Producers and film makers involved with the
007 projects over the past 50 years have come out in the open against the
current James Bond Daniel Craig. He is charged with alleged manhandling of
sophisticated Bond gadgets and causing them to break down right before the actual shooting starts. Ever since Quantum of Solace the popular gadgetry
has been on the wane on the English sets of style studded James Bond movies.
For a long time viewers were made to believe that this was
arranged on purpose, but we now know the truth behind this anomaly. The
innovative and future looking contraptions that the crew spends long hours and
sweat working on often crack up at Craig’s hands while he’s trying them before the cameras even begin to roll. Not only has this clumsy attitude cost
the production houses a lot of money, there has also been an unintentional
personality shift in the character of James Bond himself.
Following the little accidents, Craig is generally embarrassed. Lately even the technicians
have begun to take liberty of yelling at him in front of the entire crew.
This leaves him in an obviously bad mood, hence we hardly ever see him smiling
on screen. The open can has led quite a few worms to escape out in the open,
one of which told us that the glitch free multi-touch size-of-a-table-screen in
Quantum of Solace was actually the
size of a wall that hung upside down. But Craig, who has a distance diploma in
MS Office convinced the team that he could handle the gadget and would gladly
show them how to play touch Mario on such a big screen. The screen had be to be
chopped into a quarter of its original size after Mr. Bond lost it and began
to hit the shell of the tortoise a little too hard causing the panel to crack
at several places.
Martin Campbell, the director of Casino Royale calls himself lucky for
having directed the first movie with Craig playing Bond. “He was shy back then.
It was difficult for us to get him to touch any guns or cell phones even on
screen. I kept my distance and managed to let the ice stay for the entire
shooting span. But Marc (dir, Quantum
of Solace) broke the ice and Daniel got a little too friendly on the sets,
playing with gadgets, asking for advance payments, even sitting on his
director’s chair when Marc would go to the men’s room. I saw this coming, but
he just won’t listen,” recalls Campbell.
Having to send James Bond to his ancestral
Scottish deserted property in Skyfall
seems less puzzling and more out of necessity now; no matter what breaks, it’s all
junk anyway. Director Sam Mendes was unavailable for a comment but we spoke to
his neighbour Shyam Patel who took full responsibility for these words on Sam’s
behalf, “Mendes was upset. He was upset about a lot of things. His original
scriptwriter Peter Morgan left the project in the middle after he was asked to
do minor changes every time Craig broke something. The laser beam
stick had to be replaced by a rusted sword, and all. Finally they hired John
Logan and a few more to write a rustic script that could make do with the most
basic things. As a joke they didn’t even give Bond an automatic weapon in the
final scenes, where he chops a double barrel off into a shotgun.”
It is hard to tell what future awaits Bond,
but definite changes have seeped in. He smiles less, spends way less time with
women, and takes forever to get his pursed lips apart for the want of any
dialogues. He is more muscular than ever in order to thrash villains with his
bare hands, as to gadgets he has proved to be not very friendly. It is also rumoured
that M was not originally meant to die in Skyfall
but was forcefully made to die on a persistent request by Judi Dench after she had
a word with the producers about continuing with Daniel Craig in upcoming
films.
[Don't judge me. I love the new James Bond.]
