Daniel Craig is not Bond

 

It has been said many times before on this website, but it seems many folks just still don’t seem to get it. We do not hate Daniel Craig and this is not a Daniel Craig “hate site”. Sure we don’t particularly think Craig’s hiring was a good bit of casting, but this site is not dedicated to lamenting over Craig’s blond hair, blue eyes and/or short stature, despite being painted as such by those who don’t bother to read what we actually have to say.

 

Perhaps bemoaning Craig’s hair color may have been the intention when this site was founded a decade ago, I don’t know as I wasn’t here then. However, before you go about casting stones, be sure to confirm your home’s walls are not made of glass. The idea that Craig was a very poor choice was not some fringe belief relegated to madmen roaming the street while muttering to themselves about blond locks. Remember the entire world exploded with indignation over the choice, the media, bloggers, the fans, even Sam “The Great One” Mendes admitted to feeling Craig was miscast upon hearing of the decision, of course he claims to have changed his mind but considering his vision of Bond perhaps he’s the wrong man to ask.

 

The irony is Craig’s casting had no effect on me either way, I felt he didn’t really look the part but was more than willing to give him a chance. I found Casino Royal and Quantum of Solace underwhelming but it wasn’t until Skyfall when I said enough is enough. I can tell you without a doubt I would not be here if whining about hair color was all we were doing.

 

No when we say Daniel Craig is not Bond we are speaking of the Craig era. The four films starring Craig are not Bond films; they are generic action movies with a heavy handed pop psych, postmodern nihilism overtone which happen to feature a character with the name of James Bond.

 

Ever since Craig’s casting EON has turned Bond in to a depressed, self-loathing Bourne/Dark Knight rip-off devoid of what made Bond “Bond”. Before you go on about “double taking pigeons” and “invisible cars” stop. You know damn well that’s not what I’m talking about or what constitutes “Bond”. Bond has always been a serious man who doesn’t take himself too seriously, not a weeping Freudian case study.

 

Something else bandied about the internet is the statement we here at DCiNB are not “true Bond fans” whatever that means. Seriously what does that mean? Is it because we don’t lap up any and all tripe regurgitated by EON with the James Bond label pinned to it? Is it because we expect Bond to behave in the manner in which the character has been established over the first 50 years of its existence, that we are not “true fans”?

 

I’m no hypocrite, if you enjoy Craig’s Bonds I’m not going to down grade your fan status, but if one of Craig’s films is your a number one favorite Bond film of all-time, perhaps you should re-evaluate what you love about it and reconsider how you feel about Bond as a whole.

 

I do contend however, those who “Didn’t like Bond until Daniel came along” are not “true Bond fans” as they state out right they don’t like Bond, at least the Bond who has been established over 50 years 20 films, 13 novels and 9 short stories. There’s no shame in that, just don’t go around advocating the change of an established franchise just to fit your film preferences.

 

In closing I’m going to steal a quote I heard in the forum that sums up my argument perfectly: “The problem with the series currently is not that Craig isn’t Bond, it’s that Barbara isn’t Cubby.”

  22 comments for “Daniel Craig is not Bond

  1. If you genuinely can’t get any enjoyment from seeing the work of thoroughbred talents like Craig, Mendes, Deakins, Bardem, Waltz, Fiennes and Whishaw then I suggest you close this ridiculous website down and sit in a darkened room watching The World Has Had Enough, starring the truly fucking abysmal actor that is Piers Brosnan.

    • HA! "Thoroughbred talents like Craig, Mendes, Deakins, Bardem, Waltz, Fiennes and Whishaw" Thanks mate I needed a good laugh today! However… In the off chance you are being serious (I know, impossible right?!), I always find it ironic when someone who disagrees with the sentiments expressed on this website takes time out of their busy day to not only read the articles but then create an account, log in and post a paragraph ranting on about how we have no life and too much time on our hands! Anyway, thanks for the chuckle!

      • Hi Benny.
        Sorry, I didn’t realise you were one of the few who creates a moronic fucking website expressly for it not to be read or responded to.
        As soon as you’ve stopped laughing can you please identify which of the names I’ve listed you wouldn’t agree are world-renowned talents in their field and why you think your opinion of them is more worthy than the majority who disagree with you?
        Thanks in advance.

        • Oh… You were being serious… I do apologize, I wasn't aware they allowed internet access in the asylum. Apparently reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, as if you look towards the top of this very article to which you posted you would see I did not create this site, I only contribute to it and only started quite recently in fact. As to people reading my words, I'm glad you found them, please do enjoy and if you think "settling my hash" is a good use of your precious time here on earth, by all means have at it. To address your query, I have written numerous articles thus far and intend to continue doing so, which answer that very question so I'm not going to shoehorn it all in to a response box. Finally my opinion is my opinion just as yours belongs to you, I never stated mine was any more valuable than any other, I just found a venue in which to express it, I'm not over on the "fanboy" sites shoving it down anyone's throat, if it so solemnly offends you to such a great degree, perhaps you should rethink just how much reverence you place on a collection of actors and film makers.

  2. Depends which work of these “thoroughbred talents” we’re talking about. All the people you name have done sterling work elsewhere. It doesn’t mean we’re obliged to revere their every fart. George Clooney was great in O Brother Where Art Thou?, it doesn’t make Batman & Robin any better. Francis Ford Coppola directed both Apocalypse Now and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. See how that works?

    • People like Brosnan, Spottiswoode, Apted, Tamahori etc are all pretty average journeymen who have never done much work worthy of any acclaim. Since they’ve been moved on and replaced with the calibre of the people I mentioned, the movies have vastly improved. As reflected in both their critical and box office response. See how it works?

  3. Hmm. Since you’re Brosnan bashing, I notice you conveniently neglect to mention director Martin Campbell or script writers Purvis and Wade. Well, you couldn’t, could you, as he directed your precious CR and P+W wrote the scripts for Craig’s movies as well as Brosnan’s.

    There’s plenty about the later Brosnan flicks that I don’t like but the crucial point you’re missing is that that was mainly down to a gradual decline in the quality of the scripts – penned by Purvis and Wade – who now throughout the Craig era continue to rehash the same ideas (Bond going rogue, limited existential questions about Bond’s relevance, Bond being miserable, lazy non-Fleming confabulations about Bond’s family and past). The arguable decline in Brosnan’s movies was due to those scripts and Barbara’s agenda rather than Brosnan’s acting. Brosnan himself expresses frustration at the direction those scripts took and wanted something grittier. He has to work with what he’s given. GoldenEye is a great movie that reinvigorated the franchise but retained most of what we on this site hold dear about the classic Bond and of course it was directed by none other than CR’s Martin Campbell.

    To focus on your last post, I also think your giving too much credit to the early successes of some of these people. Don’t forget Mendes for example did not have the critical acclaim you seek for cinema until American Beauty which was arguably his best work. The Craig era movies don’t have a shred of the depth and interest of that movie so it clearly doesn’t work to rate these people on their prior art. It’s also an utterly different genre.

    • Couldn’t disagree with you more. The Craig era has heralded a huge upturn in the calibre of talent involved: Craig himself is a multi award winning actor. Mendes, Bardem and Waltz are all Oscar winners. As is Roger Deakins. And the writers bought in to polish Wade and Purvis’s script are also multi award winners (Butterworth, Hagis, Logan).
      I’m genuinely staggered by your implication that the Craig films are generic and shallow – Skyfall, in particularly, took Bond to deeply personal places and showed him as flawed as no previous film has even attempted.
      In my opinion, the Craig Bonds are head and shoulders above anything produced since the Connery heyday.

      Fair point about Campbell. He did a great job on Casino Royale, but he isn’t in the same league as Mendes.

      • “Skyfall, in particularly, took Bond to deeply personal places and showed him as flawed as no previous film has even attempted.” My first reaction to that was that I don’t particularly care about Bond’s “deeply personal places”. I watch a Bond film to see cool gadgets, eye-popping stunts, exotic locales and bizarre villains. But perhaps that’s unfair. It’s possible to keep all those things and still add emotional layers.

        Skyfall, however, I found to be artless and self-important; a stupid person’s idea of a clever film. The last film I saw in the cinema was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, which I thought had far more depth and emotional honesty than Skyfall. But because it didn’t bludgeon you over the head with heavy-handed symbolism and poetry readings, it tends to get dismissed in internet comment threads as “a silly kids film” etc. It’d be interesting to see how many of the people making those comments were the same people who praised Skyfall!

        • Hi Kristatos.

          If you watch Bond for ‘cool gadgets, eye-popping stunts, exotic locales and bizarre villains’ then I’m confused as to why you’re critical of the most recent movies. They incorporated all those elements but have added an additional layer of relevance and something approaching realism. The reason the Bond franchise was so ridiculed pre-Craig was for it’s over-reliance on the same boring, generic nonsense prevalent throughout all the dire Brosnan films – invisible cars, villains with ludicrous double-entendre names etc. I don’t think the symbolism of Skyfall was heavy-handed at all. The majority of punters would have enjoyed it for the fights, set-pieces and drama and wouldn’t have noticed the Freudian subtext.

  4. Personally I utterly despise the Craig movies, not because Daniel is just plain miscast but because of their re-invention of Bond as a permanently glum, openly troubled and unhappy character who so obviously enjoys nothing, unless moping into a bottle of pissy Heineken counts. That is not how Fleming (note the single “m”) wrote him and I know this because I actually read all the books as a schoolboy and am now many years later in the process of re-reading them. As for the earlier films being a “laughing stock” they probably were so to self important critics and those with the kind of socio-political outlook that hates the character of Bond on principal anyway and believes that bombarding the masses with pessimism and gloom is for their own good, but who cares? The cinema audiences certainly didn’t. Laughing stock? “Sneering stock” more like. After three attempts to watch Spectre in one sitting without nodding off, I can say that while Sam Mendes may be a dab hand at Shakespeare, when it comes to crafting an exciting larger than life adventure, he’s not fit to lick pigeon poop from off Lewis Gilbert’s shoes…

    • In order for the Bond franchise (I hate that word) to stay relevant they have to keep adapting to the times. the Brosnan model (sharp suits, double entendres, wooden acting) belong to a different time and are laughably bad. if you honestly enjoy that’s dated approach then I suggest you watch the Austin Powers boxset and continue to piss and moan as the Bond movies continue to grow for a new audience.

  5. I’ve seen all the Austin Powers films and found them to be unfunny self-conscious junk . An inept attempt to send up ALL 1960s entertainment, not just Bond. I’ve seen all the Bourne films too and, while they provide passing amusement, they are too generic and repetitive to be memorable. If you take away the sharp suit and broader humour (replaced with middle class dinner party guffaws) and reinvent the character as someone totally different, then it’s no longer Bond. If Brosnan’s films had flaws they were not his fault. Blame the scriptwriters and producers, not the actor himself, who often expressed the desire to make things a tad more intense. As for “pissing and moaning” it’s called having one’s own opinion, likes and dislikes. Get used to it.
    BAFTA…. Bullshit And Falseness Triumph Again. (Apologies to site admin for the language)

  6. There’s having one’s opinion’ and then there’s posting on a website specifically set up to whinge about the casting of an actor TWELVE YEARS AGO.
    Brosnan’s films had more than just ‘flaws’. They were all effing dreadful. I agree that’s far from being Brosnan’s fault. But the fact he’s such a terrible actor certainly didn’t help.

  7. Colin Colin Colin. I appreciate your speaking on behalf of “today’s audience”, I really do. I’m 18 so I guess I qualify as such. I bet you’re forty if you’re a day. Actually, yes, I am currently reading the original books. And Craig is nowhere near Fleming’s creation. He’s a good action hero, I grant you. So put him in the next Die fucking Hard. Bond he ain’t. I don’t give a shit about those ridiculous “personal depths” you refer to; Fleming, for one, would’ve treated Craig’s mopey, self-pitying steroid crybaby with the contempt it deserves. He is precisely the kind of caricature male that modern guys aspire to be: steroid stuffed on the exterior. Putty on the inside. And I don’t give a shit about Craig’s acting chops, nor about how many fucking oscars Sam Mendes has. The Craig/Mendes movies are boring, self-indulgent, glum and pretentious. Brosnan may be 64, but he still has way more style, wit and effortless cool than Craig. who has, erm, muscles. Brosnan looked the part, cinematically. Bond is an icon. An archetype. Craig is a gargoyle. Always remember the female character in the book who described Bond as looking like a film star. Craig looks like a bus driver.

    • Brosnan having ‘effortless cool’ – funniest thing I’ve read on this website. And, believe me, there’s a lot of competition.

      Unfortunately for you guys, Daniel Craig got cast in the part 12 years ago and has proved hugely successful both critically and commercially. A handful of sad virgins shouting into an echo chamber isn’t going to alter the fact. So, for the time being at least, you’re just going to have to suck it up. Hopefully, in the future, the producers will go back to casting a cardboard cut-out like Brosnan and his invisible car. Then you can shut this risible website down.

      By the way, Daniel Craig is a film star. Therefore your implication that he doesn’t look like one is completely non-sensical.

      • Dear Mr. Stagg, once again you prove you didn’t bother to read the article to which you post. You just read the title, mounted your trusty high-horse and charged off to battle, much like Don Quixote tilting at windmills to defend the virtue of the fair Dulcinea Craig. But I digress, let’s say for the sake of argument we are indeed a mass of unwashed Philistines, the “virginal losers” you claim who are doing nothing more than “whinging over an actor cast 12 years ago”. I have to ask where does that leave you, the man who, with great regularity whinges over our “whinging”? I find it hard to believe a man with such time on his hands is the virile accomplished lover you allude to in your post above, but that’s neither here nor there. The real question is why you keep coming back and demanding we “shut down this site”? Did we strike a nerve? Expose a chink in your Craig armor? It turns out there is a much simpler solution than throwing a cyber tantrum. You see, there is this little button in the upper left corner of your internet browser which looks like an arrow pointing left. If you click that, it will take you away from us “losers” to anywhere on the internet your little heart desires, like maybe a pro-Craig echo chamber and you no longer have to read our “pathetic ramblings” ever again. Take care and have a wonderful day, I’m sure we’ll be hearing from you again very soon, what with all the time you have to dedicate to us!

      • Stagg, what corrective frames do you wear? Daniel Craig is as much of a Bond actor as is Rosie O’Donnell is a Bond girl! In fact, if it wasn’t for Barbara Broccoli’s incessant fantasies about her doltish sidekick, we would have the 7th 007 by now! His tenure will go down in Bond folklore as troubling and disturbed. Go see his new film in August. It suits him to a tee!

  8. Firstly Colin old chap, if I’m a “virgin” then I’m not very good at it. Very much a last ditch generalisation I must say and tells rather more about yourself than about anyone else here. Do you really want to know what I personally miss more than anything about the “outdated” style of Bond film? It’s the “innapropriate frivolity”, the “flippancy”, the “outdated machismo”, the “unjustifiable swagger” (bet Barbara wrote that line). If I want to watch an accurate portrayal of a genuine espionage mission there are plenty of suitable movies available and many of them are very good. I’d rather enjoy something implausible and far-fetched because it entertains me as escapism, that is what entertainment is all about and it doesn’t make me “thick” or “uneducated” (or virginal for that matter). It means that I know how to relax and enjoy life while still taking the REAL world seriously. The reinvention of James Bond as a joyless alcoholic misery guts who enjoys NOTHING is an insult both to Fleming and Cubby Broccoli’s legacy. Yes “Die Another Day” was a pile of bollocks in many places, but that was mainly due to crummy dialogue from, presumably, Messers Purvis & Wade added to the unrestrained fanboy enthusiasm of Lee “all flash and no panache” Tamahori (the long lost twin of Zack Snyder perhaps?). The far fetched gadgets and outlandish plot devices did not bother me at all, simply how shoddily they were put together with a total lack of scale,splendour or wit. (Tamahori is also unfit to lick double taking pigeon sh$t from Lewis Gilbert’s shoes by the way). Because DAD took things as far as possible in that direction (and made a bloody fortune incidentally), the next film would always have gone back to basics anyway, they always do. So you would still get Casino Royale which I was initially OK with despite the miscasting of Craig. I decided to give the man the benefit of the doubt. Then I saw Quantum of Solace….. Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear…

  9. And as for the high calibre geniuses brought in to polish P&W’s script for “Spectre”, they obviously didn’t bring enough polish with them, not that there’s enough polish in the world to put a shine on THAT turd. Come ON!! His brother? HIS F@CKING BROTHER?!! For Christ’s sake a schoolboy could have written better than that. Did they just ring up the producers of Eastenders and ask if they had any spare rejected plot twists laying about? The vast budget? Never has a Bond film looked so unspectacular, dull and lifeless. And CHEAP. Opening scene in Mexico?
    Yawn! The much vaunted chase scene was ludicrously tame, the aircraft scene was a poorly staged waste of good Land Rovers, the finale seemed lifted both from previous, better Bond films as well as from various GENERIC thrillers and the stupidity of the scene with “Blofeld’s” helicopter was staggering. “Hello? EVASIVE ACTION?!! Someone’s firing a small calibre pistol at us from a moving boat a quarter of a mile away”. Preposterous? Yes, but not in a good way. Not self aware, just lazy. Millions of pounds payed out to people who couldn’t be arsed “coz the plebs are all thick and will buy it any way” which obviously was the thinking behind the whole venture. Add stilted dialogue and a “romance” so shallow and contrived it was groan-inducing and it all adds up to a giant white elephant that takes all the 007 “formula” and makes a massive boring pig’s ear out of it. Sadly I fear Bond is dead. This film killed him and p#ssed over the corpse…

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