary that rang hollow for me because of this (as nice as it was to listen to them look back on it all). BB is a keen businesswoman and knows that bringing Craig back for a final installment was a guarantee for success. But he still had to be convinced back after SP, is my gut feeling. I don't think they had this grand plan for the character. It just so happened that they tee'd themselves up for it.
Careful dude, critical thinking doesn't go down well with either haters or lovers. Connery was an upstart actor. Craig was a force of financial nature.
Perceived (not actual) leverage is what counts.
It seemed Moore, Dalton and Brozza had a fairly healthy relationship with the producers. Moore and Brozza were both happy to go along for the ride, and I don't think they influenced the creative decisions much.
Dalton pushed for a return to the Fleming novels which tied in with Cubby and Glen's vision of where Bond should go at that time.
I don’t think you’re wrong. I remember thinking SP would be Craig’s last film after I read the Sony leaks. Definitely seemed like it was written with that as a possibility, and another one definitely didn’t seem set in stone. But I think the way these films are made (big practical shoots that take a lot of time to plan) means they’ll always be kind of reactionary, so I think the lack of a grand plan is to be expected, they’re bound to be making it up as they go. I do think there’s an argument to be made that they shouldn’t bother with long story arcs because of that, the overarching Quantum/Spectre plot was a complete mess. But I think all that really matters is the end result, and even though that plot was messy, I thought the character stuff worked well and held it all together. They might not have planned Bond’s death in advance (although it does seem to have been an idea they were kicking around), but I don’t think that’s as important as it feeling fitting, and I thought it did. To me it felt consistent with the themes they’d been exploring and the tragic side of Craig’s take.
I just wish they'd avoid talking as if it was the plan. It makes them look silly to me. I'd always prefer them to be as candid as possible: "this is what was done, and this is what we're doing now." Listening to Craig talk about the problems of QoS was very refreshing, in comparison.
I agree. I'd like to know what they were thinking at the time of CR--specifically, were they hoping to get the rights back from McClory, and gradually reintroduce SPECTRE? They vaguely referred to the "organization" and used colors rather than numbers to identify members. McClory died days after CR's release.
But by QoS, they had named the organization. And in 2013 they got the rights.
Did they use any colours besides "White"? It's an interesting little tidbit. And for some reason I thought it was November 2012 when they got the rights back.
My thought was they decided to not expect to get the rights back, so they went with Quantum from the get go. Could be wrong though, as you say, they didn't use any organization name in CR.
I would absolutely have loved to have been a fly on the wall during those conversations.
Dominic Greene. And Raoul Silver.
Mr. Slate.
How Fukunaga/Sandren filmed the kisses is so good, the light oozing in.
His of course...I'm not a fan of the "it's just a number interpretation", for me 007 will always be James Bond
This is one of the arguments in favour of having the ending of Skyfall as the perfect Craig ending. Everything was in place there to go with either another actor, or even some more Craig adventures. The 'bond begins' trilogy had gone full circle and he was back in classic Bond mode, with a grumpy male M in his usual office, and Moneypenny and Q all in place.
Now they've killed off Bond, Blofeld and Felix, we've been forced to accept these alternate Bond timelines, which has kind of muddied the waters for people that prefer traditional linear narratives. Luckily for EON, most people seemed not to mind, or care about that. So anything's possible now.
I definitely preferred the literary character myself, having read a couple of the short novels by Ian Flemming prior to ever watching my first movie, which my parents did not think was appropriate for me to watch at that early age. I loved the way Ian Flemming described the character in the books so I am not a fan of the shift in narratives or directions. If they stick to the current trend and direction I somehow the next film will have that same "James Bond" swagger. They'll end up having to pack it full of special effects like the recent Star Wars movies just to appeal to newer fan bases.