In ‘Quantum,’ it’s Bond, James Bond, without the catchphrases
Daniel Craig is betting that absence will make the 007 fan’s heart grow fonder.
The new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, which opens Nov. 14 and screened for the press for the first time Saturday evening, leaves out some of the trademark phrases and habits of the iconic superspy.
No “Bond, James Bond” introduction, no “shaken, not stirred” martini order, still no gadget-master Q, and vengeance rather than seduction is the common interest with one of the Bond girls.
After Craig’s first outing as Bond in 2006’s Casino Royale, which rebooted the now 22-film franchise with 007’s origin story, Quantum picks up right where that film ended: with the hero trying to unravel the network of villains that led the woman he loved to betray him.
“Everybody says to me, ‘Is Bond going to be Bond now?’ And I’ve been like, ‘Yeah, well, kind of,’ ” Craig says. “But he’s got a way to go yet.”
His story arc takes 007 from soldier to the ultra-smooth operator immortalized in the previous films.
Saturday’s screening received applause during one foot-chase sequence, and again as the credits rolled.
“He’s supposed to be this superspy, suave and sophisticated,” Craig says. “But I didn’t want to start by copying what came before, but to get to that point by making it a real journey.”
Producer Michael G. Wilson, whose family originated the films and has personally worked on every Bond since 1979’s Moonraker, says that though some Bond fans will consider it heresy, he was glad to break tradition.
“I feel free,” he said during a location shoot in Chile last spring. “We always had to have those scenes in the movie. Now we have scenes only if they’re necessary.”
Craig is signed to at least two more Bond films, and he says eventually all the familiar characteristics will reveal themselves. And he hopes they will be more satisfying now that they aren’t delivered by rote.
“I’m as big a fan as anybody of all his catchphrases and the martini,” he says. “But I want to find a new way of doing them.”
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