Some 007-Star Wars connections over the years

Poster for the original Star Wars in 1977

Something trending on social media on Friday was whether James Bond actor Daniel Craig appears as a storm trooper in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as reported in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. Some fans say it sounds as if Craig did the role, but at least one entertainment journalist who occasionally reads the blog says it’s not.

Regardless, there are a number of ties between the Star Wars and 007 film series. That’s not a surprise because Star Wars movies are produced at London’s Pinewood Studios, the home base for most 007 films.

What follows are some of the major connections, though it’s not intended as a comprehensive list. To streamline things, this post shortens the Star Wars titles to take out the various chapter numbers.

John Stears: The special effects guru for the early 007 films traded Walther PPKs for light sabers when he was part of the special effects crew for the original 1977 Star Wars film.

Stears shared an Oscar (with John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Grant McCune and Robert Blalack) for special effects for his work on that movie. It was Stears’ second Oscar. He won the special effects Oscar for 1965’s Thunderball.

Irvin Kershner: The American-born director helmed the second Star Wars epic, The Empire Strikes Back, considered by some fans and critics as the best Star Wars film. In that 1980 film, things got complicated when it was revealed Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father.

The director’s next project was 1983’s Never Say Never Again, a Bond film not part of the series produced by Eon Productions. Its main asset was Sean Connery’s final movie as 007. The director had a relationship with the actor, having directed him in 1966’s A Fine Madness.

Alan Hume: Hume photographed three 007 films in the 1980s — For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and A View to a Kill. Between assignments for Bond, he was director of photography of Return of the Jedi. In the summer of 1983, his Bond and Star Wars work could be viewed essentially as the same time when Return and Octopussy were in theaters.

Anthony Waye: He was an assistant director on Star Wars. In the 1980s, he started out doing similar duties on Bond and worked his way up to associate producer (on GoldenEye), line producer (on Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough) and executive producer (Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace).

Julian Glover: The actor was a minor villain in The Empire Strike Backs and the lead villain in For Your Eyes Only.

Alf Joint, Paul Weston (and who knows how many other stunt performers): Joint’s most famous 007 stunt work was in the pre-credits sequence of Goldfinger, but he also did Star Wars movies. Weston did as well and with Bond worked his way up to stunt supervisor in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill.

Christopher Lee: The British actor and relative of Ian Fleming was the title character in 1974’s The Man With The Golden Gun. In 2002 (in Attack of the Clones) and 2005 (Revenge of the Sith), he appears as a villain (though very briefly in the latter film).

Max Von Sydow: The actor played Blofeld in Never Say Never Again and has a small role in The Force Awakens.

Chris Corbould: Part of the special effects crews of numerous Bond films going back to the 1980s, including this year’s SPECTRE. He’s also credited with special effects for The Force Awakens.

 

Octopussy’s 30th: Battle of the Bonds, round 1

Poster with a suggestive tagline.

Thirty years ago, there was the much-hyped “Battle of the Bonds.” Competing 007 movies, the 13th Eon Productions entry with Roger Moore and a non-Eon film with Sean Connery, were supposed to square off in the summer.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. In June 1983, Eon’s Octopussy debuted while Never Say Never Again got pushed back to the fall.

Producer Albert R. Broccoli was taking no chances. He re-signed Moore, 54 at the start of production in the summer of 1982, for the actor’s sixth turn as Bond. It had seemed Moore might have exited the series after 1981’s For Your Eyes Only. Broccoli had considered American James Brolin, and Brolin’s screen tests surfaced at a 1994 007 fan convention in Los Angeles. But with Never Say Never Again, a competing 007 adventure starring Connery, the original screen Bond, the producer opted to stay with Moore.

Also back was composer John Barry, who been away from the world of 007 since 1979’s Moonraker. Octopussy would be the start of three consecutive 007 scoring assignments, with A View To a Kill and The Living Daylights to follow. The three films would prove to be his final 007 work. Barry opted to use The James Bond Theme more that normal in Octopussy’s score, presumably to remind the audience this was the part of the established film series.

Meanwhile, Broccoli kept in place many members of his team from For Your Eyes Only: production designer Peter Lamont, director John Glen, director of photography Alan Hume and associate producer Tom Pevsner. Even in casting the female lead, Broccoli stayed with the familiar, hiring Maud Adams, who had previously been the second female lead in The Man With the Golden Gun.

Behind the cameras, perhaps the main new face was writer George MacDonald Fraser, who penned the early versions of the script. Fraser’s knowledge of India, where much of the story place, would prove important. Richard Maibaum and Broccoli stepson Michael G. Wilson took over to rewrite. The final credit had all three names, with Fraser getting top billing.

As we’ve WRITTEN BEFORE, scenes set in India have more humor than scenes set in East and West Germany. Some times, the humor is over the top (a Tarzan yell during a sequence where Bond is being hunted in India by villain Kamal Khan). At other times, the movie is serious (the death of “sacrificial lamb” Vijay).

In any event, Octopussy’s ticket sales did better in the U.S. ($67.9 million) compared with For Your Eyes Only’s $54.8 million. Worldwide, Octopussy scored slightly less, $187.5 million compared with Eyes’s $195.3 million. For Broccoli & Co., that was enough to ensure the series stayed in production.

Hype about the Battle of the Bonds would gear back up when Never Say Never premiered a few months later. But the veteran producer, 74 years old at the time of Octopussy’s release, had stood his ground. Now, all he could do was sit back and watch what his former star, Sean Connery, who had heavy say over creative matters, would come up with a few months later.

JUNE 2011 POST: OCTOPUSSY, A REAPPRAISAL.

Oscar update III: John Barry leads off “In Memoriam”

John Barry, the 11-time 007 composer who established the musical sound of James Bond movies (and won five Oscars for four non-Bond movies), was the first person included in the “In Memoriam” segment of the Oscars telecast. But there were a number of others included that contributed to 007 and other spy related entertainment.

They included: Alan Hume, director of photography on three Bond movies in the 1980s; Irvin Kershner, director of the 1983 Bond film Never Say Never Again, who is probably best known for directing 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back; Tom Mankiewicz, credited as a screenwriter on three 1970s 007 films and an uncredited writer on two others.

Also included were Robert Culp, the star of television’s I Spy; Anne Francis, the star of television’s Honey West; and Leslie Nielsen, who made a late-career switch to comedy that included a 007 parody, Spy Hard. All three did extensive film work in movies and television.

Alan Hume, director of photography for 007, the Avengers and Star Wars, dies

Alan Hume, director of photography for three James Bond movies, a Star Wars film and some episodes of the original Avengers television series, died July 13 at the age of 85.

The British Society of British Cinematographers has an obituary on its Web site. It reads in part:

A charming gentle man and consummate cinematographer who amassed over 100 credits in his career, his sparkling blue eyes and the warmth behind will be sadly missed. Elected to the BSC in 1964, Alan worked tirelessly for the Society, accumulating 22 years of service on the board; acting as President between 1969-1971.

Hume got his start in the 1940s, according to the BSC obit. In the 1960s, Hume photographed at least 26 episodes of The Avengers, according to his bio on IMDB.com. In the early to mid-1980s, he was director of photography on three consecutive James Bond movies: For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and A View To a Kill. During that period, he also photographed Return of the Jedi, the third Star Wars movie to be released or, officially, the sixth chapter in the Star Wars saga.

Here’s OBITUARY ON THE CINEMA RETRO WEB SITE THAT YOU CAN READ BY CLICKING HERE.

And here’s the original theatrical trailer of For Your Eyes Only: