It’s always refreshing to hear actors talking open and honestly about their own work, which is why I found this interview with Daniel Craig so interesting. Speaking with Time Out, he acknowledges the failures of QUANTUM OF SOLACE while promising that SKYFALL will be a return to form.
“On Quantum, we were fucked. We had the bare bones of a script and then there was the strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. You swear you’ll never get involved with shit like that, and then it happens.”
Craig even had to write a bit himself with director Mark Foster. “And a writer I am not…”
“[Quantum] was never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was; it just ended up being one, starting where the last one finished. For me personally, on a level of feeling satisfied, I would want to do better next time. That’s really important to me.”
But why will SKYFALL be better?
“I really think this one is better even than Casino Royale”, Craig enthuses. “[Director] Sam Mendes has lived with Bond all his life, and he grew up with Bond in the same way I did. We have exactly the same reference points, we both like the same Bond movies, and we both like the same bits in the same Bond movies we like. We sat down and we just rabbited for hours about Live And Let Die or From Russia With Love, and talked about little scenes that we knew from them. That’s how we started talking about it. That’s what we tried to instill in the script. He’s been working his arse off to tie all these things together so they make sense… in a Bond way!”
Honestly, I believe him on both points. The writer’s strike messed up a lot of stuff, and I can only imagine Daniel Craig sitting around trying to write his own dialogue for QUANTUM. And Mendes is a more than capable director, and if he’s got true passion for the material, SKYFALL should go quite well.