Some of us really like Quantum Of Solace, but the consensus is admittedly against us. Maybe the objective point-of-view is that it's a better action movie than it is a Bond film, and on that score, it sounds like Daniel Craig is in agreement, having just admitted to Time Out that Quantum was fatally compromised by the 2008 writers' strike. Skyfall, he promises, will be better.
"On Quantum, we were fucked," says Craig, succinctly. "We had the bare bones of a script and then there was the strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn't employ a writer to finish it. You swear you'll never get involved with shit like that, and then it happens!" Craig even reveals that he ended up writing some of the scenes himself, in collaboration with director Marc Forster. "And a writer I am not..."
Skyfall's apparent decision to put aside the Quantum plot thread running through that film and its predecessor Casino Royale, now makes more sense in the light of Craig's admitting "[Quantum] was never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was; it just ended up being one, starting where the last one finished. For me personally, on a level of feeling satisfied, I would want to do better next time. That’s really important to me."
But if he was disappointed in his second Bond outing, he seems excited about his third. " I really think this one is better even than Casino Royale", Craig enthuses. "[Director] Sam Mendes has lived with Bond all his life, and he grew up with Bond in the same way I did. We have exactly the same reference points, we both like the same Bond movies, and we both like the same bits in the same Bond movies we like. We sat down and we just rabbited for hours about Live And Let Die or From Russia With Love, and talked about little scenes that we knew from them. That’s how we started talking about it. That’s what we tried to instill in the script. He’s been working his arse off to tie all these things together so they make sense... in a Bond way!"
Skyfall is currently shooting, as proven by regular photographs of clapperboards on the official Facepage. We'll next see Craig on-screen in David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which is out in the UK on December 26.