James Bond: Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster explains why film was a lacklustre instalment in the series

'It was tricky because we didn’t have a finished script…'

Out of Daniel Craig’s four James Bond outings, Quantum of Solace is almost everyone’s least favourite. While not necessarily a bad film, the film neither had a substantial plot nor was as beautifully shot as Craig’s other 007 films.

Speaking to Collider while promoting his latest film All I See Is You, director Marc Forster spoke candidly about the film’s production, admitting he once tried to quit the project due to the writer’s strike taking place at the same time.

Marc Forster on Quantum of Solace

“It was tricky because we didn’t have a finished script… Ultimately at that time I wanted to pull out. Ron Howard pulled out of Angels & Demons which Sony was about to do and they sort of shut down, and at the time I thought, ‘Okay maybe I should pull out’ because we didn’t have a finished script. But everybody said, ‘No we need to make a movie, the strike will be over shortly so you can start shooting what we have and then we’ll finish everything else.’ I said ‘Yeah but the time crunch’.

“So ultimately I said ‘Okay’. The idea was to make a follow-up to Casino Royale and ultimately I felt like, ‘Okay worst case scenario the strike goes on, I’ll just make it sort of like a 70s revenge movie; very action driven, lots of cuts to hide that there’s a lot of action and a little less story. To disguise it.”

That explains the rushed, frenetic editing seen throughout Quantum of Solace; just watch the below chase scene, the camera rushing everywhere.

Forster added that writing a follow-up to Casino Royal, which he called one of the best Ian Fleming books ever made, was always going to be a challenge with no source material to base it on.

“Then ultimately you have a follow-up with an incomplete script based on no book and you have to deliver. At the same time, we only had five or six weeks to cut the movie once we finished principal photography. You have six weeks to edit before the movie actually then goes into sound and comes out.”

In the end, however, Forster says he is ‘pretty happy’ with the final product: “I must say now eight years after it seems like people have been embracing it more and more. When it came out it was very successful and people seemed to like it, but I think it gained more momentum as time went by.”

Meanwhile, Craig’s future as James Bond has been brought into question, with producers saying they hope the actor will stay with the series despite his infamous ‘rather slash my wrists’ comments.