Daniel Craig’s Last Bond Film Should be On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Daniel Craig in Quentin Tarantino’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would be a perfect end to his James Bond.
I know this is a unlikely to ever happen as Daniel Craig will probably not return to the role, but I want to explore the idea as Quentin Tarantino once tried and failed to direct an adaptation of Casino Royale, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is an anomaly within the James Bond universe that is begging to be revisited.
Over the course of the next two years, Tarantino would pitch the idea several times, at Cannes:
“I've always wanted to do it. I bumped into Pierce Brosnan and we talked about it. He liked the idea… They’ve got this gigantic franchise, they can’t do anything wrong with it. Pierce Brosnan’s only going to do one more movie for them, if that, so if he stayed on to do one more with me, let’s just this one year go my way and do it a little differently. I won’t do anything that will ruin the series… if I owned the material, I would set it in the ‘60s, but I’m sure I’d have to do it now."
He even wanted Uma Thurman to be Vesper Lynd.
He also made a pitch on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, going as far as saying once again that he'd love to do it with Brosnan, and would love to make in the 1960s if he could, but appeared open to change if needed. He also appeared to want to set the film minutes after On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Brosnan was quoted as saying:
"What Tarantino would bring to the film is life, and just a great sense of excitement and danger, and the perspective of a film-maker who has really made people sit up and watch his movies. He's got a cutting edge, which we got with the last Bond film, “Die Another Day” — with Lee Tamahori's sense of flair. Someone like Quentin would be magnificent."
We can look back at Pierce Brosnan's Bond run as a series of directionless lacklustre films, made by industrious Commonwealth studio hacks like Michael Apted, Martin Campbell, Roger Spottiswoode and Lee Tamahori. GoldenEye started off promising, directed by Martin Campbell, it's not quite a great Bond film, but Brosnan gave it his all and Judi Dench's M updated the series with a strong female character who posed the tough existential question — in a post-Cold War world, why do we even need James Bond?
"I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms, though lost on me, obviously appealed to that young girl I sent out to evaluate you." — M
"Point taken." — James Bond
I'm not quite sure any of Pierce Brosnan's Bond films adequately answered that question —Why do we need James Bond? But, seeing him gleefully driving a tank, burning around St. Petersburg, destroying everything in front of him, and then straightening his tie, was worth the price of admission. Best of all, the GoldenEye 007 video game for N64 was fantastic.
But, aside from one scene in Tomorrow Never Dies, where Brosnan's Bond waits for a killer in his hotel room, sits in the dark, his black bow tie undone, his Walther P99 silenced by his side as he does shots of straight vodka (an updated take on a scene from Dr. No) there wasn't much, if any character development in his series. What we got was a Bond that didn't grow, and Pierce Brosnan had the misfortune to utter probably the worst Bond dialogue of all time (written by the duo Neil Purvis and Robert Wade) after having sex with Denise Richard's not so believable rocket scientist Christmas Jones in The World In Not Enough, he suavely says "I thought Christmas only comes once a year.”
Foo yuck.
By the time Die Another Day rolled into cinemas in November 2002, Brosnan's era was finished, the producers and writers were so bereft of ideas that Purvis and Wade apparently worked two months on trying to make a Halle Berry Jinx Johnson spinoff. The Bourne films were taking off and cartoon violence and women we suddenly a thing of the past.
Brosnan was a great James Bond. He just wasn't in any great James Bond movies. This was the role he waited all his life for, famously being cast as Bond in 1987 after the cancellation of Remington Steele, only to have the publicity of becoming Bond revive the dead series, and then his contract wouldn't let him leave, so they gave it to Timothy Dalton. Not to mention Brosnan's late wife Cassandra Harris, was a Bond girl in For Your Eyes Only. His best role was his first, Goldeneye. All the rest are all middling Bond films, serviceable action films, if best. I can’t imagine anyone other than John Gruber rewatching any of them.
So, the idea of a Quentin Tarantino James Bond film, and a classic adaptation of an unfilmed James Bond novel, with perhaps the most brutal torture scene of all time — with Pierce Brosnan, set in the 1960s — in black and white, sounded too good of an idea — a Bond fan's, and a cineastes wet dream.
But then this happened:
Goodbye, Mr. Bond.
In November 2004, The New York Times ran a Q & A with Brosnan:
After four very successful movies, it seems you are no longer Bond. What happened?
I went to them and asked about making "Casino Royale," which is the first Ian Fleming book. I had hooked up with Quentin Tarantino, who wanted to direct the movie. On the fifth apple martini one evening, he mentioned "Casino Royale," which is the blueprint for the psyche of Bond, and I took that idea to the Broccoli family, who produce the Bond movies. They have a way of doing the films, and they are not open to discussion — they threw my idea out the window.
But they still wanted you to make a fifth film?
Initially. And I said I would. But then in the middle of negotiations, they changed their minds. They never offered a sound reason. I was shocked. They said they wanted to go in a new direction. But they've probably done me a great favour. I can now concentrate on other roles.
Tarantino's and Brosnan's dream officially ended on the morning of 14 October 2005 as a Royal Marine speedboat delivered Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson, Martin Campbell and Daniel Craig, who'd was previously known only from Layer Cake, and Road To Perdition up the Thames. He was steely blue-eyed, blonde, shaggy and scrawny.
They announced Bond's next film: "Casino Royale will have all the action, suspense and espionage that our audiences have come to expect from us but nevertheless takes the franchise in a new and exciting direction."
Fan derision was almost immediate. Offensive, knee jerk reaction “Craig Is Not Bond” websites popped up, deriding his look with ad hominem attacks and calling for a boycott of Casino Royale. Daniel Craig proved his detractors wrong, bulking up for the role — appearing very reminiscent of the hard, masculine look of Sean Connery, and creating the first compelling James Bond. Craig's Bond, as M says in Casino Royale (the movie, not the novel) is "a blunt instrument." That line of dialogue came from a memo by Ian Fleming on his vision of James Bond.
Next to Skyfall, Casino Royale is Craig's best Bond film, and it completely revitalized the aging series. It grossed $167 million, and sits at an 8/10 on IMDb and a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's exactly what the Bond franchise needed and it's grittiness was on par with the successful Jason Bourne series. Martin Campbell from GoldenEye was brought back to direct, and he delivered a well crafted and modern Bond origin film with realistic, brutal violence, and well written female characters in Eva Green's Vesper Lynd, and a reprise of M by Judi Dench. Mads Mikkelsen's torturing Le Chiffre is one of the all-time great Bond villains. It also has real character development, last seen on screen portrayed by George Lazenby in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Casino Royale isn't much of an accurate adaptation of the novel, but then again, the novel was written in 1953, and includes references to the Marshall Plan. Up until they arrive at the Hôtel Splendide in Montenegro over an hour into the movie (46 pages in the screenplay), there is very little that resembles the novel, and even the setting in Montenegro has been changed from the fictional French town Royale-les-Eaux.
Other changes were more consequential: Bond never kills anyone in the novel as his two Double-O kills came in the past two years. In the film version he kills eleven. Bond is a chain smoker; in the first chapter he lights his seventeenth cigarette of the day. The novel––he plays baccarat, the film––Texas Hold 'Em poker, although this was a reasonable change as nobody knows how the hell to play chemin-de-fer baccarat (Suivi! Bancos!) and Texas Hold 'Em is the most popular gambling game in the world.
In the novel, two Bulgarian Communists accidentally blow up each other while trying to kill Bond with camera bombs; in the film, there is a convoluted plot about Ugandan freedom fighters, a Madagascan bomber, and the whole Bahamas/Miami subplot that is just pointless plot exercise to get Bond to the Casino Royale in Montenegro where he was at on the opening page of the novel.
Where is SMERSH? What are there no Soviet spies in 2006? Where is his Bentley and Beretta!? Instead we get an Aston-Martin and a Walther P99?! Why?
Because between Casino Royale the novel, and Casino Royale the movie, Bond had over 50 years of history, which Skyfall nicely reminded us as arrived during the 50th anniversary of the Bond films.
Some of the changes made in the adaptation from novel to film do affect Bond's character. Bond is a stress drinker; in the film he drinks to relax. Daniel's Craig's Bond appears to be a snob who has to be taught to have good taste by Vesper. Fleming's Bond is a pathological planner, getting every detail right in advance. The torture scene, while close to the novel, does not have any snappy dialogue from Bond and he is broken, not only physically, but psychologically by Le Chiffre (his testicles beaten by a three-foot long cane carpet-beater instead of a knotted rope. And the SMERSH agent who kills Le Chiffre carves a Sha, an inverted M for the Cyrillic Špion (Russian for "spy") into his left hand.
Vesper's suicide in the book is by pills, not drowning, but then again, the film needed a big Hollywood third act.
The first draft was written by Purvis and Wade again with a second set of revisions by the then red hot Canadian writer-director (and ex-Scientologist) Paul Haggis.
In 2005 an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in 2005, Haggis said "It's going to be good. We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28: no Q, no gadgets."
Craig was 37 at the start of production.
I also wonder how many of those first 46 pages were mostly all Purvis and Wade. Haggis was tasked to make the film darker, and he acknowledges he also wrote the action packed third act in Venice.
In an interview with the Guardian's Marc Lawson:
They came to me [Bond Producers] and I said: "I think the biggest problem with the script is that you don't have an act three. Would you like one?" And they said yes …"
So that's Venice?
Yeah, and the draft that was there was very faithful to the book. And there was a confession. So in the original draft the character confessed and killed herself. And then she sent Bond to chase after the villains. And Bond chased the villains into the house. And I don't know why but I thought that Vesper had to be in the sinking house and Bond has to want to kill her and then try and save her and she has to kill herself.
So that's Venice. The big Hollywood third act.
The novel ends with Bond finding Vesper's body in the sea-side. I also kinda wonder, as much as I despise Purvis and Wade, if their ending was more faithful to the book and Haggis felt that he had to expand it because it felt boring.
Consider the original Casino Royale ending:
Fleming: "This is 007 speaking. This is an open line. It's an emergency. Can you hear me? Pass this on at once. 3030 was a double, working for Redland."
"Yes, dammit, I said 'was.' The bitch is dead now."
Those are the last lines of the novel. The bitch is dead now.
Haggis et al : "Why should I need more time? The job is done. The bitch is dead."
Then a long monologue from M, "Did you ever ask yourself why you weren't killed in that basement?” etc. etc., then Bond on a yacht picks up Vesper's Sony Ericsson, 'cell phone, hits a button, checks the address book … and understand why she left the phone, and is overcome by emotion.'
Bond then travels to some Medieval Villa, calls Mr. White, shoots him, and then says "The name is Bond, James Bond."
And then as the CAMERA screams up to the heavens WE HEAR, for the FIRST TIME, the guitar strains of the FAMOUS BOND THEME, CUT TO BLACK, CREDITS ROLL.
-The End -
Go ahead, read the Casino Royale script.
Somehow I think Tarantino's version would of been a lot closer to:
"The bitch is dead now."
-The End -
But in gorgeous grainy black and white.
I won't discuss Quantum of Solace, because it's the extended cut of Casino Royale, although next to Diamonds Are Forever, the first real James Bond sequel.
Skyfall brought more satisfying emotional character development, the biggest box office ever, M died, and we know a bit about Bond's past and we're back to a mature James Bond.
Now Bond is 47. Q and Gadgets are back.
This time the talented John Logan (Any Given Sunday, Gladiator, The Aviator, Hugo) is the main writer, with Purvis and Wade still on board and yet another writer Jez Butterworth (Black Mass, Edge of Tomorrow) getting a credit for a polish.
SPECTRE, the 24th Bond, poses the question once again–– why do we even need James Bond anymore? Sure, I guess, but the end of SPECTRE was also a mildly satisfying conclusion for Daniel Craig's James, and the Bond franchise probably could end here if it wanted to.
Craig's Bond really has had the most compelling character arc of any Bond. He goes from "blunt instrument' to a hollowed out killer with a past who finds peace in Léa Seydoux's Madeleine Swann.
So, where does Bond go from here?
Why doesn't James Bond just bloody quit, and marry the girl?
If this is truly Daniel Craig's last film, then I think Bond is getting the short end of the stick.
James Bond doesn't really have peace with himself. He is a hollowed out, cold blooded killer, who lost every woman he fell in love with, and treats the rest as the distrustful misogynist that he is. James Bond is incomplete without the events in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and since Craig's Bond is a reboot, he's the only James Bond actor who hasn't had the death of his beloved wife in his narrative multiverse.
So lets talk a little about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Up until Casino Royale, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was the only film that had any emotional resonance. From Russia With Love may be my favourite Bond, but On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the best film because the end is so harrowing, bleak and meaningful. James Bond falls in love, gets married, and for once a stray bullet from a villain actually hits a target and kills his wife Tracy, only moments after being married to her.
It's a truly sad ending. It hits you in the gut. George Lazenby pulls it off beautifully and you really do feel for him. That’s why it’s the best Bond film. Where else in Bond, up to Casino Royale did you ever feel any emotion other than elation for James Bond? Out of 24 films, only On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Casino Royale have the love interest “The Bond Girl” die at the end. The rest, if not all the James Bond films end with some form of the motif “Oh, James.” (Although, there is one article that tries to explain the end of Spectre, as if Brazil-like, Bond died at the hands of Blofeld and only lived happily-ever-after in the fleeting seconds before brain death. Probably as good of interpretation as any, but ludicrous because the series cinematic grammar doesn’t allow for this filmic delusion. Spectre is a James Bond film, not a Terry Gilliam film. If I spoiled the end for you, or the Blofeld reveal, what’s wrong with you? Spectre came out in November).
Lazenby didn't do any more Bond films because his ego and his agent thought it wasn't a good idea as Bond wasn't in touch with the 1970s. So there is no continuation, just this stand alone oddity in the Bond franchise, even if it is the best Bond, and maybe it is the best because you can't easily compare it to the others.
The thing is, Sean Connery's Bond was supposed to get this onscreen moment, not Lazenby.
After Goldfinger OHMSS was supposed to be next, and Richard Maibaum was working on a script. It was delayed, and Thunderball with its Kevin McLory lawsuit was settled and put into production first. Prints of Thunderball had "James Bond Will Return in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service," until they were cut out.
Except the snow in Switzerland was bad, so Salztman and Broccoli skipped ahead to You Only Live Twice. By then Sean Connery was done with Bond. He was filmed by Japanese paparazzi in a toilet stall, humiliated, and demanded more money. They said no, and they hired George Lazenby, an Australian model who had never acted.
Daniel Craig has stated that he'd "rather slash his wrists" than play Bond again. The thing is, he said similar things before Skyfall — he's just really honest and self deprecating in interviews:
"I've been trying to get out of this from the very moment I got into it" he told Rolling Stone in 2012. But they won't let me go, and I've agreed to do a couple more, but let's see how this one does, because business is business and if the shit goes down, I've got a contract that somebody will happily wipe their ass with."
It's a gruelling process, and working out for months on a strict diet of protein shakes and poached eggs takes its toll.
That's why he should take a break, relax with his family, resign on for another film for millions and then hunker down an do a solid remake of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (I suggest calling it O.H.M.S.S so it's not to be confused with the original).
Because if he does, and this is my entire point really, for once we would get a complete James Bond, with a proper character arc and the only two original novels that are meaningful to the James Bond character filmed with the same actor. And if you’re going to remake this film, do it with a great director.
And despite what Quentin Tarantino has said publicly “No, Casino Royale was the one I wanted to direct, they missed their opportunity.” I can't imagine Mr. Tarantino passing up the chance to film a classic James Bond novel with a remake of On Her Majesty's Secret Service with Daniel Craig as Bond and with Christof Waltz, an actor who has received two Oscars in Tarantino films, playing Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
Why would he want to do it? First, he's a Bond fan. If there is anything clear about Tarantino's pursuit of Casino Royale, it’s that he was dissatisfied with the current Bond films (as he should have been) but rightly saw that Brosnan could be a great Bond, given the material.
It's hard to imagine anyone writing better scenery chewing dialogue between James Bond and Blofeld, or James and Contessa Teresa di Vincenzo. Tarantino is also one of the rare directors who can also write wonderful parts for women. It also has a great electronic score, I'm sure he'd reuse it.
Now, Quentin's never made a full on Bondian action movie, and even his largest films are small when compared to the behemoth that is the James Bond franchise, but the Bond films are a complete kit that comes with its own stunt co-ordinators, second unit, and VFX teams and so that alone should insulate him from some of the stress of a 250+ million dollar monster production. The Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have also now worked with a high calibre director (Sam Mendes) and world class cinematographers in Roger Deakins and Hoyte Van Hoytema. I’m sure Robert Richardson, Quentin’s cinematographer of choice would come with him.
The plot is also fully formed in the novel, so I can't imagine him having any trouble writing his adaptation. But, part of what Tarantino also likes is that 60s feel, and this time he wouldn't be able to make a period piece as it's already been done and the current films are rooted in the here and now, not 1962.
The original OHMSS is also quite long (142 min) and you can easily imagine a Tarantino version with an intermission in it, although I can’t actually ever see this happening. Stephen Soderbergh found the original "too fucking long, the longest Bond film until Casino Royale nearly three decades later," that he actually made his own cut. But Tarantino loves long event films — Inglorious Basterds is 153 minutes, The Hateful Eight roadshow version is 183 minutes.
We'll never get a Quentin Tarantino Casino Royale, but maybe there is a fleeting chance we could get a Tarantino O.H.M.S.S. with Daniel Craig. Maybe I need to make a petition.
That's if Tarantino can get over his bitterness about Bond.
In a 2009 interview with Total Film he said "I never saw Casino Royale because I was so mad at those guys. They should have talked to me about it. They said publicly that Casino Royale was unfilmable, but the minute I said I would do Casino Royale, it's on all the websites and it is the film that people want to see. They should have said thank you.”
You can't really blame him. EON didn't even own the rights to Casino Royale, and the film had lay dormant for years — once even legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht had pounded out three literal adaptions in 1964.
Tarantino had even tried to bid on the rights to Casino Royale when they came up, only to have a Sony led consortium buy MGM which allowed them to start distributing the James Bond films, starting with Casino Royale. Sony held onto the film rights to Casino Royale (acquiring them for Columbia Pictures) as leverage in their failed Kevin McLory Thunderbolt suit, only ceding the rights to James Bond for Spider-Man.
That deal is now finished now that SPECTRE is out, and James Bond's distribution deal is up for auction.
Quentin Tarantino's Casino Royale, would have been a wonderful film. He knew it. Anyone who's seen one of his films knows it would of been good, really bloody good. I don’t know if Quentin still has an urge to do a spy film, it was once rumoured that Len Deighton's Game, Set and Match trilogy was of interest to him. But, if he still wishes he could have made a Bond film, then a remake of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service should be the film. Tarantino has stated that he’s only going to do ten films and then retire, so his legacy may not include a Bond film.
“I think there’s something really vital and exciting about thinking: I only have two movies left. What do you want your last two statements to be? How do you want to wrap up your persona for future generations? I think that’s a really creative way to look at it, and I do like the idea of there being an umbilical cord from Reservoir Dogs to the last movie.” EW December 22, 2015
This is all fantasy anyway on my part that one of those two films would be a Bond film, when it’s likely that at least one of those films is the reputed Kill Bill 3. But, It doesn't sound like Sam Mendes wants to do another Bond as he views Bond's journey as complete (it isn't) and that leaves it open for EON Productions to find another director.
There is also the issue, that SPECTRE very much plays homage to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with the very Piz Gloriaesque Hoffler Klinik in Austria, so visually it's a bit of a repeat, but three of Roger Moore's films also had winter skiing scenes (The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, A View To A Kill) — it's just part of James Bond's iconography.
EON is certainly going to do the whatever the hell they want, and for all I know they have a fully formed story ready to go, but as Pierce Brosnan said a decade ago, someone like Quentin would be magnificent, and Daniel Craig in Quentin Tarantino’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service* would be a perfect end to his James Bond.
Instead we’ll probably just get another reboot of Bond. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as there are lots of great actors names being thrown around (Idris Elba for one), but it would be a gigantic missed opportunity for Daniel Craig’s James Bond to weep for his beloved wife on screen. And it would probably take years to setup again unless you started with this film as the base of the character. Why should George Lazenby be the only actor to do this? It could be the Hamlet of James Bond.
Failing Tarantino, maybe they could coax Steven Soderbergh out of retirement to remake On Her Majesty’s Secret Service — it’s his favourite Bond film.
I’m personally hoping one day we’ll get The Death Of James Bond on screen and a 75-year-old Pierce Brosnan will come back and play him one last time. Bond director aside, the Bond franchise really needs a contemporary remake of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Why not just skip the theatres and re-do each of the classic Ian Fleming books as a series for HBO? I’m willing to write this. I’m dirt cheap.
*EON would never let Quentin have a possessory credit.
