TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020

 NO TIME TO DIE

THE LONG GOODBYE

FOLLOWING A LENGTHY DELAY, DANIEL CRAIG’S JAMES BOND
SWAN SONG IS ALMOST UPON US. WITH CLASSIFIED ACCESS
TO THE CREATIVE TEAM OF NO TIME TO DIE, TOTAL FILM REVEALS
(00)7 UNTOLD STORIES BEHIND THE MAKING OF BOND’S MOST 
IMPORTANT MISSION TO DATE, HOW CRAIG IS BOWING OUT
ON AN ALL-TIME HIGH AND WHAT COMES NEXT…
WORDSJORDANFARLEY

NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 COVER STORY
1 THE END
No Time To Die has been a long time coming, and
then some. The first major release to pull the
trigger and move out of the way of Covid in
March, Bond 25 has been in a holding pattern ever
since. It was earmarked for a 12 November release
all those months ago – a fast-approaching date
which no longer feels set in stone – and stalwart
producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson
continue to face unprecedented challenges on
an almost daily basis. But they see NTTD as
the perfect film for the present moment.
“The thing that’s really wonderful about this
film is that it celebrates heroism and service,”
Broccoli tells Total Film. “It was always the
intention of the movie that Bond represents
bravery and personal sacrifice. And what better
time to be making a film about that than now?”
A global pandemic may have conspired to
extend Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond by
seven months, but his exit has been on the cards
since day dot of NTTD D – a unique opportunity that
Broccoli and Wilson embraced. “When you look at
how the character’s evolved over these five films
in Daniel’s hands, it did feel like we needed to
complete the cycle with him,” Broccoli nods. But
with the end of Craig’s era imminent, attention
has inevitably turned to the future.

The rumour mill practically flew off its axis last
month with unverified reports that Tom Hardy
would be suiting up as the next 007. But Broccoli
and Wilson strenuously deny anyone has been
cast. “I always say: you can only be in love with
one person at a time,” Broccoli laughs. “Once the
film’s come out, then some time will pass, and
then we’ll have to get on to the business of the
future. But for now, we just cannot think about
anything beyond Daniel.”
With Bond experiencing a particularly fruitful
period under Broccoli and Wilson’s stewardship
of the Craig era, the temptation may be to repeat
the formula. But don’t expect a Craig copycat to
follow. “It will have to be reimagined, in the way
each actor has reimagined the role,” Broccoli
assures. “That’s what is so exciting and fun about
this franchise; the character evolves. Eventually,
when we have to think about it, we’ll find the
right person.”
As for that “right person”, Broccoli and
Wilson are more than prepared to break with 60
years of tradition. “He doesn’t need to be a white
man. Not as far as I’m concerned,” asserts
Broccoli, who hasn’t changed her stance on
casting a woman as Bond, despite speculation
that Lashana Lynch’s Nomi will inherit Bond’s
007 designation in NTTD. “We should create roles
for women, not just turn a man into a woman.”
But if you want the best clues as to the future
of Bond, look no further than No Time To Die,
a film that’s embracing representation and
opportunity more than ever before. That mission
will continue going forward. “These films, we
want them to reflect the world,” says Broccoli.

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 NO TIME TO DIE
2 THE STUNT
“It was really about aiming big,” Craig says,
cheek muscles tugging the corner of his lip
into a nascent smile. “We’ve got the best
team in the world. The amount of creativity…
is just astounding.”
Craig doesn’t say this lightly. Across his
first four films as 007, Bond has parkoured
across a crane, gone mano-a-mano with a
tube train and escaped at least three
collapsing buildings. No Time To Die boasts a
similar commitment to audacity laced with
veracity. But, surprisingly, the film’s
standout stunt was a last-minute addition.
“I was working around the clock in
Scotland on an off-road chase sequence,”
recalls stunt co-ordinator Lee Morrison.
“I got a phone call late at night, and as soon
as I see Daniel’s name ringing me, I was like,
‘Here we go!’”
Craig knew the film’s pre-title chase
sequence in Matera, Italy was missing a
showstopper stunt, and he’d zeroed in on a
bike jump as the solution. “He said, ‘I’ve got
this idea; find me something cool!’” laughs
Morrison, who developed three concept
jumps – the most promising option a 70-foot
leap onto the Piazza del Duomo.

Performed by four-time World Enduro
champion Paul Edmondson on a 450cc
motorcross bike, he had to hit an eight-
metre ramp at 50-60 miles per hour to
successfully scale the 22-metre wall.
“It’s a bit of a dark art,” Morrison explains.
“You’ve got to hit the back brakes and bring
the front end down, because the front wheel
spins and acts as a gyro. You’re doing it
subconsciously. It’s 40 years of riding.”
Forty years… and a tanker full of
Coca-Cola, that is. “I’ve been spraying
Coca-Cola on slippery surfaces for a very
long time,” Morrison laughs, the peculiar
‘WE’VE GOT THE trick providing vital traction on smooth
BEST STUNT TEAM stone. “I spent nearly €60,000 spraying
IN THE WORLD’ Coca-Cola around Matera – Barbara looked
DANIELCRAIG at me as if I’m crazy. And it makes things
look very clean after it washes off!” Talk
about a sweet success.

GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM


3 THE CAR
After driving off into the sunset with
Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) at the end of
Spectre, there was little question that Bond
would be back behind the wheel of the iconic
Aston Martin DB5 in No Time To Die. But as Cary
Joji Fukunaga points out, it’s not exactly the
DB5 Bond fans know and love. “Q rebuilds it in
Spectre but we don’t ever learn what’s there,”
the director teases. “So that’s where we were
able to take some licence.”
Special effects supervisor Chris Corbould
– a legendary Bond veteran going back to The
TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020
Spy Who Loved Me – was the man responsible
for upgrading the Aston. “It was so nice to
see the DB5 back in full combat mode,” says
Corbould. “The first thing was: do we stick
with the traditional Goldfinger gadgets?
Cary was keen to update some of them. So
we went from the machine gun to the little
mini-guns. We built lots of different gadgets,
from drones coming out of the back and
shooting fire as an attack weapon, or an
observation platform. We threw away as
many gadgets as we actually kept.”
Eight DB5s were built for the film – two
‘hero’ cars straight off the assembly line, and six
modified with safety cages, hydraulic brakes and
fire-extinguisher systems. It was then left to
former British rally champion Mark Higgins to
put the DB5 through its paces during a 70mph
chase through the streets of Matera that evolved
“almost right up to” the day of filming. “When
we finished, we had this great big round of
applause from this amphitheatre of people
watching from rooftops, balconies and
windows,” Corbould says. “It was amazing.”
SUBSCRIBEATWWWTOTALFILMCOM/SUBS

‘IT WAS SO
NICE TO SEE
THE DB5
BACK IN FULL
COMBAT MODE’
CHRISCORBOULD
4 THE SUIT
The careful interplay between tradition
and innovation is a constant challenge for
Bond filmmakers, and in no department
is this more keenly felt than costumes.
“You have this responsibility to the
legacy, the visual lore of Bond,” says
costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb.
“But the films have always been such a
definitive visual marker of a time. There’s
an expectation that you’re going to be at
the apex of whatever’s going on in the
world of style. That’s a never-
diminishing challenge.”
No single costume is more important
to Bond than the classic black tux. Sean
Connery and Sir Roger Moore had their
personal tailors provide bespoke cuts,
Italian fashion house Brioni dressed Bond
GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM
NO TIME TO DIE
during the Brosnan era, while Tom Ford
– as with every Craig-era film since
Quantum Of Solace – was designer of
choice on No Time To Die.
Yet style isn’t the only consideration
when shopping for Bond’s suits – scale is

an equally important consideration. “A
lot of people are aware of the multiples
thing,” says Larlarb, “but some people
aren’t aware that one suit on Bond has
33 versions, spread across Daniel’s stunt
double, driving double, a VFX version
of it, and then multiple stages of action
distress. Tom Ford has done it so many
times before they don’t even bat an eyelid
when you ask for tens of these one-off
tuxedos that aren’t available anywhere
else in the world.”
NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM
 COVER STORY
5 THE LOCATION
Bond films are always glamorous,
globetrotting affairs. On No Time To Die,
that meant excursions to Italy, Norway,
Scotland and Bond’s spiritual home,
Jamaica. One key action sequence also
called for a trip to Havana, but for obvious
reasons (some political, some explosive),
NTTD wasn’t able to film in the real Cuba.
Instead a staggeringly detailed, life-sized
recreation of two perpendicular Havana
streets was constructed on an open-air
plot at Pinewood.
“We’ve nicked all the finer bits [of
Havana] and condensed them into one
place,” laughs production designer Mark
Tildesley, who immersed himself in the
work of famous Bond production designer
Ken Adams ahead of NTTD. “You get a bit
of awe and wonder when you arrive.”
It’s the colour that hits you first. In the
Before Times (aka November 2019), Total
TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020
Film was treated to a tour of Tildesley’s
Havana set. Constructed in just seven
weeks – twice as fast as a build of this
size would typically take – the scale
and fidelity of the dozen or so two-
storey Spanish colonial-style buildings
would be overwhelming enough even
if it weren’t for the fact that they’re
all eye-poppingly bright. But there’s
an important reason for this heightened
colour palette: the scene will be set
at night.
“We’ve been working really closely
with Linus [Sandgren], the DoP,” Tildesley
explains. “In order for us to see Cuba
in that striking colour range they have,
we had to up our colour percentage by 10
per cent, so if you go in the daytime it’s
mildly shocking! But when you see it lit
at night it settles down into something
quite beautiful.”

7 THE SONG
If you reacted to the news that singer/
songwriter Billie Eilish would be
performing No Time To Die’s title track
with “Billie who?” first: you’re missing
out on some great music, and second:
you’re not the only one. “What I was
mostly involved with was trying to get
[Billie] in front of Barbara and Daniel, who
were less aware of Billie’s growing
popularity,” Fukunaga chuckles. “I was
really vying for them as a choice that
wouldn’t be so predictable.”
Eilish may have only been five years
old at the start of Craig’s tenure (oh God,
we’re old), but Eilish’s brother and
co-writer Finneas O’Connell is a lifelong
NO TIME TO DIE
Bond fan and is “very well versed in the
John Barry of it all”. Neither Fukunaga
nor composer Hans Zimmer had any
significant influence on Eilish’s moody
melody, or the basic structure of the
song. Only an idea of the film’s themes
were provided.
“I thought it was chilling when I first
heard it,” recalls Fukunaga. “After that, it
was really just trying to shape it to have
the bigger scale of a Bond song. But really,
all the bones were already there. Hans
himself said, ‘I don’t have to do a whole
lot, this song is fantastic.’”
NO TIME TO DIE OPENS ON 2 APRIL 2021.

6 THE GADGET
Even during the more grounded Craig
era, Q Division’s gadgets have been
a constant presence, and NTTD has
a doozy – a transforming subaquatic
glider. The love child of You Only Live
Twice’s autogyro Little Nellie, and The

Spy Who Loved Me’s Lotus Esprit Wet
Nellie, NTTD’s glider has folding wings,
which means it can be transported via
cargo plane and transform into a
submarine when it hits water.
“Bond uses that to get to… a certain
location,” says Fukunaga, catching
himself just before dropping a spoiler
grenade in TF’s lap. “Jumping out of
a plane has been done a lot. It was just
trying to find something fun.”
Due to the obvious danger of
dropping a couple of movie stars out of
a cargo plane, the glider has been
brought to the screen with visual
effects, primarily. But a full-scale
cockpit was constructed for Craig and
Lashana Lynch to sit in as Chris
Corbould’s team yanked them out of
the launch bay. “I would have liked to
have dropped them out of a real plane,”
Fukunaga smiles. “Time permitting on
the next one, we will.”
Though (currently) non-existent,
Fukunaga did draw from real-world
designs for the glider. “We didn’t want
it to look too much like a drone, but we
wanted it to be stealthy, lightweight
and reusable,” he explains. “I also had
a whole logic for how the underwater
engine worked. My idea was, it charges
up through the air, and when it hits the
water, it uses up all that stored-up
kinetic energy for the screw device
underwater.” Q has outdone himself.

GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 IN PICTURES



BOND PRODUCERS
BARBARA BROCCOLI
AND MICHAEL G. WILSON
CRACK OPEN A TOP-
SECRET DOSSIER AND
TALK TF THROUGH
SOME RARE AND UNSEEN
PICTURES SPANNING THE
ENTIRE FRANCHISE…
WORDSJORDANFARLEY

TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020

JAMES BOND



NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 IN PICTURES
1



3
S ON Y

TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020 SUBSCRIBEATWWWTOTALFILMCOM/SUBS

 2
JAMES BOND
1962-197 1

SEAN CONNERY
Dr No, From Russia With Love,
Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only
Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever

1 ANDRESSED TO KILL
JAMAICA, 1962
The defining image of Bond’s early years isn’t
007 in a tux, or even the gadget-packed DB5
– no, it’s Dr. No’s shell diver Honey Ryder (Swiss
actress Ursula Andress) in a striking white-
belted bikini. “She started the whole idea of the
Bond woman,” producer Michael G. Wilson
says. “She represented a new type of femme
fatale – someone who was powerful and athletic
and could take care of herself,” adds fellow
producer and Bond custodian Barbara Broccoli.
“She set this incredible standard.”

2 SHAW THING
PINEWOOD STUDIOS, UK, 1963
It’s a common belief that Bourne changed
Bond, but Broccoli maintains the true
influence on the Craig era can be found in

007’s own history. “We use From Russia With
Love as a template all the time.” Nowhere
is this better seen than during Bond’s lethal
encounter with Robert Shaw’s Red Grant.
“It’s not just the fighting – the whole
build-up is so professional,” Wilson says.
“It made it realistic and very brutal.”
4
3 GIRLS GALORE
RAF NORTHOLT AERODROME, UK, 1964
Another seminal Connery-era Bond woman,
Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) and her
Flying Circus are tasked with dispersing
Delta 9 nerve gas over Fort Knox by Auric
Goldfinger. “That third film was the one
where the whole cocktail of Bond was really
perfected,” says Broccoli. Wilson, meanwhile,
made his first on-screen appearance in
Goldfinger. “I was one of the soldiers in Fort
Knox, so that was a special moment for me.”

4 WHOA NELLIE
PINEWOOD STUDIOS, JAPAN &
TORREMOLINOS, SPAIN, 1966-7
Scripted by Roald Dahl, You Only Live Twice not
only features an iconic volcanic lair, but also
one of Bond’s most beloved gadgets. “Little
Nellie stands out, but also Maurice Binder’s
main title sequence is just so beautiful,” says
Broccoli, who counts a trip to set in Japan at
six years old among her earliest memories.
“It was just the most exotic, wondrous place...
though I got tonsillitis,” she chuckles. “And
when you were sick, Sean gave you his [trailer]
bed,” Wilson recalls.

GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 IN PICTURES
1

1969

GEORGE LAZENBY
On Her Majesty’s Secret Ser vice

1 LIFE’S A BEACH
GUINCHO BEACH, PORTUGAL, 1969

For a time, George Lazenby’s Bond was

defined more by what he didn’t do
(sequels, for starters) than what he did,
but it’s hard to argue with the results of
knockout one-off On Her Majesty’s Secret
Service. As Wilson points out: “A lot of
people think it’s the best Bond film as
a story. It’s a very complex film in terms
of all the locations, and what Bond goes
through.” Lazenby – a model with no
acting experience – was invited to
audition by Cubby Broccoli (seen above
in sunglasses) after he caught a Fry’s
Chocolate Cream advert featuring the
Aussie actor. “For someone who was
not really a trained actor, he does
a remarkable job,” Broccoli says.
GE T T Y, S ON Y

“Particularly that last scene. I mean,

it’s very, very moving.”

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DIANA RIGG
2 0 J U LY 193 8 – 10 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 0
It takes a special lady to entrance James Bond,
let alone whisk him down the aisle. And Harry
Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli certainly found one
when they cast Diana Rigg as 007’s bride Tracy
Di Vincenzo in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, a role
they’d originally earmarked for Brigitte Bardot and
Catherine Deneuve. Rigg would later say she was
only hired to guide George Lazenby through his
first starring role and to give Peter Hunt’s film
“gravitas”. Before being felled by Irma Bunt’s
bullet, though, she also gave it humour, grace and
sophistication – not least in the scene where she
flatters Blofeld with poetry in a soon-to-be-
decimated Piz Gloria.
Such glamorous locales were a far cry from
the Doncaster that Enid Diana Rigg was born in
back in 1938, or the India where she spent her
formative years. Yet the latter did help mould the
formidably fearless character which took her first
to the stages of the Royal Shakespeare Company,
and from there to the nation’s TV screens as
Emma Peel in The Avengers. With her leather
catsuit and mastery of martial arts, she was the
equal of any outlandish adversary that came her
way. Yet she was also a match for the show’s
producers, demanding an immediate pay rise
when she found out she was getting less than
one of the programme’s cameramen.
Rigg’s first love was always the stage, but
that did not prevent her making eye-catching
appearances in such films as Theatre Of Blood,
The Great Muppet Caper and Evil Under The Sun.
In later years, her finest hour – beyond playing
herself in Extras – was her role as Olenna Tyrell
in Game Of Thrones, the waspish matriarch whose
acerbic quips (“Get some rest, dear, you look
appalling!”) saw her justly dubbed the “famous
tart-tongued Queen of Thorns.” NS

“Diana Rigg was just so exquisite in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,

and certainly earned her title as Mrs. James Bond. She’s a totally captivating,
beautiful, extraordinary woman, and a magnificent actress. It’s very sad that
she’s left us, but she certainly will be remembered for many things,
and I think, also, obviously, for being Tracy in this film.”
BARBARABROCCOLI

NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 IN PICTURES
1

MICHAEL
LONSDALE
24 MAY 193 1 –
21 S EPTEM B ER
2 02 0
“Look after Mr. Bond.
See that some harm
comes to him.” If they
gave out prizes for
silkily sinister urbanity,
Hugo Drax would rule
the roost as surely as
his space station
reigned over the
heavens. Yet Moonraker
was only one highlight

of many in the career
of actor Michael
Lonsdale, whose
200-plus credits
included such rousing
classics as The Day Of 2
The Jackal, Of Gods And
Men and Steven
Spielberg’s Munich.
Born in Paris and raised
in London, the bilingual
Lonsdale started out
with ambitions to be a
painter but was soon
drawn into acting. Yet it
was not until Jeanne
Moreau murdered him
in The Bride Wore Black
that his career gathered
pace, eventually giving
him enough clout to be
deemed a worthy
opponent to 007 as
Moonraker’s big bad.
Supporting roles in The
Name Of The Rose and
The Remains Of The Day
endeared him further
to English speakers, but
it was in his native
France that he
remained most active.
His final film, a short,
GE T T Y, S ON Y

cast him as legendary

artist Degas. NS

TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020

 JAMES BOND
197 3 -198 5
3

ROGER MOORE
Live And Let Die, The Man With The
Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved
Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only,
Octopussy, A View To A Kill

1 GIMME MOORE
JAMAICA, 1972
Hot off TV shows The Saint and The Persuaders!
(and a little-seen cameo as Bond in comedy series
Mainly Millicent), Roger Moore was the perfect
choice to succeed Sean Connery in blaxploitation-
era Bond pic Live And Let Die, bringing a wink and
a wry smile to the role over his seven-film run.
“We had a very opulent Roger Moore era, where
the conspicuous consumption of the world bled
into the films,” Broccoli says.

2 UP AND OVER
BANGKOK, THAILAND, 1974
The Moore era also features several of the series’
seminal stunts – starting with The Man With The
Golden Gun’s Astro Spiral jump, in which an AMC

Hornet X driven by Loren ‘Bumps’ Willert, twists
270 degrees in mid-air. “By the way, that was the
first computerised stunt,” Wilson points out,
referring to the fact it was the first automotive
stunt to be fully modelled by computer. “They had
4 it all worked out, and they did it the first time!”

3 ESPRIT DE CORPS
SARDINIA, ITALY, 1976
Arguably the second most iconic Bond vehicle
behind the Aston Martin DB5, Wet Nellie – The
Spy Who Loved Me’s submersible Lotus Esprit –
was realised using multiple ‘shells’ for each phase
of the transformation. “A lot of that was done
underwater in the Bahamas, and then Sardinia,”
Wilson says. “It was the first film Cubby did
without Harry [Saltzman],” Broccoli adds. “And it
was the film that required the building of the 007
Stage at Pinewood to house nuclear submarines.
So a lot happened.”

4 COO-ER
ST MARK’S SQUARE, VENICE, ITALY, 1978
Wet Nellie isn’t the only amphibious vessel
Moore’s Bond utilised – in Moonraker he evades
the henchman of Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale,
see p42) in a road-worthy gondola… much to the
surprise of Venice’s pigeon population. “John
Glen has this thing – he loves pigeons,” Broccoli
laughs. A future director of five Bond movies,
Glen was the editor and second unit director on
Moonraker. “There’s always a startled pigeon
tucked away somewhere in a John Glen film!”

GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 IN PICTURES

1987-1989

TIMOTHY DALTON
The Living Daylights, Licence To Kill

1 BY THE BOOK
GIBRALTAR, 1986
After the eyebrow-raising antics of Roger Moore,
Timothy Dalton brought Bond back to basics. “He
definitely wanted to revert it back to the Fleming
books,” says Wilson. “We took this Fleming
short story, ‘The Living Daylights’, as a jumping
off point.” For stuntman Simon Crane – seen
here doubling for Bond on top of a speeding Land
Rover – it wasn’t about jumping off, but holding
on for dear life.

2 CELLO TAXI
CARINTHIA, AUSTRIA, 1986
The Dalton duology may have plumbed darker
depths than ever before, but ‘fun’ was far from
a dirty word, as Bond and Kara’s (Maryam d’Abo)

getaway on a makeshift cello case sled proves.
“Tim’s feelings about Bond were, ‘He’s a cold,
dark, killer assassin.’ But Bond’s also a romantic,
and when he did fall, he would get swept along
in this adventure with a lady,” Broccoli says.
“They’re on a romantic adventure in the middle
of all the danger.”

3 TAKING FLIGHT
FLORIDA, USA, 1988
Long before Bane’s mid-air heist in The Dark
Knight Rises, Bond pulled off the ultimate
sky-high hijacking, by hooking a cable around
the tail of drug lord Franz Sanchez’s plane in
Licence To Kill. “That’s B.J. Worth and Jake
Lombard, they did all that stunt work,” Wilson 1
says. Broccoli adds: “We shot in Key West,
Florida, down by the Hemingway House. It was a
tremendous location. The wonderful Desmond
Llewelyn came out on location with us.”

4 HOUSE RULES
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO, 1988
After his licence to kill is revoked, Bond travels
to the Republic of Isthmus – a fictional banana
republic modelled on Panama – to infiltrate
Sanchez’s Cartel. “In the ’80s you had the war on
drugs and the AIDS crisis and austerity, so it
made sense that Timothy was interested in
getting to the heart of the character,” Broccoli
says. “He made a real impression, and paved the
way for Daniel [Craig] to later come in with a
much darker Bond.”

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 JAMES BOND

2 4
GE T T Y, S ON Y

GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 IN PICTURES
1
19 95 -2 0 02
PIERCE BROSNAN
GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day
1. GOLD STANDARD
PUERTO RICO, 1995
Following a six-year hiatus, Bond
returned to a very different world in
GoldenEye. “The Berlin Wall had come
down,” Broccoli points out. “The press
were saying, ‘Is Bond still relevant?’
Our take was: now that the Soviet
Union is broken up, the world is more
dangerous than ever. And as it turned
out, yeah – that’s pretty accurate!” As
for Brosnan: “He really got off on the
right foot,” says Wilson. “It was
probably his best film.”
TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020
2 BANGKOK DANGEROUS
BANGKOK, THAILAND &
FROGMORE STUDIOS, UK, 1997
During a death-defying escape from
media mogul Elliot Carver’s Ho Chi Minh
City HQ, Bond and Wai Lin (Michelle
Yeoh) rappel down a banner 44 stories
in the sky during Tomorrow Never Dies.
“It was really them! They were on a
descender rig,” Broccoli says. But not
everything went as smoothly: “We were
supposed to shoot in Vietnam, and they
refused our permits at the last minute.
We ended up in Thailand.”
3 CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES
PINEWOOD STUDIOS, UK, 1999
Shooting permits proved similarly
problematic on follow-up, The World
Is Not Enough. “We had to pull out of
Turkey, again at the last minute, due
to safety concerns. It was a challenging
film,” Wilson remembers. Brosnan’s
Bond was joined by Denise Richards’
sultry nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas
Jones. “The name is a very controversial
thing,” Broccoli laughs. “That was
[writers] Rob [Wade] and Neal [Purvis],
I think.”
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 JAMES BOND
2

4 SEA LEGS
LA CALETA, CÁDIZ, SPAIN, 2002
As the 40th-anniversary Bond movie,
Die Another Day features numerous
loving callbacks to the series’ illustrious
history, including Halle Berry’s cheeky
reprise of Ursula Andress’ iconic
entrance in Dr. No. But looks can be
deceiving. “It was October or November;
it was freezing. The crew were in arctic
gear, they looked like they were skiing!”
Wilson laughs. “Halle did several takes.
Not a peep out of her. She was a
S ON Y

remarkable professional,” Broccoli adds.

GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 IN PICTURES
1

2
GE T T Y, S ON Y

TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020

 JAMES BOND
2 0 0 6 -2 02 0
3

DANIEL CRAIG
Casino Royale, Quantum Of
Solace, Skyfall, Spectre,
No Time To Die

1 HEALING WATERS
CZECHIA & PINEWOOD STUDIOS,
UK, 2006
The defining moment for Daniel Craig’s
fresh-faced 007 in Casino Royale proved
Bond was no longer a blunt instrument.
“In the script, it was written that Vesper
was taking her dress off, which was
covered in blood,” Broccoli recalls. “And it
was Daniel who said, ‘No, let’s both just be
in our clothes.’ And it worked beautifully.
The whole scene is a testament to Daniel,
and his ability to play the vulnerability.”

2 COMING OF RAGE
LAKE GARDA, ITALY, 2008
Picking up immediately after the climax of
Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace’s fast and
furious pre-title chase sequence features

the returning Aston Martin DBS V12, and
took four weeks to shoot. “This is [second
unit director] Dan Bradley at his best,” says
an effusive Wilson. “It’s an intense film,
and a huge contrast from Casino,” adds
4 Broccoli. “It’s totally driven by revenge.”

3 SILVA LINING
PINEWOOD STUDIOS, UK, 2012
The Craig era’s most enigmatic villain (to
date), Javier Bardem’s Raoul Silva is a
cracked-mirror reflection of Bond, and
brought deeply personal stakes – not to
mention a homoerotic subtext – to Skyfall.
“He was the one we wanted from the very
beginning,” Broccoli recalls. “Javier played
it in a semi-camp but terribly dangerous
way,” Wilson adds. “He was so perfectly
tuned.”

4 LONG SHOT
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO & PINEWOOD
STUDIOS, UK, 2015
Though not a true ‘oner’ (six shots were
seamlessly stitched together) Spectre’s Day
Of The Dead sequence – featuring 1,500
extras – is a technical tour de force. “We
got tremendous cooperation from the
Mexican government, who shut down
Zócalo Square, which is like shutting down
Piccadilly Circus,” Broccoli laughs. “They
didn’t have a [Day Of The Dead] parade
before, so we sort of created it!”

GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM

 A NEW JAMES BOND, A NEW CINEMATIC
LANDSCAPE AND A WHOLE NEW WORLD AFTER
THE END OF THE COLD WAR. AS GOLDENEYE
TURNS 25, DIRECTOR MARTIN CAMPBELL TELLS
TF WHY IT WAS A HUGE…



think there’s always the question when you do a Bond film of,
‘What hasn’t been done, when everything has been done?’”
muses director Martin Campbell a quarter of a century after
he made viewers’ jaws plunge in symmetry with James Bond
as the MI6 superspy dived 720ft off the Contra Dam in
Switzerland. “What is the thing that makes everybody go,
‘Oh my God?’ If you go back over the Bond films, there are
some terrific opening sequences. And ours was him jumping
off the dam, which was, by the way, not digital. We did it for real.
The genius of that dam is, it’s straight down. A lot of dams float
outwards in which case the stuntman [Wayne Michaels] would kill
himself by hitting it. It’s one of the few dams that is pretty much
vertical. And I said, ‘Well, why not? Let’s do this’. So we did.”
Back in November 1995, when GoldenEye opened, it was essential
to make viewers sit up and fast – and not just because Bond now had
to make an impact in the age of the CGI blockbuster, after Terminator
2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park had changed the cinematic
landscape. The 17th movie in the Bond series, GoldenEye arrived
after a six-year hiatus during which much had changed.

TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2020


 MAKING OF
For starters, Timothy Dalton had officially retired from the role in
April 1994, meaning there was a new Bond in the suave form of
Pierce Brosnan. There was also a first female M, with Judi Dench
replacing Robert Brown, and a new Miss Moneypenny as
Samantha Bond stepped into Caroline Bliss’ shoes. Behind the
camera, meanwhile, legendary producer Albert R. Broccoli was in
deteriorating health, and therefore eased into a consulting
producer role, credited as ‘presenter’. His daughter, the producer
Barbara Broccoli, and Bond producer and screenwriter Michael G.
Wilson took on the lead roles in the production.
But all of the above changes were relatively small fry. Other
ruptions had been far more seismic, with legal disputes raging
between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the parent company of the
series’ distributor United Artists, and Albert Broccoli’s Danjaq,
owners of the Bond film rights. The very existence of a Bond film
after various suits and countersuits seemed like a miracle; and
yet many were asking if 007 was even relevant anymore given
the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early ’90s.
If all of that sounds like a thumping headache, it actually
brought a sense of equilibrium to Campbell. “I didn’t really feel
any pressure,” chuckles the New Zealand filmmaker down the
phone from his home in California. “I didn’t feel any pressure
about, ‘Oh, this is Bond, so therefore I really have to deliver, or I’ll
have my throat cut’. There was a big gap since the previous
Bonds, and I just thought Bond had lost a little bit of its lustre.”
THE WRITE STUFF
The only pressure that Campbell did feel was in getting the

script right, perhaps even more so given that GoldenEye was to
be the first Bond movie that wasn’t based upon story elements
by Ian Fleming. The title, however, is an affectionate nod –
Goldeneye was the name of Fleming’s estate on the Oracabessa
bay in Jamaica, which was in turn named after Operation
Goldeneye, formed by Fleming when he was a commander in
the British Naval Intelligence, to monitor developments in
Spain after the Spanish Civil War.
A script, by Michael France, was in place. But when Campbell
took the directing gig, he swiftly employed Jeffrey Caine to
rewrite it. “None of us were bowled over by it,” recalls Campbell
of this second effort, stressing that it was the third writer, Kevin
Wade, who “broke the back of the whole thing… putting all the
architecture in place for what the movie became.” But there was
a problem: the production only had Wade for four weeks, and the
script wasn’t completed when he left. Enter fourth scribe Bruce
Feirstein. “Bruce came in and did a whole sweep,” explains
GoldenEye’s plot sees Bond fight to prevent ex-MI6 agent Alec
Trevelyan (Sean Bean), thought dead but actually gone rogue,
from using the titular satellite weapon to devastate London – all
part of Trevelyan’s plan to instigate a global meltdown. So far, so
classic Bond. But GoldenEye’s genius was in backdropping the
story to reflect the real-world reconfiguration of the political
landscape: GoldenEye is a Soviet-era satellite, and Russia plays a
huge part in the events that follow.
“Yeah, we were sort of updating it, because times had
changed,” says Campbell. “The very first thing we did was the
female M, because, at the time, the head of the real MI5 was a
woman, Stella Rimington. That’s why we cast Judi Dench, and
also put in that scene where Bond and M spar with one another,
and she calls him a ‘sexist, misogynist dinosaur’.” He chuckles.
“With Onatopp [a former Soviet fighter pilot, now assassin, played by
Famke Janssen], we wanted to make her really strong. And to have
the absurd thing of killing people with her thighs! Famke, she
really went for it. And I remember that scene where she’s
machine-gunned the whole of the control room, and she’s
having an orgasm over it. That character was so irresistible! She’s
‘I DIDN’T FEEL ANY PRESSURE
ABOUT, “OH, THIS IS BOND, I
HAVE TO DELIVER OR I’LL
HAVE MY THROAT CUT.”’
MARTINCAMPBELL
really tough, and any violence kind of turns her on.”
And what of some of the other changes? Like, first and
foremost, Brosnan as Bond? The Irish actor had previously
been lined up to take ownership of 007’s famous Walther PPK
in 1986, only to be unable to shoot his way out of his Remington
Steele contract. This time he really did get to slip into the tux,
after Dalton, star of The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence To Kill
(1989), declined to sign up for multiple films following that
six-year hiatus.
Campbell neither confirms or denies that Mel Gibson, Hugh
Grant and Liam Neeson all turned down the role, but he does
insist that Brosnan was the obvious selection. “We did see other
people – we went through the process – but really, we knew it TANKSALOT
would be Pierce,” he says. “First of all, he’s a terrific-looking guy. StPetersburg
He’s also a damn good actor. He’s very good at comedy, he’s got providedthesetting
that twinkle in his eye, and he is very good at action and handling forGoldenEye’s
weapons. He’s also a romantic. You know, he’s Irish! So all of brick-smashingtank
Campbell. “He finished the third act, and he added all the those elements combined…” He pauses, chuckles. “He’s a real chasesequencetop
humour. Really, all the character stuff was his.” good-looking fucker, you know?”
REDALERT
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outwithcamera
equipmentforanother
chaseaboveright

DON’TBESLATE
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getsreadyfora
high-speedshot

BOWINGOUT
DesmondLlewellyn
lefthadhistwolast
Bondappearances
oppositeBrosnan
inGoldenEyeand
TomorrowNeverDies

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 GOLDENEYE
And how did Campbell himself get the job? He was, after all,
the first non-English director to keep the British end up by
helming a Bond film. “I did a film in Australia called No Escape [a
1994 action-drama starring Ray Liotta and Lance Henriksen]. Then
one day, I got a call from John Calley, who at the time was head of
MGM, and he asked me to come up to the office. He said, ‘How
would you like to direct a Bond film?’ He’d seen No Escape, and I
guess he must have perhaps recommended me to Barbara and
Michael, who had seen Edge Of Darkness [a 1985 crime-drama mini-
series]. So that’s probably how the connection came.”

SHOOT TO THRILL
With Bond’s regular production base Pinewood Studios booked
out by Arthurian adventure First Knight – starring, in a strange
twist of fate, original Bond Sean Connery – GoldenEye became
the inaugural film to shoot at Leavesden, after the old Rolls
Royce factory had been converted into a state-of-the-art film
studio. GoldenEye would shoot in Russia, Puerto Rico and Monte
Carlo, but much of the action was captured at this Hertfordshire
base – including most of the famous tank chase through the
streets of St. Petersburg.
“The tank chase was thought up by Chris Corbould, the
special effects guy,” says Campbell. “He said, ‘Look, not another
bloody car chase. We’re all sick of those, we’ve seen hundreds of
them.’ So Chris’ suggestion was, ‘Why don’t we have a tank
chase in the middle of St. Petersburg?’ And we thought, ‘Well,
why not? It’s a terrific idea.’ So that’s what we did.”
It was easier said than done, mind. “We sent a second unit to

St. Petersburg and storyboarded the whole thing,” explains
Campbell, who took six weeks to shoot the sequence. “The
second unit also did the stuff around the canal, because we
couldn’t build a canal. And then all the rest of it, I shot at
Leavesden. We did the tank coming through the wall, and going
down the alleys. We built a street, and we intercut that with the
stuff that Ian Sharp, the second unit director, shot in St.
Petersburg. It all cut together pretty well.”
As did the entire movie. Released on 17 November 1995 in the
US and a week later in the UK, GoldenEye received largely glowing
reviews. Roger Ebert, uber-critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, noted
that Brosnan’s Bond was “more sensitive, more vulnerable, more
psychologically complete”, while Variety’s Todd McCarthy wrote
that GoldenEye lent the series “fresh creative and commercial
life”. The film went on to take $352m at the worldwide box office
– the fourth-biggest movie of 1995, and, adjusted for inflation,
the most successful Bond outing since Moonraker in 1979.
For his part, Campbell had done such a terrific job of
reinvigorating the franchise that he was called upon again when
it was time to reboot once more, this time with Daniel Craig in
Casino Royale (“We just said, ‘Look, it’s Casino Royale. Why don’t
we go right back to basics, stick with the Fleming book?’”) So
what is his secret to delivering a top-notch 007 movie?
“It’s all about fear, about not fucking up,” he says, bluntly.
“The fact is, you’ve got to do as good a job as you possibly can. I
mean, it absolutely drives me, the idea of getting to the set and
knowing what you’re doing and prepping correctly. Because
you’re spending a hell of a lot of money every day you shoot, and
it’s frightening what a delay actually costs you. So it’s that fear
of, one, getting the job done as efficiently as you can, and two,
just getting it right. When you get to the end, you’re dog-tired
and have to collapse. You’re so exhausted that you almost have to
be carried out on a stretcher.”

GOLDENEYE IS AVAILABLE ON DVD, BD AND DIGITAL.

NOVEMBER 2020 | TOTAL FILM