Daniel Craig was miscast as James Bond? I think so
bonded123
Posts: 291MI6 Agent
Perhaps this video proves that Craig - hand on heart - was miscast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHsAqcHIhp0
Perhaps the role should go to a more smug, better looking actor because it sells Bond as a smug, handsome hero?
Perhaps Craig's casting did lose a bit of glamour from James Bond? I do think he's a decent actor but that isn't the sole requirement. Movies are visual - so the appearance and demeanour of Bond is important. I do think Casino Royale is a better Bond film than Goldeneye but that's is more to do with Fleming's work added to the storyline. It's not because I think Craig is so ideal for the part.
I've always struggled with Craig as Bond. I wish he'd never been cast. I suppose it's no different to Star Wars fans wishing Luke didn't throw his lightsaber over his shoulder. It's hard when a fan of a franchise has to accept change that kind of hurts. I still feel a sense of hurt that Craig was cast. I'm sure he's a decent enough guy and he is a good actor but I still feel a sense of hurt he was cast. 15 years later it's still there. Perhaps I'm a bit sad (as in lame) to feel like that but it's my honest opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHsAqcHIhp0
Perhaps the role should go to a more smug, better looking actor because it sells Bond as a smug, handsome hero?
Perhaps Craig's casting did lose a bit of glamour from James Bond? I do think he's a decent actor but that isn't the sole requirement. Movies are visual - so the appearance and demeanour of Bond is important. I do think Casino Royale is a better Bond film than Goldeneye but that's is more to do with Fleming's work added to the storyline. It's not because I think Craig is so ideal for the part.
I've always struggled with Craig as Bond. I wish he'd never been cast. I suppose it's no different to Star Wars fans wishing Luke didn't throw his lightsaber over his shoulder. It's hard when a fan of a franchise has to accept change that kind of hurts. I still feel a sense of hurt that Craig was cast. I'm sure he's a decent enough guy and he is a good actor but I still feel a sense of hurt he was cast. 15 years later it's still there. Perhaps I'm a bit sad (as in lame) to feel like that but it's my honest opinion.
Comments
You're not alone. Being old enough to remember, I struggled with Roger Moore at first then came to at first accept then grow to love him being Bond (I've said more than once: you may not like his James Bond, but you can't help liking him). When Craig was cast I hoped that the same would happen- it sort of did, but not to anything like the same degree.
Gosh I'd completely forgotten about that one.
:v
(gotta love the British press /s)
I think his interpretation of Bond is very funny, much more so than Brosnan or Dalton.
The bigger problem is I think his films have been almost a complete shambles.
And even Casino Royale, which followed the plot structure so closely, missed much of the point of Fleming's story (e.g. FlemingBond's second kill was not easier than the first). The last three have had nothing to do with Fleming at all, and that's the scriptwriters' fault rather than the actors.
Of course he was executive producer of the last one, so he ends up owning responsibility for that shambles nonetheless.
I was ready for a new Bond and was disappointed when they announced Craig will be in bond 25.
Oh well. There's always bond 26.
Is that really the point of the story?
Anyway; Craig is clearly excellent. He’s charismatic and funny and feels convincingly extremely dangerous in a way that very few of his predecessors managed- the real ‘blunt instrument’. He’s also one of the few with actual tangible sex appeal: you didn’t see Pierce Brosnan getting made into a lolly! He’s the full package: I hope he stays for more.
well its certainly something that stuck out to me when I reread Fleming, and it made me think about the differences between the two interpretations of the character and how the different versions of the first two kills foreshadowed that. FlemingBond's first kill is clean and anonymous. He might almost think this job was going to be easy. Then the second is up close and very messy and prolonged. Thus he has to acknowledge the reality of what he is doing.
Whereas of course Craig's first kill is brutal and clumsy, smashing a man's face against a porcelain sink. Then it is his second that is cold and premeditated and he obviously feels nothing and will have no further qualms.
Right there is all the difference between Fleming's Bond and Craig's Bond.
Fleming's Bond regarded his job as a dirty damn business, and especially resented the assignments where he was required to kill in cold blood, the Living Daylights being the prime example.
That conflict where he can only really do that particular job, yet is haunted by the knowledge this life is wrong, is key to Fleming's Bond. It really bugs him and his only escape is amnesia.
Whereas Craig's Bond does not give a damn, and DenchM regards him as some sort of unreliable psychotic who kills so casually he never leaves alive any witness who could actually help make progress on his mission. She makes many such comments in the first two films, and Bond just rolls his eyes when she speaks like a teenager with attitude.
I don't disagree that Craig's Bond isn't really Fleming's Bond, but to be honest I think that's not an issue. Fleming's Bond doesn't really have a personality: he's just 'the hero'. He has a few traits tossed in there and likes a few brand names and taking a shower in a certain way, but otherwise the stories aren't really about him. In the same way that the films generally improve Fleming's plots (stuff like Goldfinger or On Her Majesty's are simply improved by the screenwriters), the new Bond of the Craig films is more interesting than the Fleming one. I tend to think the most novel-accurate version is Lazenby: he's tough, athletic and good-looking but otherwise: he's not really there. He says the things and throws the punches, but otherwise he's rather vacant and allows the viewer to project onto him whatever they like- which is what bookBond is like. I certainly don't buy that he's haunted by the knowledge that his job is wrong: I didn't get that from the books at all. That scene where Dalton says "If M fires me I'll thank him for it" - no way; that's not Fleming's Bond talking.
Don't get me wrong: the books are fantastic in their way- incredibly exciting and they conjure a fantastic mood. But they're not movies: and the makers of the movies have to adapt them in order to make great movies- you can't simply just put the pages on the screen- they're different media. The idea that the difficulty of the two initial kills he makes is intrinsic to the whole story and makes the film weaker I just don't buy. It's a fantastic film.
Craig's fine, but he's hardly "the greatest Bond there ever was". That title can only qualify for one man, and one man only, and that's Sean Connery. And I prefer Dalton and Brosnan over him as well, so there
I think it's a toss-up between Connery and Craig for the title of 'best Bond'. Could go either way.
+1 {[]
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I think we demand more complexity from characters nowadays. In the '50s, you expected the hero of a paperback to be too good to be true. A Bulldog Drummond clone. As Fleming said, these were "blood and thunder"stories. It was even this way with the 'adult adventure' books of The Executioner or Remo Williams, or even MacGuyver and Michael Knight on television.
Now, with TV series offering characters like Dexter and Villanelle, and books giving us Lisbeth Salander etc, strong characters give something for authors/directors/actors to boast about and hook people in.
The comments by several posters above who refer to him as appearing like a 'thug' or being 'monosyllabic' do have a significant point.
Whichever way you cut Bond, novels, continuation novels, Connery, Moore etc etc, he's always had an air of studied sophistication about him. Craig's Bond just doesn't. He's a modern 'action' hero lumbered with the same baggage they all have: psycho issues, personal issues, trauma issues; therefore he never says very much and when he does it's a riddle or a joke, he's simply not very personable. CR was great because the screenplay and the intoxicating Eva Green wheedled a decent performance from him. The others? Ah, well...
Bond might be disdainful of his superiors, but that's not disrespect, he just thinks they're making bad decisions; he never questions their authority. Craig's Bond seems to be very disrespectful and is constantly turfed out to fend for himself because he's made a 2 & 8 of things. Can't follow orders at all. Can't even be bothered to tell them he's still alive. The stuff in Turkey or wherever the opening scenes of Skyfall were set reveal this sweaty, raki drinking boozer who shags sexy women in his beach combo; he'd got no reason to do this and he looked bloody terrible; yes I know he was recovering from taking a bullet, but he couldn't even be bothered to shave. Anyway, that radioactive tip would have killed him way before he ever got back to M's apartment where he gets all stroppy again. I digress...
Additionally Bond is usually wearing a suit, if he isn't his clothes are still finely cut. Fleming is very clear about this and the early movies got it just about spot on. The rot set in on this in the latter stages of Roger Moore's tenancy with those bomber zip jackets. Dalton's wardrobe in LTK was particularly out of step. Craig hasn't even been given a decent suit to wear. They are the tightest fitting, most impractical outfits a OO7 has ever had to endure. Just watching him crammed into those Tom Ford three pieces at the end of Skyfall made me weep for his balls and his ribcage. Seriously, the man can't even hide his gun with that combo on.
And he can't stand like a normal person. Why are his arms so far from his sides and his legs so far apart? What's he trying to prove. He doesn't come across as macho, although he certainly seems thuggish, to me he just looks ridiculous. CR apart, of course...
I don't mind him being blonde, but does he have any hair left? He may as well be replaced by Jason Statham.
While Bond is a rampant misogynist in the books and treats most of his women shoddily in the sixties and seventies, we'd broken the back of most of that by the time Pierce came along. DC has had a great love affair in CR and this seems to have made the writers think he can be mean to most of his women friends from this point on. If he has any relationships at all they are framed without the slightest wit or substance. He flirts outrageously with the bosses secretary and even with the boss, but those relationships are chaste. He's just no fun to be around. Even his delivery of the clunky one-liners seems designed to be significant rather than merely funny. Why does every sentence have to mean something? This isn't epic high-brow literature, its paperback thriller territory for goodness sake.
I'm not a big DC fan. It's not his fault. He was great in Our Friends in the North and Layer Cake and Casino Royale, but these recent few Bond movies have done him no favours in my opinion.
I'll stop now, it's late and I'm sad The Big Bang Theory has ended. The Bond team should hire a few of those writers for a swift one-liner. Might cheer up Craig's demeanour no-end.
The 'blunt instrument' indeed.
He only acted well because of Green? C'mon.
Tell that to everyone on here who spend serious dosh replicating that outfit!
I think you need to read your Fleming a bit more. Bond pretty much only wears one suit for most of the novels, plus another houndstooth one for the country which is described in various states of being 'old', 'battered' and 'yellowing'. He's frequently just in short shirtsleeves or shorts, wears the occasional windcheater (just as Roger did) and even wears jeans a couple of times.
Dalton's outfit in LTK (especially in Key West) is pretty much exactly what Fleming's Bond would wear, and CraigBond updates the Fleming wardrobe pretty effectively whilst upgrading it to suit how we're accustomed to seeing Bond; not the slightly shabby Bond of the books. Brosnan wearing a suit to clean his teeth and go scuba diving was pushing it a bit far.
The Spectre ones were indeed a weird fit, but I'm not sure how you can claim he was miscast on that basis!
Eh?
And he's 'blond'.
Not really sure what you're on about to be honest. He does the jokes. He delivers them well.
He's an alpha male type, which we haven't seen since Connery and Lazenby, and it's a great fit for Bond. He should be A Real Man, as much fun as it was to watch Roger and Pierce flounce through their fight scenes, and he has the brooding presence of a killer. That doesn't mean he can't be the sophisticate that we're used to seeing Bond as, and if he didn't look so good in all of those expensive outfits he wouldn't get so many modelling gigs!
Craig is very much the literary Bond, a blunt instrument. Although throughout his films he has slowly changed the character, to
What many traditionalists expect. I also find his use of the
Comic one liner, very good more Connery than Moore in his
Delivery.
One phrase has become the informed description of a one-note portrayal.
No. She brought the performance from him and he from her because they had a decent screenplay with multi-layered characters to interpret. She is exceptionally good and that aids his characterisation enormously.
I don't understand this comment. Is it a joke from a Daniel Craig Bond film?
Well, I haven't read any Fleming novels since 2009, so I've probably forgotten the details. Whichever it is, I still can't get my head around DC's outfits. The best ones seem to be his swimming gear. He has less to wear and therefore less to ruin. The tux in CR was a good fit, but since then he just looks like rent-a-mannequin in holiday clobber who has a bad eye for sartorial elegance. This isn't his fault, its the wardrobe department's, but it doesn't help me feel comfortable about his portrayal because he looks so, well, uncomfortable all the time.
I'll accept that. I had this vague impression his hair had receded and got much thinner, but I am wrong.
The jokes have ceased to become throwaway lines which remove tension, instead they have become integrated into the unending character psychoanalysis of the protagonists in the latter three or four films. Again, this isn't his fault. It's the writers, who don't seem to understand the role humour plays in a thriller. That's why many commentators consider his Bond to be so serious - it's because he's rarely being simply, outrageously funny (i.e. "I think he got the point"). When he is, it usually falls very flat. he's better at the psychobabble stuff.
Are you suggesting Sir Roger or Pierce did not interpret Bond as 'a real man' - I am disdainfully using lower case letters. I'll leave aside exactly what you think 'a real man' should be. Anyway, who's flouncing through the fight scenes in TND or FYEO? And surely Craig only gets modelling gigs because of product placement. I doubt he'd get a look in otherwise.
Thanks for replying in detail. I like a nice chat.
Well if you're comparing to Fleming, he didn't exactly do nuanced characterisation for Bond either. Craig's Bond is actually way more interesting than Fleming's: there's not that much on the page.
It's very easy to use soundbites like 'one-note' to wave it away, but it's just not true. Yes he's more brutal than usual Bonds, but that's not all he is: just try watching the films. How many other Bonds do we see cry, fall in love, see suffer etc.?
Personally I think she was miscast: she can't deliver the banter lines, isn't hugely convincing and can't even do the accent! She also does this odd thing of delivering each line like she's totally emptied her lungs before saying it.
But ignoring that, the idea that he's only good because she's there is insulting and a bit ridiculous. Is Mikkleson not a good actor? Dench? His scenes with them fall flat? C'mon.
Is it complicated? People on this site like that outfit and replicate it. I'm not sure how else to phrase it...?
But that's what you're criticising him on, and you're getting them wrong. It's not 'details' if you're saying Fleming's Bond dresses in a way he doesn't.
Uncomfortable? What are you talking about? You were just complaining he doesn't look as smart as Fleming's Bond should do...?
Which lines are you thinking of here?
Forgive me, but when you're going for 'he can't wear clothes, can only act well when there's a certain actress with him, is balding, can't do jokes' etc. etc. I feel you're overstating your case a bit. It's hard to take seriously.
Do you think they did?!
Can you really not see the difference between Connery and Moore in terms of physicality and sheer testosterone? I'm not criticising Roger: that was his style and it was great. But one is a brawler and one is a charmer: isn't that obvious?
Well they are! That's what I'm talking about. They're fine in them but not convincing.
Yeah sure 8-) What do you even mean 'product placement'? That's what all modelling basically is: they show off the clothes and list what they are!
I wasn't, I thought you were.
I don't know which performance you were watching. Very harsh criticism. Rather insulting; which is odd given you consider my well structured comments on DCs performance an 'insult'
What? You mean people paid good money to look such a debauched mess?
I did say 'whichever way', nonetheless I'd like it noted there is certainly a difference between looking smart and looking comfortable
Maybe most of them.
Ahh, you are starting to understand my chatter. C'mon, I mentioned James Bond and The Big Bang Theory in the same post...
Does a trained killer have to be like DC? You're making assumptions about masculinity which do not necessarily apply.
Thanks for the well reasoned reply.
The Bond films have survived by continually traversing an arc between two poles – serious and comedic. A balancing act, not always delicately performed.
Some of us - a diminishing minority nowadays, no doubt - still tend to think of 007 as that saturnine chap adorning the painted covers of the 1950s Pan paperbacks. An image strikingly embodied by Connery in his first couple of outings, before Eon worked out what best pleased mainstream audiences made up of more than just those “red-blooded heterosexual males” who constituted Fleming’s original target readership.
Much later, when the franchise was flagging, Dalton tried to resurrect the Book Bond. He treated the role with respect. No ironic distance. No self-spoofing. A purists’ 007. Craig may lack the advantage of Dalton’s physical resemblance to the Book Bond, but he can’t be accused of not making an effort to play the character, albeit within the constraints of the material he’s given. Anyway, the Book Bond is paradoxical and contradictory, a dangerous-looking tough customer who’s nevertheless capable of succumbing to sentimentality and being “old-maidish” and fussy in his habits. Fleming’s daydream version of himself. Has any actor so far managed to convey all of those facets convincingly? (Why, I wonder, does Lazenby’s performance come to mind as perhaps best suggesting those contradictory qualities?)
Yet for a vast swathe of the international public, James Bond, if he registers at all nowadays, is a cartoonish caricature. A punning super-sexist in a perma-tux, equipped with a gadget for every possible contingency, dispatching assailants with nonchalant élan, dispensing groan-inducing quips while shooting his cuffs, straightening his tie and sipping at his vodka martini. Never so much as a hair out of place, with Vic Flick always standing by, just offscreen, ready to strike up his theme tune at the slightest provocation. Like one of those old Action Man dolls - pull a little cord attached to his chest and out come the stock phrases: “Bond, James Bond”, “Shaken, not stirred”. A quaint, painfully dated paragon of what, way back in a woefully “unwoke” era, passed for sophistication. The Alan Partridge/Austin Powers idea of Mr Cool, forever going up against Nehru-jacketed, cat-stroking megavillains. “We meet again, Meestair Bond!” Countless Bank Holiday TV repeats, DVDs and Blu-rays of half a century’s worth of films help keep this hackneyed persona in the public consciousness. Good fun when you’re in the mood, but where else can you go with him? How do you keep the money rolling in, going forward?
Well, you try rebooting him as the tough-as-nails “blunt instrument”, the psychologically screwed-up loose cannon. A new interpretation for tough new times. Someone to give the likes of Bourne a run for their money. Not your dad’s Double-O-Seven. Maybe still not transgressive enough to earn Guardian opinion columnists’ Seal of Approval, but sufficiently “grounded in reality” to at least make the character a little more palatable to modern tastes, more culturally respectable.
This was, more or less, the assignment Craig took on – build a whole new fanbase, male and female. Trouble is, keep reinventing, reconstructing and rehabilitating Bond and you may have successfully kept up with the times and “repositioned your brand” in an increasingly tough marketplace, but you end up with a whole new character entirely. Not such a problem for younger audiences who come to the franchise without a load of sentimental baggage, but a matter of some regret for us sad old sods who appreciate the aesthetics of 007, enjoy witty variations on time-honoured themes, and still remember being a bit pissed off when they first saw DN and noticed that the makeup people hadn’t bothered to paint in a scar on Connery’s face.
That said, the Craig films have started edging back toward the comedic pole, dipping a tentative toe into Cartoon Bond territory, so who knows what’s next…
I try to separate the literary James Bond from the Film James Bond and am aware that he must evolve from the time of his creation by Fleming, otherwise all the films would have to be set in the 1950s, but I think the Craig era has gone a little too far in changing Bond and are at the risk of making him just another generic action hero.
Yes, Craig is very like McQueen in Bullitt, and the motorbike scene in QOS reminded me of McQueen too.