Quantum of Solace (2008) is
the twenty-second James Bond film produced by Eon Productions, and is
the direct sequel to the 2006 film Casino Royale. Directed by Marc
Forster, it features Daniel Craig's second performance as James Bond.
In the film, Bond battles wealthy businessman Dominic Greene (Mathieu
Amalric), a member of the Quantum organisation, posing as an
environmentalist who intends to stage a coup d'état in Bolivia
to seize control of the nation's water supply. Bond also seeks
revenge for the death of his lover, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), and is
assisted by Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), who is seeking revenge
for the murder of her family.
Producer
Michael G. Wilson developed the film's plot while Casino Royale was
being shot. Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis and Joshua Zetumer
contributed to the script, Daniel Craig and Marc Forster had to write
some sections themselves due to the Writers Strike, though they were
not given the screenwriter credit in the final cut. The title was
chosen from a 1959 short story in Ian Fleming's For Your Eyes Only,
though the film does not contain any elements of the original story.
Location filming took place in Mexico, Panama, Chile, Italy, Austria
and Wales while interior sets were built and filmed at Pinewood
Studios. Forster aimed to make a modern film that also featured
classic cinema motifs: a vintage Douglas DC-3 was used for a flight
sequence, and Dennis Gassner's set designs are reminiscent of Ken
Adam's work on several early Bond films. Taking a course away from
the usual Bond villains, Forster rejected any grotesque appearance
for the character Dominic Greene to emphasise the hidden and secret
nature of the film's contemporary villains.
The film was also marked by
its frequent depictions of violence, with a 2012 study by the
University of Otago in New Zealand finding it to be the most violent
film in the franchise. Whereas Dr No featured 109 "trivial or
severely violent" acts, by the time Quantum of Solace was
released, the count grew to 250 - the most depictions of violence in
any Bond film.
In July 2006, as Casino
Royale entered post-production, Eon Productions announced that the
next film would be based on an original idea by producer Michael G.
Wilson. It was decided beforehand the film would be a direct sequel,
to exploit Bond's emotions following Vesper's death in the previous
film. Just as Casino Royale's theme was terrorism, the sequel focuses
on environmentalism. The film was confirmed for a May 2nd 2008
release date, with Craig reprising the lead role. Roger Michell, who
directed Craig in Enduring Love and The Mother, was in negotiations
to direct, but opted out because there was no script. Sony
Entertainment vice-chairman Jeff Blake admitted a production schedule
of 18 months was a very short window, and the release date was pushed
back to late 2008. Neal Purvis and Robert Wade completed their draft
of the script by April 2007, and Paul Haggis, who polished the Casino
Royale script, began his rewrite the next month.
In
June 2007, Marc Forster was confirmed as director. He was surprised
that he was approached for the job, stating he was not a big Bond
film fan through the years, and that he would not have accepted the
project had he not seen Casino Royale prior to making his decision:
he felt Bond had been humanised in that film, arguing since
travelling the world had become less exotic since the series' advent,
it made sense to focus more on Bond as a character. Born in Germany
and raised in Switzerland, Forster was the first Bond director not to
come from the British Commonwealth of Nations, although he noted
Bond's mother is Swiss, making him somewhat appropriate to handle the
British icon. The director collaborated strongly with Barbara
Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, noting they only blocked two very
expensive ideas he had. The director found Casino Royale's 144-minute
running time too long, and wanted his follow-up to be "tight and
fast ... like a bullet."
Haggis, Forster and Wilson
rewrote the story from scratch. Haggis said he completed his script
two hours before the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike
officially began. Forster noted a running theme in his films were
emotionally repressed protagonists, and the theme of the picture
would be Bond learning to trust after feeling betrayed by Vesper.
Forster said he created the Camille character as a strong female
counterpart to Bond rather than a casual love interest: she openly
shows emotions similar to those which Bond experiences but is unable
to express. Haggis located his draft's climax in the Swiss Alps, but
Forster wanted the action sequences to be based around the four
classical elements of earth, water, air and fire. The decision to
homage Goldfinger in Fields's death came about as Forster wanted to
show oil had replaced gold as the most precious material.
The producers rejected
Haggis's idea that Vesper Lynd had a child, because "Bond was an
orphan ... Once he finds the kid, Bond can't just leave the kid."
The water supply issue in Bolivia was the main theme of the film,
with a story based on the Cochabamba Water Revolt.
Michael
G. Wilson decided on the film's title Quantum of Solace only "a
few days" before its announcement on January 24th 2008. It was
the name of a short story in Ian Fleming's anthology For Your Eyes
Only (1960). The film is related to the title in one of its thematic
elements: "when the 'Quantum of Solace' drops to zero, humanity
and consideration of one human for another is gone." Daniel
Craig admitted, "I was unsure at first. Bond is looking for his
quantum of solace and that's what he wants, he wants his closure. Ian
Fleming says that if you don't have a quantum of solace in your
relationship then the relationship is over. It's that spark of
niceness in a relationship that if you don't have you might as well
give up." He said that "Bond doesn't have that because his
girlfriend [Vesper Lynd] has been killed," and therefore,
"[Bond is] looking for revenge ... to make himself happy with
the world again." Afterwards, Quantum was made the name of the
organisation introduced in Casino Royale. Craig noted the letter Q
itself looks rather odd. Near the end of the film, the Camille Montes
character and Bond have a discussion about their individual quests to
avenge the deaths of their loved ones. Montes asks Bond to "let
me know what it feels like" when he succeeds, the implication of
the title being that it will be a small amount of solace compared to
his despair. Bond's lack of emotion when he does exact revenge shows
this to be the case.
According to a December
2011 interview with Craig, "We had the bare bones of a script
and then there was a writers' strike and there was nothing we could
do. We couldn't employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, 'Never
again', but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes and a
writer I am not." He said that he and Forster "were the
ones allowed to do it. The rules were that you couldn't employ anyone
as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes
together. We were stuffed. We got away with it, but only just. It was
never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was, but it ended up
being a sequel, starting where the last one finished."
During filming, after the
strike ended, Forster read a spec script by Joshua Zetumer, which he
liked, and hired him to reshape scenes for the later parts of the
shoot, which the director was still unsatisfied with. Forster had the
actors rehearse their scenes, as he liked to film scenes continually.
Zetumer rewrote dialogue depending on the actors' ideas each day.
Untitled
Quantum of Solace was shot
in six countries. Second unit filming began in Italy at the Palio di
Siena horse race on August 16th 2007: although at this point Forster
was unsure how it would fit into the film. Some scenes were filmed
also in Maratea and Craco, two small distinctive towns in Basilicata
in southern Italy. Other places used for location shooting were
Madrid in August 2007; Baja California, Mexico in early 2008, for
shots of the aerial battle; Malcesine, Limone sul Garda and Tremosine
in Italy during March, and at Talamone during the end of April. The
main unit began on January 3rd 2008, at Pinewood Studios. The 007
Stage was used for the fight in the art gallery, and an MI6 safehouse
hidden within the city's cisterns, while other stages housed Bond's
Bolivian hotel suite, and the MI6 headquarters. Interior and exterior
airport scenes were filmed at Farnborough Airfield and the snowy
closing scenes were filmed at the Bruneval Barracks in Aldershot.
Shooting in Panama City
began on February 7th 2008 at Howard Air Force Base. The country
doubled for Haiti and Bolivia, with the National Institute of Culture
of Panama standing in for a hotel in the latter country. A sequence
requiring several hundred extras was also shot at nearby Colón.
Shooting in Panama was also carried out at Fort Sherman, a former US
military base on the Colón coast. Forster was disappointed he
could only shoot the boat chase in that harbour, as he had a more
spectacular vision for the scene. Officials in the country worked
with the locals to "minimise inconvenience" for the cast
and crew, and in return hoped the city's exposure in the film would
increase tourism. The crew was going to move to Cusco, Peru for ten
days of filming on March 2nd, but the location was cancelled for
budget reasons. Twelve days of filming in Chile began on March 24rh
at Antofagasta. There was shooting in Cobija, the Paranal
Observatory, and other locations in the Atacama Desert. Forster chose
the desert and the observatory's ESO Hotel to represent Bond's rigid
emotions, and being on the verge of committing a vengeful act as he
confronts Greene in the film's climax.
While filming in Sierra
Gorda, Chile, the local mayor, Carlos Lopez, staged a protest because
he was angry at the filmmakers' portrayal of the Antofagasta region
as part of Bolivia. He was arrested, detained briefly, and put on
trial two days later. Eon dismissed his claim that they needed his
permission to film in the area. Michael G. Wilson also explained
Bolivia was appropriate to the plot, because of the country's history
of water problems, and was surprised the two countries disliked each
other a century after the War of the Pacific. In a poll by Chilean
daily newspaper La Segunda, 75% of its readers disagreed with Lopez's
actions, due to the negative image they felt it presented of Chile,
and the controversy's potential to put off productions looking to
film in the country in the future.
From 4th to the 12th of
April, the main unit shot on Sienese rooftops. Shooting on the real
rooftops turned out to be less expensive than building them at
Pinewood. The next four weeks were scheduled for filming the car
chase at Lake Garda and Carrara. On April 19th, an Aston Martin
employee driving a DBS to the set crashed into the lake. He survived,
and was fined £400 for reckless driving. Another accident
occurred on April 21st, and two days later, two stuntmen were
seriously injured, with one, Greek stuntman Aris Comninos, having to
be put in intensive care. Filming of the scenes was temporarily
halted so that Italian police could investigate the causes of the
accidents. Stunt co-ordinator Gary Powell said the accidents were a
testament to the realism of the action. Rumours of a "curse"
spread among tabloid media, something which deeply offended Craig,
who disliked that they compared Comninos' accident to something like
his minor finger injury later on the shoot (also part of the
"curse"). Comninos would fully recover from his injury.
Filming took place at the
floating opera stage at Bregenz, Austria, from April 28th to May 9th
2008. The sequence, where Bond stalks the villains during a
performance of Tosca, required 1500 extras. The production used a
large model of an eye, which Forster felt fitted in the Bond style,
and the opera itself has parallels to the film. A short driving
sequence was filmed at the nearby Feldkirch, Vorarlberg. The crew
returned to Italy from May 13th –17th to shoot a (planned) car
crash at the marble quarry in Carrara, and a recreation of the Palio
di Siena at the Piazza del Campo in Siena. 1000 extras were hired for
a scene where Bond emerges from the Fonte Gaia. Originally, he would
have emerged from the city's cisterns at Siena Cathedral, but this
was thought disrespectful. By June, the crew returned to Pinewood for
four weeks, where new sets (including the interior of the hotel in
the climax) were built. The wrap party was held on June 21st.
Production designer Peter
Lamont, a crew member on eighteen previous Bond films, retired after
Casino Royale. Forster hired Dennis Gassner in his stead, having
admired his work on The Truman Show and the films of the Coen
brothers. Craig said the film would have "a touch of Ken
Adam," while Michael G. Wilson also called Gassner's designs
"a postmodern look at modernism." Forster said he felt the
early Bond films' design "were ahead of their time," and
enjoyed the clashing of an older style with his own because it
created a unique look unto itself. Gassner wanted his sets to
emphasise Craig's "great angular, textured face and wonderful
blue eyes," and totally redesigned the MI6 headquarters because
he felt Judi Dench "was a bit tired in the last film, so I
thought, let's bring her into a new world."
Louise Frogley replaced
Lindy Hemming as costume designer, though Hemming remained as
supervisor. Hemming hired Brioni for Bond's suits since her tenure on
the series began with 1995's GoldenEye, but Lindsay Pugh, another
supervisor, explained their suits were "too relaxed." Tom
Ford was hired to tailor "sharper" suits for Craig. Pugh
said the costumes aimed towards the 1960s feel, especially for Bond
and Fields. Prada provided the dresses for both Bond girls. Jasper
Conran designed Camille's ginger bandeau, bronze skirt and gold fish
necklace, while Chrome Hearts designed gothic jewellery for Amalric's
character, which the actor liked enough to keep after filming. Sophie
Harley, who created Vesper Lynd's earrings and Algerian loveknot
necklace in Casino Royale, was called upon to create another version
of the necklace.
The film returns to the
traditional gun barrel opening shot, which was altered into part of
the story for Casino Royale where it was moved to the beginning of
the title sequence. In this film the gun barrel sequence was moved to
the end of the movie, which Wilson explained was done for a surprise,
and to signify the conclusion of the story begun in the previous
film. The opening credits sequence was created by MK12; Having worked
on Forster's Stranger than Fiction and The Kite Runner, MK12
spontaneously began developing the sequence early on in production,
and had a good idea of its appearance which meant it did not have to
be redone when the title singer was changed. MK12 selected various
twilight colours to represent Bond's mood and focused on a dot motif
based on the gunbarrel shot. MK12 also worked on scenes with
graphical user interface, including the electronic table MI6 use, and
the Port-au-Prince, Haiti title cards.
Quantum of Solace was the
last in Ford Motor's three-film deal that began with 2002's Die
Another Day. Although Ford sold over 90% of the Aston Martin company
in 2007, the Aston Martin DBS V12 returned for the film's car chase
around Lake Garda; Dan Bradley was hired as second unit director
because of his work on the second and third Bourne films, so the film
would continue the gritty action style begun in Casino Royale. He had
intended to use Ford GTs for the opening chase, but it was replaced
by the Alfa Romeo 159. After location filming in Italy, further
close-ups of Craig, the cars and the truck were shot at Pinewood
against a bluescreen. Originally three Alfa Romeos were in the
sequence: but Forster felt the scene was running too long and
re-edited the scene so it only looked like two Romeos were chasing
Bond. Six Aston Martins were destroyed during filming, and one of
them was purchased by a fan.
Fourteen cameras were used
to film the Palio di Siena, footage which was later edited into the
main sequence. Aerial shots using helicopters were banned, and the
crew were also forbidden from showing any violence "involving
either people or animals." To shoot the foot chase in Siena in
April 2008 four camera cranes were built in the town, and a cable
camera was also used. Framestore worked on the Siena chase,
duplicating the 1000 extras during principal photography to match
shots of the 40,000 strong audience at the real Palio, removing wires
that held Craig and the stuntmen in the rooftop segment of the chase,
and digital expansion of the floor and skylight in the art gallery
Bond and Mitchell fall into. The art gallery fight was intended to be
simple, but during filming Craig's stunt double accidentally fell
from the construction scaffolding. Forster preferred the idea of Bond
hanging from ropes reaching for his gun to kill Mitchell, rather than
having both men run out of the building to continue their chase as
specified in the script, and the number of effects shots increased.
The free-fall scene
involved its own set of challenges, Craig disliked the idea of
"being hung by wires and blown by a large fan in front of a
green screen" but actual sky diving coverage has serious
drawbacks. It's not only difficult, dangerous and time-consuming, but
nearly always results in problematic head-replacements for close-ups.
Stunt co-ordinator Gary Powell and VFX Designer Kevin Tod Haug,
presented the idea of filming the scene in a large vertical wind
tunnel in Bedford in order to do this sequence as practically as
possible. While a great solution for the actors' performances the
technique presented enormous VFX challenges: relighting shots
captured in a tall white tube to match the sky over the Bolivian
desert, and the impossibility of filming medium to wide shots of the
actors. An array of eight Dalsa Origin cameras (supported by 7 HD
cameras and a 35mm hand-held camera, all running in sync) was used to
create a virtual camera with which to shoot the actors floating in
the simulator. Ged Wright and his team at Double Negative developed a
method to use the data from these cameras that allowed these real
performances to be placed in a synthetic environment as seen by a
synthetic camera. During the shooting in the wind tunnel Craig and
Kurylenko wore wind-resistant contact lenses that enabled them to
open their eyes as they fell. For safety and comfort, they only shot
for thirty seconds at a time. Forster wished he had more time to work
on the free-fall scene.
To film the aerial
dogfight, a "Snakehead" camera was built and placed on the
nose and tail of a Piper Aerostar 700. SolidWorks, who provided the
software used to design the camera, stated "pilots for the first
time can fly as aggressively as they dare without sacrificing the
drama of the shot." The camera could turn 360 degrees and was
shaped like a periscope. The crew also mounted SpaceCams on
helicopters, and placed cameras with 1600 mm lenses underground, to
cover the action. Forster wanted to film the plane fight as a homage
to Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and chose planes like the
Douglas DC-3 to suit that.
The Moving Picture Company
created the climactic hotel sequence. The fire effects were
supervised by Chris Corbould, and post-production MPC had to enhance
the sequence by making the smoke look closer to the actors, so it
would look more dangerous. A full-scale replica of the building's
exterior was used for the exploding part Bond and Camille escape
from. The boat chase was another scene that required very little CGI.
Machine FX worked on replacing a few shots of visible stuntmen with a
digital version of Craig's head, and recreated the boats Bond jumps
over on his motorcycle to make it look more dangerous. Crowd creation
was done for the Tosca scene by Machine FX, to make the performance
look like it had sold out. Forster edited the opera scene to resemble
The Man Who Knew Too Much. In total, there are 900+ visual effects
shots in Quantum of Solace.
David Arnold, who composed
the scores for the previous four Bond films, returned for Quantum of
Solace. He said that Forster likes to work very closely with his
composers and that, in comparison to the accelerated schedule he was
tied to on Casino Royale, the intention was to spend a long time
scoring the film to "really work it out." He also said he
would be "taking a different approach" with the score.
Arnold composed the music based on impressions from reading the
script, and Forster edited those into the film. As with Casino
Royale, Arnold kept use of the "James Bond Theme" to a
minimum. Arnold collaborated with Kieran Hebden for "Crawl, End
Crawl," a remix of the score played during the end credits.
Jack White of The White
Stripes and Alicia Keys collaborated on "Another Way to
Die," the first Bond music duet. They had wanted to work
together for two years beforehand. The song was recorded in
Nashville, Tennessee; White played the drums while Keys performed on
the piano. The Memphis Horns also contributed to the track. White's
favourite Bond theme is John Barry's instrumental piece for On Her
Majesty's Secret Service, and he watched various opening credit
sequences from the series for inspiration while mixing the track.
Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse had recorded a demo track for the film,
but Ronson explained Winehouse's well-publicised legal issues in the
preceding weeks made her "not ready to record any music" at
that time.
The
film premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on October 29th 2008.
Princes William and Harry attended, and proceeds from the screening
were donated to the charities Help for Heroes and the Royal British
Legion. The film was originally scheduled to be released in the UK
and North America on November 7th; however, Eon pushed forward the
British date to October 31st during filming, while the American date
was pushed back in August to November 14th, after Harry Potter and
the Half-Blood Prince had been moved to 2009, thereby allowing the
distributors to market the film over the autumn blockbuster
Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Producer Barbara Broccoli, Daniel
Craig, Olga Kurylenko and director Marc Forster are pictured at right
at the Australian premiere.
Returning product placement
partners from Casino Royale included Ford, Heineken Pilsener,
Smirnoff, Omega SA, Virgin Atlantic Airways and Sony Ericsson. A
reported £50 million was earned in product placement, which tops
the Bond film's record of £44 million for Die Another Day. The
2009 Ford Ka is driven by Camille in the film. Avon created a
fragrance called Bond Girl 007 with Gemma Arterton as the
"face" of the product. Coca-Cola became a promotional
partner, rebranding Coke Zero as "Coke Zero Zero 7." A
tie-in advert featured the orchestral element of "Another Way to
Die." In the film, Coca-Cola was briefly seen being served at
Dominic Greene's party. Sony held a competition, "Mission for a
Million," enabling registered players to use their products to
complete certain tasks. Each completed "mission" gives
consumers a chance to win $1 million and a trip to a top secret
location. Corgi International Limited made 5-inch action figures and
gadgets (such as a voice-activated briefcase), as well as their
traditional die-cast toy vehicles. They also created 7-inch figures
of characters from the previous films. Scalextric released four
racing sets to coincide with the film. Activision released their
first James Bond game, also titled Quantum of Solace, which is based
on both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. It is the first Bond
game to feature Craig's likeness and the first seventh generation
console game in the series. Swatch designed a series of wrist
watches, each of them inspired by a Bond villain.
Though the screenplay did
not get made into a novel despite its original storyline, Penguin
Books published a compilation of Fleming's short stories entitled
Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories. The book
combines the contents of Fleming's two short story collections, For
Your Eyes Only, including the original "Quantum of Solace"
short story, and Octopussy and The Living Daylights.
The November/December 2008
issue of Cigar Aficionado was a special James Bond edition written by
David Giammarco, author of For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of
the James Bond Films, and featured an 20-page feature on the making
of Quantum of Solace from his interviews on location.
Quantum
of Solace broke the record for the largest Friday opening in the UK
and then broke the UK opening weekend record, taking in £15.5
million ($25 million) in its first weekend, surpassing the previous
record of £14.9 million held by Harry Potter and the Goblet of
Fire. It earned a further £14 million in France and Sweden,
where it opened on the same day. The weekend gross of the equivalent
of $10.6 million in France was a record for the series, surpassing
what Casino Royale made in five days by 16%. The following week, the
film was playing in sixty countries and broke records in Switzerland,
Finland, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Romania and Slovenia. Its
Chinese and Indian openings were the second largest ever for
foreign-language films. The film grossed $27 million on its opening
day in Canada and the United States, where it was the number one film
for the weekend. It was the highest-grossing opening weekend Bond
film in the US, and tied with The Incredibles for the biggest
November opening outside of the Harry Potter series.
Reviews for Quantum of
Solace have been mixed. Critics generally preferred Casino Royale,
but continued to praise Craig's depiction of Bond, and agree that the
film is still an enjoyable addition to the series. The action
sequences and pacing were praised, but criticism grew over the
realism and serious but gritty feel that the film carried over.
Roger Moore, the third
actor to play Bond in the films, continued to feel Craig was a
"damn good Bond but the film as a whole, there was a bit too
much flash cutting [and] it was just like a commercial of the action.
There didn't seem to be any geography and you were wondering what the
hell was going on." Kim Newman of Empire gave it 4/5, remarking
it was not "bigger and better than Casino Royale, [which is]
perhaps a smart move in that there's still a sense at the finish that
Bond's mission has barely begun." However, he expressed
nostalgia for the more humorous Bond films. The Sunday Times review
noted that "following Casino Royale was never going to be easy,
but the director Marc Forster has brought the brand's successful
relaunch crashing back to earth – with a yawn"; the
screenplay "is at times incomprehensible" and the casting
"is a mess." The review concludes that "Bond has been
stripped of his iconic status. He no longer represents anything
particularly British, or even modern. In place of glamour, we get a
spurious grit; instead of style, we get product placement; in place
of fantasy, we get a redundant and silly realism." The Guardian
gave a more positive review, rating it as 3/5 stars, and was
particularly fond of Craig's performance, saying he "made the
part his own, every inch the coolly ruthless agent-killer, nursing a
broken heart and coldly suppressed rage" and calling the film
"a crash-bang Bond, high on action, low on quips, long on
location glamour, short on product placement"; it concludes
"Quantum of Solace isn't as good as Casino Royale: the smart
elegance of Craig's Bond debut has been toned down in favour of
conventional action. But the man himself powers this movie; he
carries the film: it's an indefinably difficult task for an actor.
Craig measures up."
Roger
Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who praised the previous film,
disliked Quantum of Solace. He wrote that the plot was mediocre,
characters weak and that Bond lacked his usual personality, despite
his praise for Craig's interpretation of the role. Throughout his
review, he emphasised that "James Bond is not an action
hero." Kate Muir wrote in The Times that "The Bond
franchise is 50 years old this year, and the scriptless mess of
Quantum of Solace may be considered its mid-life crisis", before
she went on to praise the film's successor Skyfall as a
"resurrection". Some writers criticised the choice of
Quantum of Solace as a title. "Yes, it's a bad title,"
wrote Marni Weisz, the editor of Famous, a Canadian film publication
distributed in cinemas in that country, in an editorial entitled
"At least it's not Octopussy."
The film was nominated for
Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Visual Effects, Film and
Sound Editing at the 2008 Satellite Awards, winning Best Song. It was
nominated for Best Action Movie at the 2009 Critics' Choice Awards,
and at the Empire Awards, which is voted for by the public, it was
shortlisted for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Newcomer, Best
Thriller and Best Soundtrack. It was nominated for the Saturn Award
for Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film, while Kurylenko and Dench
were both nominated for the Best Supporting Actress award.
AV
CLUB SLIDESHOW DEPARTMENT
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In
June 2007, Marc Forster was confirmed as director. He was surprised
that he was approached for the job, stating he was not a big Bond
film fan through the years, and that he would not have accepted the
project had he not seen Casino Royale prior to making his decision:
he felt Bond had been humanised in that film, arguing since
travelling the world had become less exotic since the series' advent,
it made sense to focus more on Bond as a character. Born in Germany
and raised in Switzerland, Forster was the first Bond director not to
come from the British Commonwealth of Nations, although he noted
Bond's mother is Swiss, making him somewhat appropriate to handle the
British icon. The director collaborated strongly with Barbara
Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, noting they only blocked two very
expensive ideas he had. The director found Casino Royale's 144-minute
running time too long, and wanted his follow-up to be "tight and
fast ... like a bullet."
Michael
G. Wilson decided on the film's title Quantum of Solace only "a
few days" before its announcement on January 24th 2008. It was
the name of a short story in Ian Fleming's anthology For Your Eyes
Only (1960). The film is related to the title in one of its thematic
elements: "when the 'Quantum of Solace' drops to zero, humanity
and consideration of one human for another is gone." Daniel
Craig admitted, "I was unsure at first. Bond is looking for his
quantum of solace and that's what he wants, he wants his closure. Ian
Fleming says that if you don't have a quantum of solace in your
relationship then the relationship is over. It's that spark of
niceness in a relationship that if you don't have you might as well
give up." He said that "Bond doesn't have that because his
girlfriend [Vesper Lynd] has been killed," and therefore,
"[Bond is] looking for revenge ... to make himself happy with
the world again." Afterwards, Quantum was made the name of the
organisation introduced in Casino Royale. Craig noted the letter Q
itself looks rather odd. Near the end of the film, the Camille Montes
character and Bond have a discussion about their individual quests to
avenge the deaths of their loved ones. Montes asks Bond to "let
me know what it feels like" when he succeeds, the implication of
the title being that it will be a small amount of solace compared to
his despair. Bond's lack of emotion when he does exact revenge shows
this to be the case.
The
film premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on October 29th 2008.
Princes William and Harry attended, and proceeds from the screening
were donated to the charities Help for Heroes and the Royal British
Legion. The film was originally scheduled to be released in the UK
and North America on November 7th; however, Eon pushed forward the
British date to October 31st during filming, while the American date
was pushed back in August to November 14th, after Harry Potter and
the Half-Blood Prince had been moved to 2009, thereby allowing the
distributors to market the film over the autumn blockbuster
Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Producer Barbara Broccoli, Daniel
Craig, Olga Kurylenko and director Marc Forster are pictured at right
at the Australian premiere.
Quantum
of Solace broke the record for the largest Friday opening in the UK
and then broke the UK opening weekend record, taking in £15.5
million ($25 million) in its first weekend, surpassing the previous
record of £14.9 million held by Harry Potter and the Goblet of
Fire. It earned a further £14 million in France and Sweden,
where it opened on the same day. The weekend gross of the equivalent
of $10.6 million in France was a record for the series, surpassing
what Casino Royale made in five days by 16%. The following week, the
film was playing in sixty countries and broke records in Switzerland,
Finland, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Romania and Slovenia. Its
Chinese and Indian openings were the second largest ever for
foreign-language films. The film grossed $27 million on its opening
day in Canada and the United States, where it was the number one film
for the weekend. It was the highest-grossing opening weekend Bond
film in the US, and tied with The Incredibles for the biggest
November opening outside of the Harry Potter series.
Roger
Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who praised the previous film,
disliked Quantum of Solace. He wrote that the plot was mediocre,
characters weak and that Bond lacked his usual personality, despite
his praise for Craig's interpretation of the role. Throughout his
review, he emphasised that "James Bond is not an action
hero." Kate Muir wrote in The Times that "The Bond
franchise is 50 years old this year, and the scriptless mess of
Quantum of Solace may be considered its mid-life crisis", before
she went on to praise the film's successor Skyfall as a
"resurrection". Some writers criticised the choice of
Quantum of Solace as a title. "Yes, it's a bad title,"
wrote Marni Weisz, the editor of Famous, a Canadian film publication
distributed in cinemas in that country, in an editorial entitled
"At least it's not Octopussy."
