Daniel Craig gave James Bond a soul, even when the films lacked it
He may be the only Bond actor to escape the long shadow of Sean Connery
Film Features Films
It’s difficult to remember now, but Daniel Craig was once considered an unusual, even a dubious choice for the role of James Bond. He didn’t look the part, as audiences had come to know it over the decades. His hair was blonde, and he reportedly refused to dye it darker. He was handsome, but in a colder, more alien way—his features tight and narrow, his eyes an icy blue. He almost had more in common, physically, with Robert Shaw in the second-ever Bond movie, From Russia With Love. Back in 2006, in the wake of his casting, you could much more easily picture Craig as the remorseless bad guy, especially if you had seen Road To Perdition, where he played one.
Of course, almost every actor that’s slipped into the tuxedo since Sean Connery vacated it (and then vacated it again, and then once more with feeling) has faced some preliminary skepticism. But has any silenced it as decisively as Craig has? No Time To Die, which opened today in theaters all around the world, marks his fifth and final turn as Bond. He’s been playing 007 for 15 years now—longer, in other words, than anyone before him (unless one counts that second time Connery returned to the role, in the early 1980s, after a decade away from it). To plenty of fans, Craig is Bond.
The Bond movies starring him haven’t all been great. In fact, only two of the five have been especially good: the impossibly cool origin story Casino Royale, which introduced Craig as a younger, tougher, less polished version of MI6’s finest, and the seductively sinister Skyfall, with its smart meditation on the legacy of the character and its jaw-dropping Roger Deakins imagery. As a whole, however, the Craig Bonds pretty neatly accomplished what every cycle of this series has attempted but only sporadically achieved: They brought Bond into a new era, updating his appeal without radically altering it.
You don’t have to squint hard to see the event-movie trends the new Bond films strained, often successfully, to emulate. Christopher Nolan looms heavily over them, his Batman movies informing the gritty, more grounded Bond Begins reboot strategizing of Casino Royale and the operatic sweep (and crazed-villain scheming) of Skyfall. But this franchise-within-the-franchise was also built in the mold of modern serialized blockbusters, some version of what Marvel was doing across town. Where once every new Bond film was a soft reboot—a standalone adventure, even when the lead wasn’t recast—these sequels all lead into each other, picking up where the one before left off. They want to tell a whole story, even if it hasn’t always been clear what that story is.
For a while, it looked like a tragic character arc. What we seemed to be watching, in Casino Royale, was the making of an icon, and maybe the transformation of a flesh-and-blood man into a killing machine of the empire. The Bond we meet in that first movie isn’t the same old Bond. He’s not so refined yet—a brute in a suit is still a brute. He crashes through walls like a wrecking ball, the “blunt instrument” Ian Fleming described. He does not care how you prepare his martini. And yet for all his savagery (there’s almost no traces of Roger Moore playfulness in Craig’s performance), this Bond has hot blood pumping through his veins. He can love, maybe. And he seems like an honest-to-God character again, not just a collection of traits and tropes and catchphrases. It’s part of what made the film so thrilling.
Casino Royale ends with Bond introducing himself as he has for half a century, last name first. Is he finally the Bond we know and love? There’s an implied explanation, even a critique, in the film’s structure—the way it suggests that losing Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) has turned James into the callous, cynical ladykiller and workaholic of silver-screen legend. (It’s like a mirror-image inverse of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, treating loss not as a terrible consequence but as a motivator.)
Yet the series never fully committed to that idea, in part because it never really settled into the status quo of Bond just being Bond. Quantum Of Solace, which picks up right where Casino Royale left off, ties up the first film’s loose ends—okay, we might think, this is the terminus of Bond’s arc into himself. But then came Skyfall, temporarily completing a full trilogy of prequels by offering yet another formative adventure, an exile followed by a return that becomes a climactic reckoning with the past. So was this the final step in Bond’s making-of story? Spectre, the film that followed, comes closest to looking like a traditional Bond movie, but it still can’t resist more backstory, the urge to keep painting the past, not the present, of James Bond. Even the new No Time To Die looks backwards, albeit in a conclusive way.
These films want to deconstruct Bond—to see what makes him tick, to give him shades he hasn’t possessed before, to find a person under the iconography. Which may explain why they never finish laying out his origins. The truth is that the old Bond, the one this new Bond never became, can’t have a psychology. He’s the engine at the center of a franchise designed to continue indefinitely. He can’t change, because changing would mean doing something different than what audiences pay good money to see him do. It’s why the series didn’t die with Connery’s departure from it: Bond, as traditionally conceived, is basically a suit that can be worn by any actor it fits. The Craig Bonds keep the character in indefinite transition because if he ever truly becomes Bond he’ll cease to be interesting anymore. He’ll just be an icon again.
So you could say the tension of these movies lies in the constant negotiation between their reverence for the character and their desire to do something different with him, to go deeper. It’s Craig, though, who breathes life into that sparring match. His take on Bond is, in some respects, its own act of pastiche. There is a little of the masculine brutishness of Sean Connery in his performance. (Craig’s Bond may be the first since Connery’s to look like he’s taken a punch or two in his lifetime.) We get some of Timothy Dalton’s haunted intensity. Again, this is a Bond who feels things, with a heart ticking beneath all that elegant evening wear; in that way, Craig’s version calls back to George Lazenby. He’s the legacy sequel in man form: a greatest hits of James Bond rolled into one slightly unfamiliar package.
Craig’s tightrope act is how he locates humanity in the fundamentals of his shop-worn role: the charm, the smolder, the quips, the cynicism, the physical prowess. Bond movies are machines that run on formula. But in his best moments, Craig was able to complicate or even disguise that, often by making prototypical behavior look spontaneous. One cannot blame him for wanting out of this plum gig—its limits are built into the durable predictability of a series that’s survived this long by never really changing. What more could he do with the role after five installments? But if Craig’s run was uneven, he was rarely the reason why. He kept Bond human to the sentimental end.
Craig, in fact, might be the only actor who’s managed to escape the shadow of Connery—the only Bond not damned by unflattering comparisons to the original. That’s partially time’s doing; there are scores of fans, maybe a whole generation of them, too young to have absorbed Goldfinger even through cultural osmosis. But it’s also a testament to how much Craig made Bond his own, even as the films around him constantly communed with 50-plus years of franchise history. Whoever takes over the role next has their work cut out for them, but also a fine model from which to work.
85 Comments
Craig is good but he’s given so little to do in pretty much every movie other than Casino Royale that he just always looks bored. There’s precious little lightness or really variety of any kind to offset his brooding take (again, outside of Casino Royale, in which he’s great).He also is just so old it’s distracting, kind of in a Roger Moore way, double the age of his female co-stars.
Old? He’s my age you cheeky ****.
“Git” only requires three asterisks, and it’s the only insult that comfortably follows “cheeky” besides… Oh. Carry on.
There’s a reason they’re often called “four-letter words”, MiFroChi….
I can think of a word that rhymes with “git” that also follows “cheeky”. 😀
Oh man I love being called cheeky regardless of what asterisks come after it.
Craig is indeed aging out of the role, which I think is one of the main reasons he’s bowing out. It’s a physically demanding role and he’s ended up with a list of injuries each time he’s played it—lists that are longer after each iteration.As for his age being a distraction, I would argue that the Bond stories are designed to offer a vicarious glimpse of adventure for its core audience of middle-aged men. That’s why they’re called Bond Girls. Historically, Bond’s only flirtation with an older woman has been the harmless, playful banter with Miss Moneypenny.
Yeah in this one he looked noticeably older. It wasn’t Moore bad but I don’t see why he didn’t get with Monica Bellucci instead rather than the much younger Seydoux.
Yeah it bugged me how much of the press for that movie was “Finally an age-appropriate Bond girl” and it’s a glorified cameo where he ends up with the younger one anyway.
I was, and remain, utterly baffled by the criticism of Craig’s casting based on his hair colour. All these people straight up pretending that Roger Moore didn’t exist. Weird.
Maybe hard to believe now, but it was for real. I don’t think it was just the color of his hair (Roger Moore was more of a dark, dirty blonde), but his look in his introductory press conference didn’t exactly fit the traditional Bond aesthetic – some called him James Bjornd. There is something about blonds that audiences (or producers think audiences) won’t embrace as a lead (Barry Allen has been played by three brunettes).
If 80’s movies have taught me anything, Well-dressed blonde people are villains and bullies.
On the other hand, that only seems to apply to blonde men. You can have a heroic blonde woman with the only stereotype that she is supposedly dimmer than her brunette friends.
I could see a movie where Craig is the owner of a ski lodge trying to buy out the town and demolish the youth center
Audiences haven’t embraced Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth? Steve McQueen?
Not saying it never happens but tall, dark and handsome is a thing. I’m bet it’s about a 10:1 ratio brunette vs blonde leading men. Yeah, Thor is going to be blonde because, well, Thor, but Steve Rogers isn’t exactly platinum. Even cinematic Aquaman is a brunette.https://www.starnewsonline.com/article/NC/20061112/entertainment/605125370/WM
I would embrace them.
You’ll note that each of them, and the more beloved Targareyans as well, slowly went more brunette as time progressed. Only Cersei stayed blonde. Chris Evans was *sort of* blonde in the first Cap, then went brunette. Thor was super blonde and then went brunette. Steve McQueen was barely blonde. I’ve never consciously thought about it before this, but blondes DO take a little bit of a shit kicking in movies. Even Eastwood’s “Blondie” was not blonde.
Interesting. I’d watch a poorly-sourced and choppily-edited Youtube thinkpiece on that subject
Honestly, my main problem regarding the casting as such was that no matter his actual age, he looked more tired and worn than Brosnan ever did.
People also disliked how short he is, which I didn’t even notice until it was pointed out
It’s especially hilarious now when we are actively talking about a black James Bond or a female/black female Bond.
Some called him James Blond. People are so cruel.
Yet he was able to focus his rage at being called “James Blond” in order to become a cold, killing machine.
I postulate that it wasn’t just the hair color, but the fact that too many people saw Road to Perdition without watching Layer Cake.
To quote other internet videos, Idris Alba was also considered too blond for the role.
At the time a lot of it may have been driven by the fact people wanted Clive Owen. That and blonde rhymes with Bond which is fucking catnip for British media.
Is it James Bond thinkpiece week? Not that I’m opposed.
It’s James Bond movie promotion week.
If it focused on Connery, it’d be a James Bond hairpiece
The hairpiece is dead, Jim!
In an alternate world, I’d like to have seen a series of more sleek, thoughtful, psychologically charged follow-ups to Casino Royale that follows Bond from cynical young agent to bitter old man. That film promised a franchise that might finally escape from the iron clad laws of its own franchise, but ultimately never could quite get away from the camp, sexism, or stupidity (not that there’s anything wrong with the camp, but the franchise already had that in spades). It’d be interesting to do a four or five film Bond arc where he falls, grows, and is redeemed. That’d be a trick none of the recent competitors (Bourne, Wick, Hunt, etc.) have been able to pull off: actual character growth.
This feels like a strange comment because Casino Royale was arguably the most straightforward Bonding film of the Craigs, with the sequels trying (with various levels of success) to do exactly what you laid out.
Why would it would want to grow beyond the iron clad laws of its franchise? Isn’t the point of this to keep the franchise going?
If only there weren’t several metric fucktons of production troubles between EVERY SINGLE JAMES BOND MOVIE. It’s not a well-oiled franchise at all; it’s kept alive by duct tape and spite at this point. For instance the writer’s strike severely hamstringed Quantum of Solace iirc.
Yeah, Craig’s whole tenure seems to be riddled with ownership issues and corporate buggery. I think either before or after Spectre there were issues too which led to all the delays. Last time that happened was between Dalton and Brosnan
The sexism has come a long way from even the Brosnan years. In those he had more equals, a few love interests within a decade of his age and even people telling HIM what to do, but he also sexually harasses every woman he comes across and it’s treated as hilarious. So yeah it’s still there even now. Bond just can’t get with a woman who’s less than 10 years younger than him. Even in NTTD they establish Vesper was like 23 when she died (born in 83 while Eva Green was born in 80). And Madeline can’t be much older. While she’s a consenting adult it just seems creepier and creepier over the years.
Anyone who watched Layer Cake already knew that DC would be a good James Bond. The fun part is that he turned out even better than expected.
His character in Layer Cake (a posho drug-dealing coward, essentially) has almost nothing in common with Bond, though.
What’s funny is that his part in Layer Cake is nothing like James Bond. He’s about as far away from “superspy badass” as possible.
Except for this scene, which is played as a joke in the movie but gave you a glimpse that he’d be a perfect Bond.
IMO it’s not anything specific that he does, but rather his charisma and cleverness. XXXX was a guy who was comfortable dealing with underworld types and smart enough to get himself out of trouble, but more importantly he was fun to watch.
Certainly true, he’s smart and cool and confident and dresses really well. But, of course, the whole thrust of the movie is that he’s in completely over his head from the first frame and just doesn’t know it. He’s not quite as smart or prepared as he thinks he is.
Colm Meaney kicking the living shit out of him midway through is a highlight, and Craig sells the absolute hell out of it. One of his last lines just before is, “everything’s under control.”
Meaney is my fantasy casting for a Trump biopic when there is one.
That’s what James Bond needs — more Chief O’Brien!
But also the smugness and the way he wears that suit at the very end, you say: “Yeah, there’s a Bond.”
But also the smugness and the way he wears that suit at the very end, you say: “Yeah, there’s a Bond.”Oh yeah, his suits and general sartorial choices throughout the movie were extremely Bond.
Marketing Daniel Craig as 007 was a blond Bond sell.
We can quibble over whether or not Craig’s movies are “great” or “good” or whatever, but I think it can be argued that Craig’s movies are easily the most consistent in quality. For me, with a handful of exceptions or so, all the previous Bond movies are unwatchable more than once. Whereas I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace and even Skyfall which I am in the minority in that I find it impossibly dull. I will admit I’ve only seen Spectre the once in theaters, but Craig’s movies have an endless rewatchability to them.
There’s just such a sea change in the stunt work and CG-assisted set pieces once they hit the Brosnan era, and then another massive upgrade in slickness after that. The opening train chase in Skyfall is so bananas compared to anything in classic Bond that if you brought that 10 minutes back in time to the 60’s, people’s heads would fucking explode.
I just watched License to Kill and you want your mind blown check out when they drop Bond from the back of the Coast Guard chopper onto the back of the air plane.
I don’t think you are in the minority regarding Skyfall. It seems to be the most divisive of Craig’s films. Either it’s a beautifully shot, intense, personal Bond story OR a beautifully shot overly-plotted derivative attempt at a psychological Bond story.
that demands you turn off your brain if you’ve ever used a computer.
I wouldn’t call Quantum bad, but it is dull.
Quantity of Sport
What? That’s what Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo called it!
felt like what it was — several great ideas that were somehow never strung together to make a compelling movie. We got several marvelous setpieces, but I couldn’t tell you what Spectrum’s plot was if the fate of the Earth rested on it: “Uh, something about buying up all the oil, or maybe all the water, in the world, I think? So I guess Spectrum is basically Nestlé’s…?”Now that would have been a cool idea — M sending Bond out to take down a global terrorist organization that’s also a Swiss chocolate multinational, who create a deathtrap that embalm spies in milk chocolate and wrap them in tinfoil for Easter!
Well actually….They call it ‘Question of Sport’, which is the name of a long running sports quiz show here in the UK.I’m making a wild assumption that you are not British and may not know this. I apologise profusely if I have got that wrong, also ‘hello to Jason Isaacs’.
Caught me out! I’m a Colonial Commoner, Medium-Term Listener — and as you rightly surmised, I have never heard of the show Question of Sport.Hello back to Jason Isaacs!Tinkity-Tonk, and Down With Misheard Pop Culture References….
If Skyfall is impossibly dull why do you rewatch it?
I don’t think they’re bad, but I just don’t see what they’re supposed to have to do with James Bond. James Bond isn’t so much as a specific character as a type of movie, a tone, a vibe, and these don’t have any of it. You might as well just redub a Jason Bourne with “James Bond” every time the character’s name comes up and be done with it.
It just sounds like ur not the demographic these films are for. Try arguing that with me Dad.
but I think it can be argued that Craig’s movies are easily the most consistent in qualityNot really. They are highly inconsistent in that the first two seemed to embrace the mandate to have an altogether more realistic take on Bond, while the later ones tried to combine the humanized Bond with decidedly superhuman villains, which was just plain uneven.
I have been a Bond fan since seeing the old ones on TV in the 1970s and I have seen every one since Moonraker in the theater. Bonds seem to flip from serious to silly back to serious to silly and back to serious (Connery, More, Dalton, Brosnan, Craig) Bond movies are successful because they mirror the times they are made. I hope the next Bond makes going to the theater worth it.
so we’re due for silly, thank god.
He escaped Connery’s shadow because it stopped falling on the franchise after Dalton. It had been long enough since Connery that times had changed. Fans were ready for a new bond after Dalton. Brosnan was a good Bond, but I think Craig is better.
But then came Skyfall, temporarily completing a full trilogy of prequels by offering yet another formative adventureSkyfall definitely had a weird ouroboros effect with the trappings of the Bond formula reverting to how they were for the first 16 films – the classic office complete with coat rack, a crusty old male M, Moneypenny sitting out front. Almost as if these films were somehow meant to slot in before Dr. No, but then you get to the Brosnan era and its Judi Dench again and arraaggghhh….
I think he is easily the best Bond and his movies are really the only ones that I can and will re-watch. He brought about as much reality as you can to the series and his backstory and the fact that his character wasn’t always likable made it more interesting. I think the scene in Quantum of Solace where M calls him on his treatment of women was incredible brilliant. It brought a lot of insight into both characters
Craig did good with the soul of Bond, but the movie storyline and direction taken have been absolute rubbish! (Long, dull, and dark without action) Mission Impossible has done better Bond-esque adventures than 007 himselfThere might be some redeeming qualities in No Time to Die, but I wouldn’t spend much money on it to see the film.
Craig’s performances have always been at his best when he’s gotten to something different other than deliver the normal Bondisms. As a result, his performance in Spectre is his most muted one, even though its still pretty solid. But its the movie where he has the least room to give his own touch to the role. In Casino Royale he gets to play a softer, even at times romantic, Bond. In QoS, he gets to be single minded force of rage. In Skyfall, he gets to play with his age and how the job has affected him. I think he’s outstanding in No Time to Die. Probably the most relaxed he’s been since Casino Royale. His humor, drama, emotion all was on point for me.
He’s not my favorite, but I do think he’s the best actor to have taken the role.
I wouldn’t have minded him in one more film to make it six. I wonder why they didn’t split this in two like Avengers Endgame? Hmm. There could also have been a video game adventure with the main actors doing the voices.
Consider me one Bond fan who has NEVER accepted Daniel Craig in the role. The guy just has NO charisma whatsoever. Abs, yes, charisma, no. He just comes across as a block-headed thug, like Curtis Sliwa. I think the producers can only do better, whomever they cast…
The Craig Bonds keep the character in indefinite transition because if
he ever truly becomes Bond he’ll cease to be interesting anymore.
This statement alone explains why Craig never had to suffer any comparison with Connery: they weren’t playing the same character!In a way, it’s easy to understand why that happened. While many things about the franchise are still cool (I always loved the tradition of starting with an action scene and an opening title sequence), the main character aged horribly. In the novels, James Bond misogyny is even more problematic than in the films (it’s harder to deny he hates women when you can read his thoughts), and he’s racist and homophobic on top of that. The films could ignore the last two flaws but the sexism of the old films is harder to ignore, with the concept of “Bond girls” being a thing. Audience loves a good James Bond movie, but can we have one without James Bond?And that’s what the Craig movies were. Starring an actor that neither looks nor acts like Bond, the films kept re-introducing elements from the lore as late as the 4th film, as if the films were some sort of prequels and that’s why they were so different. Casino Royale wasn’t a soft reboot, it was a hard one. So comparing Craig with the other actors, to me, is a mistake. They were part of the old franchise, not the new one.
I find it hilariously ironic that you think dour, humourless, stone-faced Daniel Craig gave these movies soul. He sucks all the charisma out of whatever room he’s in.
lol
even more absurd in Dowd’s review of NTTD makes zero mention of how much humor they got into that script, something woefully missing from all of Craig’s other movies.
As a long time Bond connoissure, I freely admit I never warmed to Craig as Bond. He’s a good actor—I just never liked him as Bond because his Bond was just horribly depressing on screen. Whatever action was going on—even in the Connery films—Bond had a sense of humour. Craig had the humour of a Borg drone. I saw Casino Royale, and after that, I pulled the ripcord and jumped from the plane. Michael & Babs removed Bond’s funny bone when they decided “darker and grittier”. Dalton was that, but he still had a sense of humour in the role…Craig just went through a roulette wheel of glares, scowls, and grimaces…kinda like the Kerry Washington method of acting, and who wants to pay to see that? With each successive film, it became clearer and clearer that he did not want to do it…and why should people be paying to watch someone not want to be there on screen?What really annoys me most about the Craig era Bond is that Tom Cruise showed he grasped the essence of Bond better than Bond’s own producers.
I find this interesting because I always thought Daniel Craig was incredibly funny in the role. His eyes are perpetually twinkling as he commandeers a helicopter or plows an earth-mover into some bad guys or whatever. It felt like a running joke that we and him were both in on.
Exaccctly. His torture scene in Royale is so fucking good. He has an unspoken sense of being aware of how ridiculous this all is, and his dryness comes from the fact that he’s accepted the ridiculousness and is over it lol. It’s a very British sense of humor imo
His torture scene is iconic.
“you missed a spot”
It took 4 films to finally have a proper gun barrel sequence and to treat Bond as a normal agent, not as a rogue/missing/too old/quitting agent. But even after Spectre it’s heavily implied he’s done. So literally none of the Bond films are about a spy who’s committed to his career. Bond’s whole schtick is that his career is the ONLY thing he can commit to, there’s almost nothing left to his life otherwise!
Trying to turn Bond into a Jason Bourne copy was the stupidest backwards-ass decision the studio made.Fuck trying to do the “He needs to be like Fleming’s original books!” take. You don’t try to escape Connery’s cinematic shadow. You fucking EMBRACE it. You respect all the work he and every actor since then put in, try to find a way to take all that in, push it forward, and then add your own layer on top of it. He’s a super-spy with everything provided by Mi6 at his disposal. He is not a hitman.The only thing missing from Craig’s Bond is him wearing the Nolan Batman suit. Come on.
I just plain have enjoyed every one of the Daniel Craig Bond films. Some are for sure better than others but all have been worthy of the James Bond film universe in my opinion.
Finally got to NTTD and I definitely feel this way. I’ll miss him as Bond, and I wish he had better material to work with. When he’s actually allowed to be James Bond he’s absolutely amazing. The best parts of the latest movie are when he is in the field with Leiter and Paloma. Or when he greets the random guy after ejecting from a car in Spectre, or his flings at the beginning of Casino Royale. He, like Dalton before him will be overshadowed by their reputations for being gloomy but they show in numerous places that they can be just as charming as the Moores, Connerys and Brosnans of the world. NTTD’s fatal flaw is building off of Spectre and his lackluster romance with Madeline Swann. She’s a bit more interesting in this one but I just can’t buy them being in love. He’s too much like her dad and she seems to have no real interest in cars, gambling and martinis.