The case for a new face as James Bond
It’s finally time for the sky to fall on Craig’s secret agent 007, Tim Robey writes.
When Daniel Craig took over as 007 in the 2006 Bond film Casino Royale, he brought some exciting new attributes to the role. First among them was his bruiser quality: He looked more likely to scramble out of a bareknuckle boxing ring than tux up for pre-dinner cocktails. This was a different Bond from any we had seen, with less of a debonair eyebrow game and more of an edge of menace. He meant business, and the business was mean.
Whether he still means it is the question. Recently, The New York Times reported that his return for Bond 25 was a “done deal,” despite his previous much-quoted statement, since recanted, that he’d rather “slash his own wrists” than step back into the role. But would the Bond films be better off without him?
Bond fans love to hate Craig’s second 007 film, Quantum of Solace, for its haphazard action scenes, lack of memorable villains, and a title even more meaningless than Never Say Never Again. But there’s a strong case for the defence — and it partly hinges on Craig, whose performance is his best as Bond by a mile. The film’s terseness suited his own. He was rarely saddled with extraneous dialogue or bad jokes. Plus, the death of Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd in the previous outing gave him rare follow-through motivation. You could forget the wholly forgettable plot unfolding, and just concentrate on his residual grief.
But after Skyfall and Spectre, the lustre of Craig’s Bond has faded. His age isn’t a problem: Roger Moore was 57 when his last hurrah as Bond in A View to a Kill came out; Craig is 49. But all the least interesting aspects of Craig’s Bond have curdled his persona, turning him into a stiff, Madame Tussauds version of himself. It’s time for a change.
For a start, he’s not funny. Say what you like about Moore, but he got on the wavelength of those cheesy wisecracks. When Craig attempts one (“Got into some deep water” in Skyfall springs to mind), the level of cringe goes through the roof. He can’t do it. It’s partly the writers’ fault, for neither appreciating this limitation nor giving Craig better jokes to work with.
As for giving Bond sex appeal? Most would point to Sean Connery as the all-around winner in this area, but those famously bulging swimming trunks in Casino Royale could well bag Craig a silver medal. He had a brutish animal magnetism when he took over … so where has it gone? Find me a scene in Spectre, for example, which anyone would replay because Craig is so unforgettably magnetic. Cavorting with Monica Bellucci in that Italian villa? It’s Bellucci doing all the head-turning.
Some said after Craig’s casting that the attitude he exuded was a welcome throwback to the “true” Bond of Ian Fleming’s vision: not a suave operator but a ruthless one, with little time for the after-hours innuendo. It’s true Craig ditched the come-hither posturing of the Moore and Pierce Brosnan years. His defining moment in his first fight sequence in Casino Royale was when he came crashing down through a building site. On hitting the ground, he merely shook his head to fend off concussion, and continued on. It was clear there would be no Brosnan-esque smarm on his watch.
Still, this down-and-dirty machismo has been a less enduring boon than we might have hoped. Contrast Timothy Dalton — the most underrated Bond — who managed to act the part better than anyone, save perhaps Connery. This will be controversial, but I don’t think any of Craig’s Bond pictures beats the grit and romance of The Living Daylights (1987). Dalton, balancing Bond’s angst and professionalism with a skill we took for granted, deserved better than two Bond films — certainly in a franchise that is about to hand Craig a fifth, maybe a sixth. Alas, the paltry box office sealed Dalton’s fate.
Every one of the candidates who have been dangled to succeed Craig — Tom Hardy, Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba, Michael Fassbender — has an advantage over him: novelty. The formula is getting stale. Sam Mendes’s much-vaunted directing role on the past two films has attracted world-class cinematographers, to look on the bright side, but it hasn’t brought the best out of Craig. He hasn’t looked like he’s enjoying himself.
Playing Bond must be unbelievably hard work.
But it shouldn’t look like hard work, or an audience is likely to get depressed.
Connery always pulled it off and kept a sense of fun, a spring in his step, right up to being lured back for Diamonds are Forever (1971). Craig, at this point, emits such grudging enthusiasm for the job that throwing in the towel would be good for him — and us.