Credit: Spectre
Daniel Craig’s James Bond is officially done. No Time to Die wrapped Craig’s version of the iconic character in a nice little bow that left a better taste in the mouths of audiences than Spectre did. As a whole, the Daniel Craig era has been a mixed bag for most. There’s more good than bad in this timespan of James Bond, and the Oscar nominee is always on top when it comes to performance, but Spectre just didn’t reach the levels that Skyfall did despite a game cast and the return of Sam Mendes. For Craig, the actor made it clear that he was happy to be done with the franchise during its promotion stage, with the 54-year-old infamously stating when asked if he could imagine himself doing another Bond movie, “Now? I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists.” Craig told Time Out London. “No, not at the moment. Not at all. That’s fine. I’m over it at the moment. We’re done. All I want to do is move on.”
Of course, Craig would eventually take back those comments following his return to No Time to Die, but we haven’t heard much from Sam Mendes following his return to Spectre. Now, when it was confirmed in 2016 that Sam Mendes wouldn’t return for the official last outing of James Bond, it wasn’t much of a shock as the filmmaker pretty much stated in his Deadline interview with Mike Fleming that he was finished with the franchise:
Credit: Spectre
“There is a sense of completeness that wasn’t there at the end of Skyfall, and that’s what makes this feel different. It feels like there’s a rightness to it, that I have finished a journey,” Medes said at the time. And when asked if he’d return if Daniel Craig did, he was more direct. “I’ll probably be doing something else… What is important is, not doing it is not a negative. It’s not me saying, “I don’t want to do this.” What it would be is me saying, “I really want to do this story. There are other stories to tell.”
Mendes has never said anything bad about Spectre, even when audiences and critics weren’t so kind to what was believed was Daniel Craig’s final outing as the titular character. However, in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Mendes does reveal why Spectre didn’t live up to the high standards that Skyfall set:
Credit: Spectre
“These movies are very difficult to write. Those 10 months of downtime, that’s when the script really turned around because we had the time to go down blind alleys and try things like the [Bond/Silva team-up]. And that time was not afforded to me when we made Spectre. And you can see the difference in the script. [With Spectre], I felt there was some pressure. Certainly [producers Barbara and Michael Broccoli] exerted some pressure on me and Daniel to make the next one, so that makes a big difference. People saying: “We want you to do it,” and passionately wooing me to do it, was a big thing.”
Spectre was by no means a bad film, but it did feel lackluster when it came after one of the best Bond films ever made. Still, Spectre was a fun outing for James Bond, and watching Christopher Waltz light up the screen as the big bad is always a delight. There’s no telling what made producers return to Bond after Spectre – money is the biggest candidate, of course – but it seems that many felt that Spectre wasn’t the right film to end the Daniel Craig era on. Whatever the case may be, Spectre is a divisive film that’s in the record books.
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