Time to accept Craig as Bond
The news is out today that the sequel for Casino Royale is underway. Barbara Broccoli is hard at work on an original script and Daniel Craig is already signed up and locked into his second Bond role. Meanwhile hardcore Bond fans are finding it incredibly hard to accept that Craig is the new face of Bond and they've started an online petition to collect names of people who will boycott the film until Pierce Brosnan is returned to the role.
Yet all this time, while the petition pushes over the fifteen thousand name mark, the filming continues on the new episode in the franchise, and Craig does his thing in front of the camera. Meanwhile he's been signed up for a sequel which is also in development.
So is it too late, and should these fans wake up to reality? Is it time to accept Daniel Craig as the new Bond?
Thinking back, was there this uproar when Roger Moore or Sean Connery were replaced? Why the fascination with Brosnan as Bond, and is that really the problem?
Perhaps not. This new Bond is set to be rugged, dangerous, dirty, and not like the suave womanising, wise cracking, over confident Bond we've come to know and love. Is it in fact this that is the problem? When George Lazenby took the reigns there were similar voices of dissent, and he too played a very different Bond. In that film Bond had married, put away his womanising ways and settled down, then he became a man of revenge and anger.
A similar thing happened with Timothy Dalton, his character was also settling down from the Bond ways. Not smoking, becoming monogamous, and much more serious than before. His outing too was cut somewhat short.
Okay, these actors have all been a turn away from the classic looking Bond that undoubtedly Brosnan epitomises, and both Moore and Connery come close to. Yet is it perhaps more that these actors have become Bond at a time when the character is undergoing major changes? Changes that the fan base just don't want to see?
Stepping back from the whole franchise for a moment, Hollywood is heavily relying on remakes and franchises, and let's face it the majority of these are very poor. In this time of sequels and prequels, perhaps it is a good thing to think that some franchises are not resting on a tried and tested formula, and are in fact trying to revitalise their series and characters? I think it is.
Bond has been the same for a very long time, and when the actor outlives his contract, becomes too old to play the part, or just simply moves on, we look to replace them with a carbon copy, a perfect Bond. It's come to the point where the films are following the same formula, only the gadgets and explosions get bigger. The time has come to change Bond or lose him forever.
What better way to change him than to add some realism to the character. By taking him back to an original Fleming story that has remained untainted by the film Bond treatment and filming it in the intended style, tough, hard and flawed. Frankly I'd rather that than lose the character.
With that, out goes the image of Bond we've sat through time and time again, for there's no way that character could work when returning to the source material of Fleming and adding that handful of reality. So why not accept a new Bond image? With a different hair colour, a girlfriend, human traits and flaws.
It's time to accept a new Bond, and it's time to accept Daniel Craig as that Bond. After all filming is underway and Craig is already hard at work. Why not welcome a renewed franchise rather than cling to an aging and flagging series?
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