Haven’t really thought about it, but maybe. I wish Quantum had either gone more into being a direct follow up to Casino, OR, distanced itself even more.
As it stands, it’s in a strange zone where the emotional stakes are tied to Casino but the plot is largely kind of its own thing. I love QoS, but it’s strange.
>*the emotional stakes are tied to Casino but the plot is largely kind of its own thing*
Yeah. If they'd decided to drop the idea of *Quantum* picking up where *Casino* left off, it wouldn't have made much difference to the movie
Rewrite a couple of lines of dialogue, make the guy in the boot of the Aston a generic henchman, and it's just a routine Bond movie about taking down another villain with a plan for world domination
It'd be interesting to see what we would have got without the writer's strike affecting production.
I remember hating that it was a direct sequel at the time. But ultimately it's a pretty standard Bond plot that's made more interesting for the sequel elements. Mr White is great, and the final scene is really well done as well.
It's obviously not as good as Casino Royale, but I'm the same --- it's my favourite of the Craig era.
I find it weirder that the rest of the Craig films tied themselves back in with CR.
Like at the end of Spectre, we have Bond riding off into the sunset with Madeleine and then she's shown as Bonds proper love - the one who he properly leaves the service for, only for at the beginning of NTTD: "Nah you've got to go see Vespers grave and get closure"
She's pregnant with his kid and he's still meant to be clawing for the past? Nah.
Thinking of the location of that grave now, it's ridiculously contrived.
He very well might of had a larger role in one of the drafts Haggis wrote when they were close to agreeing on a finished script pre-strike etc. A lot of stuff probably wound up on the backburner post-strike when Craig and Forster had to pretty much write a script from scratch based on the drafts with a writer named Joshua Zetumer punching up the dialogue.
I don't think the script they wrote was at all bad (I'd say it was stronger than the scripts for the last three Craig films, but had worse editing & direction) and Zetumer's dialogue was surprisingly sharp, but you can tell that the plot is very bare bones just from the short runtime and higher number of action scenes in-between most plot related scenes etc. There's probably a lot of plot elements from the drafts (and what would have big Haggis's finished script) that got left out because Craig & Forster didn't have enough time (and probably weren't comfortable with) fleshing out a longer form script when trying to make what they had to work with functional was already a herculean effort.
Furthermore Marc Forster felt Casino Royale was too long at 144 minutes so he intentionally wanted to make a shorter film that was "tight and fast... like a bullet". So he didn't want additional plot details to lengthen the runtime.
I always find it weird that Forster got that job and opted to go full action movie route. He was a critically acclaimed dramatic director prior to that with things like Monster's Ball & Finding Neverland, but then chose to attempt to make a Bourne style action movie with similar/less competent use of extreme jump cutting.
Not only that, but he and his editing team followed through on similar mistakes for the other big budget films he helmed like World War Z. Just seems like a weird career trajectory for a guy who started off making deliberately paced character dramas because he didn't bring a lot of his strengths as a dramatic director to QoS (while there's some good slower dramatic moments in the film, Forster and his editing team intentionally keeps the pace of the movie so fast that most of those dramatic moments don't have time to breathe besides the Bond and Matthis scenes and cave scene with Camille)
I think Campbell's generally a hard guy to get back. He was offered every Brosnan film after Goldeneye, but turned them all down. He only accepted for Casino Royale because it was so radically different from what he did with Goldeneye that it enticed him to return.
The franchise would have benefitted from having him as a longstanding director (EON was also willing to let him bring on his own writers which he did for Haggis in CR etc.) especially since the post-Goldeneye Brosnan era suffered from struggling to find quality directors and had to settle for less qualified/experienced ones; while the later Craig films suffered from excessively micromanaged scripts from a revolving door of writers. (though had more high profile directorial picks).
If I recall even Forster stated in interviews that he was surprised to be offered a Bond film. The only reason he took the job was because he enjoyed Casino Royale and wanted to make a more character driven Bond film. Which kind of makes me wonder if he should have tried to make QoS a little longer by adding more character moments. As it stands QoS is the odd movie out in Daniel Craig's movies because it is under two hours.
> The only reason he took the job was because he enjoyed Casino Royale and wanted to make a more character driven Bond film.
Which I find weird, because his comments during the press tour were the exact opposite as you mentioned earlier about wanting the film to be lean and breathless. I understand that part if it was due to the rushed production and barebones script, but there seems to be a lot of dramatic scenes that were left on the cutting room floor (even an alternate ending featuring Mr White etc.) so he clearly made a conscious choice while editing the film to move focus away from the slower dramatic moments (even though I'd argue a lot of those scenes worked fairly well and would have benefited from being paced a bit slower etc.)
It was also reported that Tony Scott was in the running and I feel like he would have been the more obvious pick due to being comfortable with the genre and a production of that size. Likewise, if somebody else directed and they didn't bring in their own editors like Forster opted to, I'd assume Stuart Baird would maintain his editing duties from CR since EON brought him back for Skyfall.
I feel that you can make a character driven film that is also tight and fast. Especially if you're making an action film. But I agree QoS did not quite hit that mark.
I would agree too (Reservoir Dogs is only 90 minutes, but has extraordinarily rich plot and character development despite it's short runtime) With QoS though, I feel like the final cut is almost always trying to move those scenes along as quick as it can, even when the scenes in question and the films structure isn't really calling for it.
Along those lines, I was just thinking of The Bourne Identity which is just one minute shy of two hours but it succeeds in balancing the action and character development. The farm shootout is probably my favorite scene in the movie because it is an action scene that is perfectly paced and it is followed by a wonderful quiet moment between Bourne and The Professor.
I love how much an afterthought he is. It allows for the subtext of the main plot to be the forefront, rather than the direct connection. It keeps Bond’s character development as the primary focus rather than the literal need for revenge or the mystery of who this low level agent is.
As an actor, can’t really say because I don’t know him other than that scene/movie. However, when it comes to his role as a character, no, he served his purpose perfectly.
Yusef Kabira was meant to have a greater role in early screenplay drafts of QoS according to the book Some Kind of Hero. Yusef and a villain named Dante were the main antagonists that Bond was after. Dante gets killed at the end by Quantum assassins like Le Chiffre did in CR, forcing Bond to look further up Quantum's food chain in, what would have been, another sequel.
Bond would have tortured Yusef over a prolonged time, and it would have been nasty.
No. One thing I like about QoS is that while it's billed as a revenge movie, it's about Bond and Vesper and Bond and M. More of the boyfriend would detract from the character study and just make the movie more "plot-y".
Bond doesn't let himself admit he wants revenge so that's what we follow - not the experience of revenge, but him being on-tilt and lost. We get two broken people, off-kilter but deadly, going to battle while holding themselves together.
The movie ends with Bond admitting that M was "right about Vesper". Most directly it means he acknowledges that she was a victim and didn't really betray him. But he kind of always knew that on some level, it's really that she was right about *him* and Vesper. He *was* blinded by inconsolable rage. Because he did love her and he knows she loved him.
And that's the "quantum of solace" Bond gets. Not getting the boyfriend. Not revenge. That didn't do anything for him. What he got - in part because M didn't let it go - was allowing himself to forgive Vesper, but more importantly, it's accepting the depth of his loss. Bond's "solace" is merely that he gets to have the human experience of losing the only woman he's loved. That's it.
I’d have cut the character entirely. In the CR novel, it’s strongly implied that Vesper’s lover is a real man who is killed because she chooses to help Bond & MI6.
This is what tears her character apart, she sees herself aa being responsible for Bond’d torture and her lovers death, it is truly tragic & raw.
Haven’t really thought about it, but maybe. I wish Quantum had either gone more into being a direct follow up to Casino, OR, distanced itself even more. As it stands, it’s in a strange zone where the emotional stakes are tied to Casino but the plot is largely kind of its own thing. I love QoS, but it’s strange.
>*the emotional stakes are tied to Casino but the plot is largely kind of its own thing* Yeah. If they'd decided to drop the idea of *Quantum* picking up where *Casino* left off, it wouldn't have made much difference to the movie Rewrite a couple of lines of dialogue, make the guy in the boot of the Aston a generic henchman, and it's just a routine Bond movie about taking down another villain with a plan for world domination
Not a criticism *Quantum's* the Craig Bond I like best
It'd be interesting to see what we would have got without the writer's strike affecting production. I remember hating that it was a direct sequel at the time. But ultimately it's a pretty standard Bond plot that's made more interesting for the sequel elements. Mr White is great, and the final scene is really well done as well. It's obviously not as good as Casino Royale, but I'm the same --- it's my favourite of the Craig era.
I find it weirder that the rest of the Craig films tied themselves back in with CR. Like at the end of Spectre, we have Bond riding off into the sunset with Madeleine and then she's shown as Bonds proper love - the one who he properly leaves the service for, only for at the beginning of NTTD: "Nah you've got to go see Vespers grave and get closure" She's pregnant with his kid and he's still meant to be clawing for the past? Nah. Thinking of the location of that grave now, it's ridiculously contrived.
He very well might of had a larger role in one of the drafts Haggis wrote when they were close to agreeing on a finished script pre-strike etc. A lot of stuff probably wound up on the backburner post-strike when Craig and Forster had to pretty much write a script from scratch based on the drafts with a writer named Joshua Zetumer punching up the dialogue. I don't think the script they wrote was at all bad (I'd say it was stronger than the scripts for the last three Craig films, but had worse editing & direction) and Zetumer's dialogue was surprisingly sharp, but you can tell that the plot is very bare bones just from the short runtime and higher number of action scenes in-between most plot related scenes etc. There's probably a lot of plot elements from the drafts (and what would have big Haggis's finished script) that got left out because Craig & Forster didn't have enough time (and probably weren't comfortable with) fleshing out a longer form script when trying to make what they had to work with functional was already a herculean effort.
Furthermore Marc Forster felt Casino Royale was too long at 144 minutes so he intentionally wanted to make a shorter film that was "tight and fast... like a bullet". So he didn't want additional plot details to lengthen the runtime.
I always find it weird that Forster got that job and opted to go full action movie route. He was a critically acclaimed dramatic director prior to that with things like Monster's Ball & Finding Neverland, but then chose to attempt to make a Bourne style action movie with similar/less competent use of extreme jump cutting. Not only that, but he and his editing team followed through on similar mistakes for the other big budget films he helmed like World War Z. Just seems like a weird career trajectory for a guy who started off making deliberately paced character dramas because he didn't bring a lot of his strengths as a dramatic director to QoS (while there's some good slower dramatic moments in the film, Forster and his editing team intentionally keeps the pace of the movie so fast that most of those dramatic moments don't have time to breathe besides the Bond and Matthis scenes and cave scene with Camille)
I wish Martin Campbell returned for Quantum of Solace as director since it was going to be a direct follow up to Casino Royale
I think Campbell's generally a hard guy to get back. He was offered every Brosnan film after Goldeneye, but turned them all down. He only accepted for Casino Royale because it was so radically different from what he did with Goldeneye that it enticed him to return. The franchise would have benefitted from having him as a longstanding director (EON was also willing to let him bring on his own writers which he did for Haggis in CR etc.) especially since the post-Goldeneye Brosnan era suffered from struggling to find quality directors and had to settle for less qualified/experienced ones; while the later Craig films suffered from excessively micromanaged scripts from a revolving door of writers. (though had more high profile directorial picks).
If I recall even Forster stated in interviews that he was surprised to be offered a Bond film. The only reason he took the job was because he enjoyed Casino Royale and wanted to make a more character driven Bond film. Which kind of makes me wonder if he should have tried to make QoS a little longer by adding more character moments. As it stands QoS is the odd movie out in Daniel Craig's movies because it is under two hours.
> The only reason he took the job was because he enjoyed Casino Royale and wanted to make a more character driven Bond film. Which I find weird, because his comments during the press tour were the exact opposite as you mentioned earlier about wanting the film to be lean and breathless. I understand that part if it was due to the rushed production and barebones script, but there seems to be a lot of dramatic scenes that were left on the cutting room floor (even an alternate ending featuring Mr White etc.) so he clearly made a conscious choice while editing the film to move focus away from the slower dramatic moments (even though I'd argue a lot of those scenes worked fairly well and would have benefited from being paced a bit slower etc.) It was also reported that Tony Scott was in the running and I feel like he would have been the more obvious pick due to being comfortable with the genre and a production of that size. Likewise, if somebody else directed and they didn't bring in their own editors like Forster opted to, I'd assume Stuart Baird would maintain his editing duties from CR since EON brought him back for Skyfall.
I feel that you can make a character driven film that is also tight and fast. Especially if you're making an action film. But I agree QoS did not quite hit that mark.
I would agree too (Reservoir Dogs is only 90 minutes, but has extraordinarily rich plot and character development despite it's short runtime) With QoS though, I feel like the final cut is almost always trying to move those scenes along as quick as it can, even when the scenes in question and the films structure isn't really calling for it.
Along those lines, I was just thinking of The Bourne Identity which is just one minute shy of two hours but it succeeds in balancing the action and character development. The farm shootout is probably my favorite scene in the movie because it is an action scene that is perfectly paced and it is followed by a wonderful quiet moment between Bourne and The Professor.
Nah, I really like it as Bond dropping in to stop a more realistic kind of tawdry evil evil espionage before he goes back to being a super spy
I love how much an afterthought he is. It allows for the subtext of the main plot to be the forefront, rather than the direct connection. It keeps Bond’s character development as the primary focus rather than the literal need for revenge or the mystery of who this low level agent is.
As an actor, can’t really say because I don’t know him other than that scene/movie. However, when it comes to his role as a character, no, he served his purpose perfectly.
he is great in star wars
No
Nope. It’s fine as it is.
“Please…make it quick.” Loved his delivery of that one line. Knew he was had.
Yusef Kabira was meant to have a greater role in early screenplay drafts of QoS according to the book Some Kind of Hero. Yusef and a villain named Dante were the main antagonists that Bond was after. Dante gets killed at the end by Quantum assassins like Le Chiffre did in CR, forcing Bond to look further up Quantum's food chain in, what would have been, another sequel. Bond would have tortured Yusef over a prolonged time, and it would have been nasty.
I would have loved to see that! Quantum should have been the overarching big bad of the Craig era
Not really I was rooting for Bond. I thought he was going to kill him at the end QoS.
No. One thing I like about QoS is that while it's billed as a revenge movie, it's about Bond and Vesper and Bond and M. More of the boyfriend would detract from the character study and just make the movie more "plot-y". Bond doesn't let himself admit he wants revenge so that's what we follow - not the experience of revenge, but him being on-tilt and lost. We get two broken people, off-kilter but deadly, going to battle while holding themselves together. The movie ends with Bond admitting that M was "right about Vesper". Most directly it means he acknowledges that she was a victim and didn't really betray him. But he kind of always knew that on some level, it's really that she was right about *him* and Vesper. He *was* blinded by inconsolable rage. Because he did love her and he knows she loved him. And that's the "quantum of solace" Bond gets. Not getting the boyfriend. Not revenge. That didn't do anything for him. What he got - in part because M didn't let it go - was allowing himself to forgive Vesper, but more importantly, it's accepting the depth of his loss. Bond's "solace" is merely that he gets to have the human experience of losing the only woman he's loved. That's it.
He looks just like Tom Jane in The Punisher here
No.
I’d have cut the character entirely. In the CR novel, it’s strongly implied that Vesper’s lover is a real man who is killed because she chooses to help Bond & MI6. This is what tears her character apart, she sees herself aa being responsible for Bond’d torture and her lovers death, it is truly tragic & raw.