James Bond star Daniel Craig and series producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, in the recently-released documentary Being James Bond, reflected on everything that went wrong on Quantum of Solace, Craig’s second outing as the iconic British spy. Widely considered to be the worst of the Craig Bonds, Quantum of Solace was marred by the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike and a rushed production that even director Marc Forster wanted to bail on.
In the documentary, which released on Apple TV ahead of Craig’s fifth and final Bond film, No Time to Die, the actor admitted to being “overwhelmed” by the success of his 007 debut, Casino Royale, and said that Quantum of Solace was a typical example of the “troubling second album syndrome.”
In Craig’s own words:
“We had a writer's strike. We had a script; it wasn't completed, but it was nearly completed. The movie kind of works. It's not Casino Royale, and that was always going to be… It was like, literally, troubling second album syndrome. In a way, we could not top Casino… It's easy to say that. Of course, we wanted to top Casino Royale, but, you know…”
Broccoli said, “We basically started shooting without a script, which is never a good idea. But the script was turned in, and I remember the writer who turned the script in picked up his check, and then picked up his placard and stood outside the studio striking. We were kind of screwed, and we all had to muddle in and try and make the story work, and it wasn't really working that great. But I look back at the movie, and you know, it's still a good movie.”
To disguise the fact that they were pushing along without a script, Craig said that he threw himself into the stunts, which in hindsight proved to be a bad idea, because he ended up hurting himself quite badly. He tried to “bash things out” on set with Forster, script-wise, but confessed that he was no writer.
Wilson, who co-produces the Bond films with Broccoli, said that the movie “didn’t get Bond’s journey right.” He added, “It wasn't totally focused on his journey, and sometimes we get too wound up on plot rather than keep to the story, which is an issue for these kind of films.”
Despite everything, Craig said that “there are some really special moments” in Quantum of Solace. All things considered, the film turned out to be a box office hit, grossing nearly $600 million worldwide. It also starred Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright and Judi Dench.
in a 2016 interview with Collider, Forster admitted that he was in two minds about bowing out of the film. Here’s what he said:
“It was tricky because we didn’t have a finished script… Ultimately at that time I wanted to pull out. Ron Howard pulled out of Angels & Demons which Sony was about to do and they sort of shut down, and at the time I thought, ‘Okay maybe I should pull out’ because we didn’t have a finished script. But everybody said, ‘No we need to make a movie, the strike will be over shortly so you can start shooting what we have and then we’ll finish everything else.’ I said ‘Yeah but the time crunch’…”
But in the end, Forster said, he was “pretty happy with the film” and was pleased to note that public sentiment about it was improving over time. It remains to be seen how Quantum of Solace affects Craig's legacy as Bond in the long run, but before that we have his final film in the series to look forward to. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, No Time to Die will arrive in theaters on October 8.