James Bond Declassified: GOLDENEYE

Without this one, we might not have any Bond films today

FILE #17: GOLDENEYE

This series will trace the cinema history of James Bond, while also examining Ian Fleming's original novels as source material and examining how faithful (or not) the films have been to his work.

Directed by Martin Campbell
Screenplay by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein
Story by Michael France

CHARACTERS / CAST

James Bond / Pierce Brosnan
Alec Trevelyan / Sean Bean
Natalya Simonova / Izabella Scorupco
Xenia Onnatopp / Famke Janssen
Jack Wade / Joe Don Baker
Valentin Zukovsky / Robbie Coltrane
Dimitri Mishkin / Tchéky Karyo
General Arkady Grigorov Ourumov / Gottfried John
Boris Grishenko / Alan Cumming
Bill Tanner / Michael Kitchen
Caroline / Serena Gordon
Irina / Minnie Driver
Miss Moneypenny / Samantha Bond
Q / Desmond Llewellyn
M / Judi Dench

Six years.

That doesn’t seem that long in the grand scheme of things, but when it came to the James Bond franchise, that was a huge, possibly franchise-ending pause that they took, and it wasn’t a voluntary one. Timothy Dalton was still signed to reprise his role when they started trying to develop scripts for Bond 17, and Cubby Broccoli was still the man in charge. By the time the film made its premiere in 1995, Cubby was all but retired so that Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson could step up and take control of EON and Timothy Dalton was gone, having chosen not to wait around for another film to get off the ground. In many ways, GoldenEye is a reinvention of the franchise, the pivotal film that connects the classic Bond franchise to the modern era. It is safe to say that this film had to work or there would be no more James Bond movies, at least not from the same producers. Action movies were changing and audiences turned out in droves for True Lies in 1994, a film that seemed to thumb its nose at the Bond series directly.

image courtesy of your nightmares

The only new Bond media during this drought was the largely forgotten animated series James Bond Jr., which featured both classic Bond villains like Jaws and Nick Nac, as well as new inventions like Dr. Derange and the organization S.C.U.M. There were two different Timothy Dalton scripts developed during these wilderness years, but at a certain point, a meeting was held, and it was Cubby Broccoli who had to make the difficult decision to move forward with Pierce Brosnan instead of trying once more to make the public accept Dalton in the role. Knowing they were starting with a brand new Bond gave them permission to reinvent as much of the series as they wanted to, and they took full advantage. They started development not sure if the film would get a green light, and the question loomed large for everyone involved: had the world evolved to the point where James Bond no longer had a place in it?

Part of the reinvention involved injecting new creative blood into the series, which meant they had to let Richard Maibaum go. They landed on Martin Campbell as a potential director early in the process. At that point, he was known primarily for his television work, including Edge of Darkness and Reilly, Ace of Spies, as well as bringing in films like No Escape on a limited budget without making it feel like he was limited. Once they had Campbell locked in, they went looking for writers. Michael France was the first writer in on this version of the film, and it was his script for Cliffhanger that got him the job. France basically wrote a series of giant set pieces, leaning into the idea of Bond as an epic action movie that could compete in the ‘90s action movie landscape. France wrote so many set pieces that they ended up cutting several of them and using them in later films in the Brosnan run, making him the initial architect of this part of the franchise. He was off the film after a few drafts, and Jeffrey Caine is the one who then came in and created the actual structure of this film. He is the one who genuinely broke the script, who figured out how to make this film work, and he was on it for several drafts, polishing the characters and trying to figure out just how big (or small) the film needed to be. Kevin Wade came in for a month of work, mainly to punch up characters and relationships, but even as they were getting ready to start shooting, everyone felt like the script wasn’t quite done yet.

MGM was in rough financial shape, basically being fattened up a bit so they could be sold, and the last few James Bond films had been financial failures. They were reluctant to make a major gamble on a franchise that might not work, and they put a firm cap on the film’s budget at just shy of $50 million. The guy they brought in to do the actual production polish work on the film was probably the cheapest hire of the bunch. Bruce Feirstein at that point was largely known as a writer for magazines like Vanity Fair and Spy, and it was Barbara Broccoli who read a few of the scripts he had floating around Hollywood and suggested he might be a good choice for punch-up work. If Caine is the one who cracked the film’s structure, then Feirstein is the one who turned it into a Bond film, finding just the right sense of humor to drizzle over the entire thing. He worked closely with Martin Campbell, who credits him with giving the film the “James Bond touch.” It was Campbell’s idea to make M a woman, and it was Feirstein who wrote her in such a way that Judi Dench jumped at the chance to play the part. That one choice may be Feirstein’s greatest contribution to the series as a whole, considering how long Dench ended up playing the part.

Once they were ready to shoot, they ran into an unexpected problem because film production in the UK was at an all-time high. There was no space for them at Pinewood, and they had to scramble to find a solution that would keep them at home but give them enough studio space to build, say, an entire series of St. Petersburg streets. Eventually, they landed on the Leavesden solution, and the studio space that they built ended up becoming one of the most sought-after studios in the country, the eventual home of the Harry Potter series. Once they had Leavesden locked down and the rest of the cast came together, they were off and running in their attempt to bring 007 into the ‘90s, with Pierce Brosnan finally playing the role that everyone seemed to agree (at least on paper) was the role he was born to play…