Sam Mende’s Gives The Lowdown On Skyfall

Empire recently visited the James Bond Skyfall set and had a chat with director Sam Mendes. Here’s what they passed through the grapevine.

“There’s an enormous amount of pleasure in making a movie where I don’t feel like I’m having to walk a knife-edge between genres or work in shades of grey. Thrills and action are what’s necessary here, and that’s what I intend to supply, as well as a kind of emotional engagement that maybe you haven’t seen before in Bond. You’ve got to give him an arc, not just a mission.” So at least we have even newer depths of Bond to look forward to. If they go any deeper they’ll find out he’s a psychotic, manic-depressive, schizophrenic and then all hell will break lose.

He added that Daniel Craig will be ”physically pushing himself” and that he will take the character “to another level where [he] isn’t just playing things he’s done before, where we felt we were pushing – I have to say this in a way that’s not giving too much away – the personal history of the character.”

However, when asked to give just an teenie weenie bit away Mendes said ”Bond’s mission has taken him to Shanghai first, and in Shanghai he gets a lead that the person he’s looking for is in Macau. He has only one very slender lead and it takes him to a casino on a lake.” Ah that old chestnut.

Not only that, but special effects supervisor Chris Corbould has promised “a big shoot-out sequence in a country home, with incendiaries coming through the windows and a big helicopter 50-cal [gun] strafing through the walls…real in-yer-face stuff.” He better live up to his word or his ass is grass.

As October 26 looms closer we will hopefully have lots more Bond stuff to share so stay tuned.

By Rebecca Wojturska