Sam Mendes & Daniel Craig SKYFALL Interview: New James Bond Less Glitz and Glam
- Details
- Category: Interviews
- Created: Friday, 09 November 2012 16:31
- Published: Friday, 09 November 2012 16:31
- Written by Lupe Haas
The bromance with James Bond over the last 50 years has certainly been with his super spy lifestyle; a world traveler, his ways with women, and suave attitude. Women want to be with him and men fantasize being him.
In SKYFALL, the romance with James Bond changes. Many critics are saying director Sam Mendes has re-created James Bond in the same way Christopher Nolan did with the Batman Dark Knight franchise.
Daniel Craig’s third outing as 007 is quite different. He's hurting in many ways. He is now a broken man both physically and mentally. His skills as a secret agent come into question along with doubts about his chosen profession. When’s the last time you saw James Bond in sweats, looking scruffy? This is a very different Bond.
Daniel Craig recently expressed his excitment with the new direction at a Los Angeles press conference. This time around, the story drove the action and it made sense according to the 44-year-old actor.
“Action movies live and die by the story that you’re trying to tell. It’s very difficult to do an action movie that stays engaging. More often there is a split between the two; you get a bit of explosion, you get a bit of dialogue. Sam put a huge amount of hard work into retaining the story all the way. And when you do that, doing the action makes all the sense in the world.”Craig’s action scene on top of a moving train in Istanbul, or in Shanghai, for example, made sense for James Bond to be in the exotic locale. More often than not, James Bond’s backdrop are romantic locations but this time around the majority of the action takes place in 007’s own backyard of London and Scotland. The bleak settings were a far cry from previous incarnations. Every location in SKYFALL had a purpose, according to the SKYFALL director.
“The point about locations in a Bond movie is to try to find a reason why you’re there, not just the way it looks. That it has a reason in the story. In this case, it has to do with Bond’s emotional state most of the time. We went places that meant something. There’s a reason for those things that isn’t just ‘Hmm! What would look beautiful, what would look nice. But what means something in the story. And that’s the key, I think.”
While most James Bond movies go to far away places for the action, Bond must fight Silva, the cyber terrorist played by brilliant Javier Bardem, on his home turf. London pops up in the Ian Fleming stories as the home offices of MI6, but the action rarely occurs there until now. Most Bond villains’ master plans include world domination, but in SKYFALL, 007’s nemesis seeks revenge on Judi Dench's M and MI6 which makes it more personal for James. Viewers get a glimpse into James Bond’s family background when he hides out in his childhood home in Scotland. Sam Mendes says London is “not a photogenic city” and Scotland while beautiful is quite bleak. Cinematographer Roger Deakins captured the two landscapes beautifully, but Mendes agrees they are “unBond-like.” Yet he holds to a firm belief that the story dictates location and not the other way around.
“So we tried to make the locations kind of mean something other than the way they just look. “Of course, you still have classic Bond moments with a few exotic locations, and an appearance of the Aston Martin. When Bond gets his “mojo back,” as Mendes describes it, the classic Bond is back his tux and fully shaved in a Shanghai casino. For that scene, Mendes and Deakins used reds, gold, and other rich colors to show that Bond is back to form in his “emotional journey.”
The most talked about scene from the 23rd Bond film isn’t the action or locations, but a six-minute dialogue between Silva and Bond that has the online world buzzing about the villain’s sexuality. Mendes is thrilled that a talking scene is the most talked about thing from a Bond movie.
“It proves movies like this don’t all have to be… you know rushing around and explosions, that you can have a balance of the two things. As long as you have actors who are capable of doing it.”Thanks to more than “capable” actors like Daniel Craig and Javier Bardem, and a script by John Logan, SKYFALL’s fresh take on a 50-year-old franchise makes this one worthy of calling it one of the best James Bond movies.