I hated Spectre and I so wanted to love it. One of my favorite film complaints, though, was a bitch I had over the jittercam in Quantum of Solace. I told my friend, who had not yet seen it, "You'll need to bring a laser pointer to count elbows and knees. Otherwise, you'll be convinced that James Bond just spent the last two two hours kicking his own ass."
Quantum of So-What? was wretched as well as doomed and one reason is it was rushed into production before the 2007 writer's strike crippled film production. Quantum was the proof of how crippling with Daniel Craig himself admitting the film was "fucked" and he ended up doing some of the rewrites himself.
There's no doubt about it, Daniel Craig is one of the best actors to have ever worn the 007 mantle. And as the lead in the "Casino Royale," an entry which in many ways revitalized the franchise and brought it kicking and screaming into the 21st century, Craig gave us the grittiest take we'd seen on the world famous spy yet. That was followed up quickly with "Quantum of Solace" two years later, and to put it kindly, it was a much lesser effort.
Written by director Marc Forster, Michael G. Wilson and finally Paul Haggis, the script literally arrived two hours before the the start of the 2007/2008 Writer's Guild strike. And according to Daniel Craig in a recent interview with Time Out London, that left the production in the lurch as nothing else could be done to fine tune the script.
"On 'Quantum,' we were fucked," he said plainly. "We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, 'Never again,' but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not.’"
Pressed about his involvement on writing scenes for 'Solace,' Craig reveals that there was really no other option, and adds an interesting tidbit that originally, the film wasn't supposed to connect to "Casino Royale" much at all. "Me and the director [Marc Forster] were the ones allowed to do it. The rules were that you couldn’t employ anyone as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes together," he explained. "We were stuffed. We got away with it, but only just. It was never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was, but it ended up being a sequel, starting where the last one finished."
I have little doubt the Q of S fiasco contributed to Craig souring on the role.