Bond, James Bond…and I’m so, so sorry…

Updated on January 6, 2010 By Ken Begg 22 Comments

In one of the queerest movie decisions I can remember in a while, Sam Mendes has been chosen to direct the next Bond film.  Mendes is best known…well, pretty much exclusively known…for directing the sort of “Wow, Western Civilization sucks” fare favored by the chattering classes:  American Beauty (for which he naturally won an Oscar), Jarhead, Revolutionary Road…

I guess after the comparative fiasco of Quantum of Silence, the Bond People decided to shake things up, while also bringing in a ‘revered’ director.  Which is fine.  Who knows, maybe Mendes wants to stretch and just have fun and will turn out a great movie.

However, it amazes me that Hollywood types refuse to just look to the obvious.  (I could write a whole article in this regard just on Sony’s Fantastic Four movies.)  It’s not like the reasons most everyone disliked QoS are a big secret.  In sum, it was the horrible direction and flash / stutter editing.  The whole point of the Bond series is to present incredible practical stunts, which is why there there was an uproar over that horrible CGI effect of Bond surfing a tidal wave in one of the Brosnan movies.

That fight on the museum scaffolding looked awesome–or it would have been if we could have seen it.  Imagine the poor stuntmen, putting in the huge amount of work to block the thing, much less shoot it.  Then to see the finished film and realized that your hard work had been utterly obscured in the editing room.

So really, assuming Mendes is not planning to impose a ridiculously inappropriate political position on Bond, I really don’t have an issue with his hiring.  But for heaven’s sake, direct the film cleanly so that we can see what the hell is going on.

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  • MarshallDog

    I initially didn’t like Quantum of solace, but I’ve changed my mind. It’s hard for me to hate a Bond movie starring Daniel Craig, and even if the action scenes are impossible to follow, that’s not really why I’m watching a Bond movie to begin with. I like the characters and I like the bankster/corporate terrorist angle the new series is taking. I am curious… who would you hire to direct the next Bond film?

  • Ericb

    Considering that Bond is pretty much as “Western” as your going to get ouside of John Wayne I don’t see how he can make this a Western Civ sucks film without making Bond a villain.

  • Martin Campbell did a great job with Casino Royale, so I’d probably stick with him.

    Again, I don’t have a problem with Mendes per se. Less important than who they hire is a firm insistence that there be no jitter cams and flash cutting.

  • Well, the Bond movies have been growing more cynical, and I don’t mind that. But yes, Bond must ultimately believe that he’s fighting (and killing) for something worth fighting and killing for. I don’t mind John LeCarre’s spy stuff, but you can’t really make a John LeCarre’s Bond film. And attempting it would in all probability be a disaster.

  • BeckoningChasm

    George Lucas should direct the next Bond film, no question.

    …wait, wait, I was kidding!!!

  • P Stroud

    I’m afraid that the frenetic cutting used to replace real stunt choreography is on the increase, not the decrease. After hacking up the Gone in 60 Seconds remake (not that frenetic cutting was the only problem) and ruining the last Bourne movie apparently Bond movies are going to become cgi/cut stunt extravaganzas as well. Certainly the stunts in QoS were a massive disappointment after CR.

    Maybe they can get Steven Soderberg for the next Bond film. It’d be fun to see the old murdering turd, Castro, depicted as a saint.

  • JohnMason

    It would help if the next Bond movie’s SCRIPT is easier to follow and relatable to a general viewing public (well, me at least) who needs to care about what the mission is in order to root for Bond to win out. Not a tedious runaround that boils down to “The bad guys are destabilizing governments just to STEAL WATER FROM POOR COUNTRIES!!” (oh, the humanity)

    When QoS’s action scenes weren’t giving me migraines with their tight close-ups/shaky-camera/spastic-editing/cross-cutting- to-unrelated-events incoherence, the plot and character stuff was BORING and hard to follow even when that direction was (comparatively) slower. And watching boring non-characters like Felix Leiter’s idiot supervisor or M’s boss spout pretentious drivel like “we should only deal with nice people” and “if we didn’t deal with bad guys we wouldn’t get anything done” is not my idea of entertainment. It’s more like patronizing lecturing, which this series badly needs to get away from and back to just being actual ENTERTAINMENT.

  • Aussiesmurf

    Although it was a terrible movie, I’ve thought that a great summary of the Bond movies was the tag-line for that horrible Avengers movie : “Saving the world in style”.

    I could not agree more about the emphasis on practical stunts as against CGI. I absolutely loathed Die Another Day. Even A View To A Kill, an extremely weak movie by many standards, had the brilliant sequence involving fire engines, cars etc.

    I didn’t hate Quantum of Solace, but it certainly wasn’t in the same league as Casino Royale (which was also the best Fleming to movie adaptation, even exceeding OHMSS).

  • Plissken79

    I thought Quantum of Solace was OK, the plot was flimsy and the editing of the action scenes left much to be desired. Still, Craig did a great job and, ;et’s be honest, Casino Royale was nearly an impossible act to follow (my third favorite Bond, after Goldfinger and FRWL, probably tied with OHMSS)

    Sam Mendes does strike me as an odd choice, besides Road to Perdition, his work does not seem to fit at all within the action genre. In addition, as Ken points out, his work often devolves into tiring, pretentious degressions on how Western middle-class life sucks. I once read an odd rumor that Martin Scorsese was interested in directing a Bond film, he would be a better fit than Sam Mendes

  • Marsden

    Considering that Bond is pretty much as “Western” as your going to get ouside of John Wayne I don’t see how he can make this a Western Civ sucks film without making Bond a villain.

    Ericb said this on January 6th, 2010 at 11:23 am

    What if he decides that the “terrorist/villian” he is attempting to kill or capture (an UBL type) is really just misunderstood and only felt like he had to turn to terrorism… er turn to causing man made disasters and Bond sides with him and helps him blow up Buckingham Palace to overthrow the cruel monarch?

    This is very disturbing.

  • Tork_110

    The scene that summed up Quantum of Solace to me was right after the scene where Bond and the woman spy ejected from a plane and started walking away. Even though they were just walking, there were several rapid, pointless cuts from different angles of them walking.

    It hurts my brain just thinking about that scene. I’m afraid I’m going to start walking somewhere, and then all of a sudden I’ll see the path in front of me at a different angle for a half second for no good reason.

    Just give us more Jackie Chan Bond and I’ll be fine.

  • R. Dittmar

    I don’t understand why the producers of the Bond films have started playing games with the directors. If you look back at the classic pre-Brosnan era of Bondage, you’ll find that they started with a cadre of directors that they pretty much stuck with the whole time. When an old director retired, they’d promote a second unit director. Everyone involved tended to be someone who had been involved in production for years. They should return to that system and stop hiring one-off intrusive show-off directors that tend to subtract more than they add.

  • MarshallDog

    I may be wrong, but I thought Martin Campbell didn’t want to do another Bond film, at least not right away. Same with Marc Forster. I imagine filming a Bond movie in like five different countries must be tough to handle, and the producers like to keep a tight release schedule (a new movie every 2 to 3 years).

    I’m somewhat in favor of changing directors between Bond films. For me, the first movie in a given series tends to be my favorite, and each sequel gets staler and more annoying. To be fair, I can’t think of a ton of long-running series that change directors aside from James Bond, but I know I don’t like the Spider-Man sequels, I liked Batman Begins more than The Dark Knight, and I liked the first Lord of the Rings the best. I’ll probably like Casino Royale better than Daniel Craig’s other Bond films as well. So I’m not sure what my point is…

  • monoceros4

    I know that it’s not going to happen but I’d love to see Sam Mendes try to turn a Bond movie into another “suburbia sucks” cliche-fest. It’d be a train wreck, of course, but a fascinating one. But this is mere flight of fancy. I do predict at least one alcohol-soaked, unhappy marriage will be featured in one or two scenes.

  • Peter Johnson

    I’ve got a bad feeling about this. And I’m the guy who was excited that Marc Forster was directing QoS, until I actually saw the movie. I gotta go with Ken: what’s the point of hiring the best stuntmen, coordinators, and trainers in the business if you’re not going to show the fruits of their labors onscreen? Why not just hire the WORST stuntmen and save yourself a lot of money? The end result would look pretty much the same.

    R. Dittmar makes a good point regarding Eon’s long tradition of hiring in-house directors who could stick to the script and stay on budget, rather than big-name auteurs who bring their own baggage to the film. I’m not sure if their new approach is good or bad; certainly Eon’s old production-line work ethic resulted in some very dull movies, especially during the Moore and Brosnan eras. And they famously turned down Quentin Tarantino, who dreamed of doing a faithful Casino Royale adaptation starring Pierce Brosnan (discussion question: would it have been the best movie ever made, or a horrible stinker?).

    I wonder about Eon’s sudden about-face, and I hope Bond 23 turns out well.

  • Mr. Rational

    If Bond at any point stops to contemplate the beauty in the sight of a man’s head in a pool of his own blood, I’m walking out of the theater. Actually, I’d also do that at the first appearance of a rose petal.

  • Mark

    I’m not a big fan of most of Mendes’ films, but the action scenes in Jarhead were fairly well done (in an “old fashioned” way), so I like the decision. Mendes’ past efforts were also rather stylish in a nicely unobtrusive way and Ithink he imght be able to give Bond a nicely timeless look.

  • Grumpy

    it amazes me that Hollywood types refuse to just look to the obvious. (I could write a whole article in this regard just on Sony’s Fantastic Four movies.)

    Go ahead and write it, since I don’t quite follow what you mean by “look to the obvious.”

  • professorKettlewell

    This is going to take a while. Sorry.

    1. To answer Ericb. You know what Mendes could do, that would be, totally postmodern? He could make *Bond* the villain!! Yeah!!! That would throw our petit-bourgeois suburban prejudices back in out white, privileged face, wouldn’t it!!
    (Oh goodness. I really hope I didn’t jst give anyone ideas….)

    2. Take a look at the fight between Bond and Grant near the end of ‘From Russia with Love’. There’s nothing subtle or sophisticated about the choreography or whatever, but it actually looks like two very hard men having a fight to the death. It’s dirty and nasty and super-effective. Then look at the bit in ‘You Only Live Twice’ where Bond is trying to escape from the sailors in Kobe. The photography is nice, but the stunts are nothing special – but the scene looks like Bond is in danger, and twenty tough blokes are ready to kick him to pieces if they can lay hands on him. I’m just saying.

    3. Ken: Bond films are more cynical now than in the Roger Moore era, but please take a look at ‘Doctor No’, in particular, the scene where Bond gets the drop on Professor Dent, and instead of sending for the police or whatever, Bond just wastes him. He shoots an unarmed man six times in cold blood. That’s the kind of moral ambiguity I occasionally want so see from someone who does Bond’s job. Now don’t mistake me – I love the colourful, travelogue, exositicist Bond as much as anybody, and the Fun bits are usually my favourite parts. I am NOT NOT NOT in favour of making Bond a haunted, existential anti-hero who can’t live with himself etc etc, but we *do* need to see that he is a professional killer, and an extremely tough and ruthless man who will exploit any situation or any person to get his job done. That’s what ‘Casino Royale’ got across nicely in my opinion, and what ‘QAS’ didn’t.

    If Mendes can communicate that toughness and ruthlessness and keep the charm and humour and actual Joi De Vivre that Bond has – pleasure in good food and good friends and nice clothes and beautiful women, I’ll be happy. If we have to have Yet Another weeping angel who wishes he could escape from the horrible spiral of revenge and counter-revenge, and who takes refuge in meaningless sex and pleasureless gourmandising (which is, I suspect, the angle we’ll be getting) then I’ll be saying bye-bye to the franchise and sticking to my DVD’s.

  • Petoht

    I am NOT NOT NOT in favour of making Bond a haunted, existential anti-hero who can’t live with himself etc etc, but we *do* need to see that he is a professional killer, and an extremely tough and ruthless man who will exploit any situation or any person to get his job done. That’s what ‘Casino Royale’ got across nicely in my opinion

    You got that feeling in CR? Maybe if the movie had been fifteen minutes shorter, but they had to put the coda on the end, making Bond into a whiny git who just couldn’t keep on doing his job because of Vesper.

    I’m used to Bond having a quivering-upper-lip moment when a Bond Girl dies, but not resigning and being all moody and mopey and… well… emo.

    Perhaps it’s because I so enjoyed Dalton’s take on Bond (hey, someone has to). When Leiter was brutally injured, Bond didn’t mope and whine, he gave M the middle finger and hopped on down to Central America to ruthlessly murder everyone even remotely involved.

    Bond suppresses his emotions so that he could do his job, and his job is killing the enemies of the Crown. Craig’s Bond is too… modern. Bond’s not a metrosexual, he’s a cultural dinosaur, and that’s why he works, dammit.

    Casino Royal was a fun movie, but it didn’t feel like a Bond movie. It felt like a Jason Bourne ripoff, which isn’t what anybody wants from Bond. Or Bourne, for that matter.

    And frankly, I’m sick of watching Daniel Craig pout. Give it to that Lance Reddick dude from Fringe. He would be awesome

  • Dr. Whiggs

    Casino Royale was boring as hell and I will have a kick fight with anyone about it. It’d be a fist fight but my hands are all dry and the knuckles on my right hand are cracking and I can’t make a fist without it really stinging.

    I had completely forgotten Quantum of Solace existed.

  • professorKettlewell

    Petoht: I did get that from ‘CR’. All of the mopey emo is from Fleming, as far as I can see; it’s supposed to be the ‘birth’ of 007. What I took from the end of the original book was that Bond is mad at SMERSH at least in part because they wrecked his chance to be happy and normal, but also in part because he knows that he screwed up. Maybe you think I’m being too easy on the movie because maybe I’m conflating too much stuff that I took from the book, but it did work for me.

    I enjoyed Dalton’s performance too, although I had a bit of a problem with Bond going private and all Death Wish-y.