At first I thought: 'What am I supposed to do with this?'

Marc Forster reacted in much the same way as the rest of us when the producers of the biggest franchise in cinema history told him the name of the new Bond film. Only thing was, he was the one whose job it was to make it.

Hardly the obvious choice to help pick up where Casino Royale left off, Forster initially took some convincing to sign on the dotted line. He came from a more modest, albeit critically-acclaimed, filmmaking background with the likes of Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner on his CV. "Yes, I was surprised," he says, describing during a recent BFI interview the moment the offer came in: "My agent called me and said are you interested in the next Bond film? I said: 'No, not really'."

Despite being very comfortable making lower-budget films ("I could do whatever I wanted, I had final cut, pretty much most of the actors wanted to work with me"), the director set aside his concerns that a blockbuster flop would put him out of work for five years and decided to rise to the challenge of making his first action film.

Climbing onboard the Bond juggernaut with a firm release date but no locked screenplay, the film collected screenwriters, including input from acclaimed writer-director Paul Haggis, whose work on Casino Royale is widely considered to be one of the core reasons for its success. "Paul did a great job on the [Quantum] script and I was very happy but he was also working on his own movies, so what he gave us still needed more development," Forster says diplomatically. Forster and star Daniel Craig added their own input, as did at least one other writer who missed out on a credit, but the director admits the script "was sort of a work in progress" while the crew looked to the various exotic locations to inspire them into creating exciting action set-pieces.

Carrying the promise of even more action after the electrifying free-running opening of Casino Royale, the film starts as it means to go on, hurling audiences into a manic car chase within the opening seconds before launching into a bruising sprint across Sienna's skyline with barely a pause for breath between. "I thought, if I'm making an action movie I want to do actually a lot of action," he explains, adding: "Because that's sort of the challenge for me; I've never done that before."

Forster was also keen to develop the relationship between Bond and M (played once again by Judi Dench), by having "that verbal tension between them, sort of like a little bit of this mother-son thing going on" between the two characters. As a result, Dench gets more screen-time as Bond's behaviour starts to alienate him from both the British government and the Americans, in a series of tense and increasingly fraught scenes designed to give more insight into Bond's character and his motives. Forster had carefully considered elements of the previous film to get a feel for Bond's mental state and used this to inform Quantum of Solace. He says: "I was mainly interested in the last five minutes of Casino [Royale], where Bond was as a character and where we left him and what kind of emotional state we left him in."

Forster is philosophical about the mixed critical reception the film received, although of course its box-office success makes it easier to stomach. "You know, I like polarising people!" he says, adding: "I think there's a discussion happening. Some people seem to really love it and some people really hate it. I think discussion is always good and it's not the last Bond film ever made."

Despite its success, he won't be returning for Bond 23, despite being offered the job. "They did ask me to do another one, but at this point I need to do something smaller." He gives a sly smile, unable to resist: "But then you can say never say never again..."

First published on InTheNews in March 2009.