Daniel Craig knew it was time to reset James Bond with No Time To Die
"Let’s kill my character off and go find another Bond and go find another story," Daniel Craig says
Aux News Daniel Craig
After 15 years and five films, Daniel Craig knew it was time to wrap up his time as James Bond after 2021's No Time To Die. The career move not only allows him to move on to other projects but also enables the Bond franchise to bring on a new (mystery) person for the iconic role and breathe new life into the films.
“Two things, one for myself and one for the franchise,” Craig says in an interview with Los Angeles Times. “One, for the franchise, was that resets start again, which [the franchise] did with me. And I was like, ‘Well, you need to reset again.’ So let’s kill my character off and go find another Bond and go find another story. Start at [age] 23, start at 25, start at 30.”
Craig continues, “The other was so that I could move on. I don’t want to go back. I suppose I should be so lucky if they were to ask me back, but the fact is I need to move on from it. The sacrifice that he makes in the movie was for love and there’s no greater sacrifice. So it seemed like a good thing to end on… I’m very, very fortunate as an actor to have got to a stage in my career where I can now go, ‘You know what? I’m gonna pick and choose.’”
Right out of his time at one franchise, Craig incidentally signed up for another with Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, albeit he seems much happier with this one. Craig appears in the sequel Glass Onion as the detective Benoit Blanc, and is currently strapped in for a third installment of the franchise for Netflix.
Craig does admit that one of his regrets while working on the Bond films was the persistent discussion of his on-set injuries and the general physicality of the role over the creative merits of the films.
“It’s my fault because I kind of didn’t shut up about the fact that I had all these injuries,” Craig says. “I’m pissed off at myself that I ever even spoke about them. I put way more work into the creative side of those movies than I did into the physical side of those movies.”
Craig adds, “The physical side of the movies was just the job. I had to do it. I trained, learned the fights, that’s kind of my brain not working. The rest of it, the look, the feel, the kind of the temperature of the movies, getting Sam Mendes in to direct Skyfall, that’s where the hard work was. Going to the gym is hard work, but it’s not really brain hard work.”
10 Comments
Does a license owe anything to the artist who created it’s characters? James Bond has always represented a very specific kind of alpha machismo that is decidedly less popular culturally now than it was when he was created. That essence of male fantasy fulfilment however in my opinion is integral to the character. When they inevitably make the next Bond a female identifying PoC it will no longer by James Bond. What’s the point? Write your own stories instead of blatantly stealing IPs to feed your narcissistic progressive puritanism? I’ll be happy when this marketing gimmick finally fades away the same way the words Latinx and Wypipo have…
I’m a HUGE series fan. #1 favorite movies. I know they’re shit, I still love them. The Bond universe is wonderful because it resets all the time. There’s so little canon in the story. Yes, I admit there are elements that always carry over. But what other franchise continually resets like this? Maybe the Hulk movies??I hope they bring back “bottle episodes”. I’d even be totally OK with period one-offs. These are B-movies made from pulp novels. That imparts a freedom that Star Wars and the MCU will never have. A lot of franchises implode when they turn to shit. But 007 was always shit, which means that now we can go have some fun. I want a pre-credits scene with nearly no relation to the movie. I want 007 to walk through a padded door, and M to ask Bond if he knows anything about >insert topic<.
I have no problem with killing James Bond in No Time to Die, but that movie sucks. The action is breathtaking, but the whole opening sequence completely undoes all the growth Craig’s Bond goes through over the previous four films and resets him to a brooding, closed off, brute. There’s no emotional reward for any of our investment and his “redemption” and subsequent death ultimately means nothing. Rami Malek’s villain has no motivation for any of his actions, his accent is ridiculous, and Bond dispatches him in moments when it finally happens. Nothing in that movie makes any sense and it was a piss-poor sendoff to what I would argue is the best Bond. Spectre is also pretty bad, but the ending is satisfying enough that if I had to choose between ending this era of Bond with Spectre or getting No Time to Die I’d choose ending it with Spectre.
No motivation? He literally tells you his motivation multiple times. He is from a family of poisoners who Blofeld used and then had killed off. And he murdered Madeline’s mother because her husband was the one who killed his family. And he he was obsessed with Madeline because he saved her life out of pity and now thinks he owns her because of that. It’s not my favorite Bond movie, but Lucyfer’s motivation was certainly explained.
Jesus Christ I forgot Malek’s character was named “Lucyfer”
Yes that was a little too on the nose. But this was a movie franchise where a Bond girl was named “Pussy Galore”.
LOL, very true.
So I’m actually adding something to the coversation, I think you sum up Lucyfer’s backstory and motivation pretty well, but similar to the OP I was also confused, especially toward the end of the movie. Did he want to release the virus and kill everyone, or was he still trying to sell it? I feel like all of a sudden he was like “let’s launch these missles and kill millions of people,” but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it.
Then again, you may not want to put any stock in my Bond opinons. My hot take is that Quantum of Solace is secretly the 2nd best movie of the Craig run, especially if you watch it soon after Casino Royale.
Who knew? Craig knew!
Great, I’m happy for him and all and I’m interested in seeing a new Bond. And of course there will always be lots of speculation about “Will Bond be black this time?”, “Will Bond be a lady now?”, “Can Bond be nonbinary?”, etc.
I actually don’t care much about all that. But can we please just get back to movies that are about Bond being a secret agent who drives cool cars, has sex with a lot of attractive people, and gets into tough scrapes involving impressive stunt work, etc., and less of this moody B.S. about what a fractured soul Bond is and Bond’s “redemption arc,” and how every supervillain’s entirely too complex, muti-trillion dollar, mass murdering plot is really just an elaborate way of getting back at Bond for, like, stuffing him in a locker in school or something petty like that?Craig’s Bond started out as such a breath of fresh air, but after so many rounds of seeing him sulk and squint in regret over yet another emotional trauma I started feeling nostalgic for Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore.
I just hope the next set of Bond movies are fun again instead of being sour and tedious, now that the tenure of the very worst Bond is over.