The director of GoldenEye and Casino Royale has been chatting about the James Bond movie franchise.
Director Martin Campbell is the only man to date to have successfully rebooted the James Bond saga twice. He brought it back to life with 1995’s GoldenEye, starring Pierce Brosnan. And then he was at the helm with the 2006 reboot, Casino Royale, that also introduced Daniel Craig to the role of 007.
Campbell is currently doing promotional work for his new movie, The Protégé, and as part of that he’s doing an ask me anything session over at Reddit. Inevitably, the discussion of his time at Bond comes up.
He was asked about what he learned in particular with GoldenEye, and argued “I think GoldenEye is a more serious movie than the Roger Moore movies and Pierce Brosnan himself brought a much more grounded Bond than Roger Moore. Also, his relationship with M was very different to the past and of course the bad guys turned out to be the Russians, who were the bad guys du jour in the 90s. But each actor brings a very different characterization of Bond. The different between Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig could not be more extreme”.
Later on too, he was asked what he felt about Craig’s second outing, Quantum Of Solace, a feature he declined the opportunity to direct himself. That, and later Craig films. “Disappointed in Quantum Of Solace”, he wrote. “I really liked Skyfall, but I thought Spectre was disappointing as well”.
Finally. Campbell also denies the rumour that a lot of footage of Bond and Vesper was sliced out of Casino Royale. “97% of her involvement made the final cut”, he confirms.
Oh, and one more thing. He would consider making another Bond film if they asked…
You can read the full AMA here.
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