Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Who moved James Bond's gadgets?


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.] 

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