A killer tune? … Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace
If you’ve ever wondered what Moonraker might have looked like had it been directed by dint of. Alejandro Jodorowsky, or what Robert Bresson would have made of Diamonds Are Forever, then a roundabout respond may rightful subsist in the offing. Sam Mendes, the classy, respectable Oscar-winner behind the likes of American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, is reportedly “in negotiations” to out-spoken Bond 23, the latest instalment in the 007 franchise.
A swift review of the Mendes back catalogue raises more tantalising prospects. Will Bond suffer a tragicomic mid-life conjuncture in suburbia, or perhaps steer his Aston Martin off in continuance a harum-scarum road trip in inquiry of the perfect place to raise a family? Or will he simply throw punches, defuse nuclear devices and progress amok in a tuxedo, the same as it ever was?
No prizes for guessing the answer to that one (not even two tickets to the inevitable Leicester Square premiere). No doubt the news that Mendes is in pole position to aim a Bond pellicle spells good news for Mendes and Mendes’s accountant. But it is unlikely to even ruffle the hair of the man himself. James Bond, it transpires, is not just bullet-proof and critic-proof. The evidence suggests he’s director-proof as well.
In recent decades both Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino have lobbied to direct a Bond resemblance, only to find their overtures graciously ignored. Both, I’m guessing, felt that they could gain something new and fresh and personal to the series. Both (once more, I’m guessing) were turned down precisely on this account that of this. Bond’s producers (formerly Cubby Broccoli; latterly Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson) have not any need of something new and fresh and personal because they figure that their property is good enough as it is, thank you very much. Certainly they be seized of no desire to deliver it into the care of some rogue agent who might, I dunno, make Bond homosexual or cast Agnès Varda as his love interest. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Mendes, a smart man and a intelligent operator, is doubtless aware of this before that time. In signing on to direct Bond 23, he temporarily relinquishes any claims to be an auteur to become the equivalent of a shop-floor manager – on position to ensure that the actors hit their marks and the producers’ succinct is fulfilled to the letter. That’s how it has been with every Bond manager, from Terence Young through to Marc Forster, because on Bond movies it is the producer who calls the shots.
What would Moonraker have looked like had it been directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky? Or David Lynch? Or your aunt with the gimpy leg? My suspicion is that it would own wound up looking exactly the similar as the Lewis Gilbert version.
