It is no secret that this time, and coinciding with the farewell of Daniel Craig as a performer, James Bond has seen and desired them to reach theaters. Before No Time to Die was the first Hollywood premiere to be postponed by the coronavirus (initiating a succession of delays that did not come to an end until yesterday , October 1 , premiering next week in the US), 007’s 25th movie had experienced all kinds of problems.
From the departure of Danny Boyle , to constant rewriting of the script, through an injury to Craig that caused the filming to go ahead without him for a few weeks. To Cary FukunagaBoyle’s substitute finale, he doesn’t mind acknowledging the chaos this production has wrought.
In fact, the closer the premiere got and the more it became clear from the critics that No Time to Die is a satisfactory end to Phase 3, the more specific it has been about the problems the shoot experienced. Some mishaps not especially unprecedented for him ( Maniac , on Netflix, had to start recording before the script was finished), which is taken with all philosophy and with a point of humor.
“With Bond we were still writing while we finished shooting. It was even being written in post-production! ”He says. The libretto of No Time to Die gave so many problems that even at one point it was decided to turn to Phoebe Waller-Bridge (arrival ofFleabag ) to try to put some order.
Something that did not prevent Fukunaga from going to the extreme of shooting a scene in No Time to Die without knowing how it would fit exactly into the film, since there was no finished script and sometimes (like Craig’s convalescence) you had to move on yes or no Yes. “The only set that was really ready to go was M’s office at MI6. He knew more or less what he wanted to happen, but nothing in the body of the script had been written yet. Luckily, I was sitting there with some of the best actors in the world, ”he says, referring to a scene starring Ralph Fiennes (the aforementioned M) and Ben Whishaw.
“I wrote a dialogue revealing enough, but vague enough, that I could apply it to a number of things that happened in the third act. It was almost like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book writing stuff like ‘If this happened here and you have to go here, this page might be worth it,’ ” Fukunaga jokes for IndieWire .
An almost desperate job that, miraculously, came to fruition. “When we finally put the film together, everything made sense, somehow everything fell into place. But I will tell you a secret, that I think nothing happens now that the premiere is so close: there are parts that Ralph Fiennes says in the trailer that neither I nor Ralph knew exactly why he was saying ”.
