James Bond

Background

In 2004, two years after Pierce Brosnan's final screen appearance as Bond in Die Another Day, Eon Productions decided to reboot the James Bond franchise with an adaptation of Fleming's 1953 novel Casino Royale, the first novel in the Bond series. Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who own the rights to the franchise and the character, decided to portray Bond, who had been an ageless character in 20 films since 1962's Dr. No, at the beginning of his career as 007, a secret agent in the British secret service agency MI-6 with the discretionary "license to kill". Paul Haggis, who co-wrote the script with Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, said that they wanted "to do for Bond what Batman Begins did for Batman".

In October 2005, Daniel Craig was cast as Bond for the first film in the reboot series, Casino Royale, after signing a deal to play the character in four films. Director Martin Campbell decided to cast Craig after seeing his performance in the 2004 thriller film Layer Cake.

The casting of the blond-haired, 5 feet 10 inches (178 cm) Craig was initially controversial, as the actor did not fit the traditional portrayal of Bond as "tall, dark, and handsome". After the film premiered, however, Craig won acclaim for his characterisation of Bond, with critics praising him for bringing both a dark, morally ambiguous edge to 007 and a humanity and vulnerability to the character that had not been seen in previous portrayals.

Fictional character biography

Character's life prior to the films

The Craig reboot series borrowed several details of Bond's early life originally created by Fleming, while incorporating geopolitical events that occurred in the 1990s and 2000s. Like Fleming's original character, Bond is the son of Sir Andrew Bond and his wife Monique, both of whom died in a climbing accident when Bond was 12. Before the death of his parents, Bond was educated in Switzerland and in West Germany, where his father was stationed as a Vickers executive. Bond briefly lived in Skyfall Lodge, his family's ancestral home in Scotland, before being adopted by family friend Hannes Oberhauser. Following Oberhauser's death in an avalanche, Bond was raised by his aunt, Charmain Bond, and attended Britannia Royal Naval College.

After conducting a year of general sea service, Bond served as an intelligence officer aboard HMS Exeter during Operation Granby. He subsequently transferred to the SBS, during which he was attached to 030 Special Forces Unit, seeing covert service in Iraq, Somalia, Iran and Libya. In Bosnia, he was credited with saving the lives of nearly 100 men from a Serbian militia. He was recruited by the RNR Defence Intelligence Group and awarded the rank of Commander. His work provided vital intelligence during key moments with Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Indonesia, China and North Korea. In Libya, Bond was able to secure detailed assessments of the status of the Libyan government's reputed financial ties to numerous terrorist organizations. During his tenure at the RNR DI Group, he attended specialized courses at Cambridge (where he achieved a first in Oriental Languages), Oxford and other institutions. Bond left the RNR DI Group after recruitment by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) at the age of 30.

Bond then was appointed Senior Advisor at the British Embassy in Rome. He was promoted to Ops Specialist simultaneous with this posting. Although based nominally in Rome, his duties took him to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, France, Spain, China, and the United States. He worked back-channel sources to aid in solving a minor crisis between the U.S. and China. Afterward, he was posted to the MI6 headquarters in London, where he continued to work as a Mission Specialist (within Black Ops) in such locations as Cuba, the United States, Austria, Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Sudan, and the UAE.

Appearances

Films

Bond is promoted to MI-6's "00" branch as agent 007, with a discretionary "license to kill", after assassinating corrupt MI-6 Section Chief Dryden (Malcolm Sinclair), who was selling state secrets, and his terrorist contact, Fisher (Darwin Shaw). Following a botched mission in Madagascar in which he kills bombmaker Mollaka Danso (Sébastien Foucan) and creates an international incident by blowing up an embassy, he is nearly fired by MI-6 Chief M (Judi Dench), but he redeems himself after foiling a terrorist bombing of an aerospace prototype.

M sends Bond to Casino Royale in Montenegro on a mission to bankrupt terrorist financier Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) in a high-stakes poker game to force him to give MI-6 information about his clients in return for political asylum. He is accompanied by French secret agent Rene Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) and British Treasury agent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green); Bond and Vesper eventually fall in love.

During the poker game, Le Chiffre almost kills Bond by poisoning his drink with digitalis, but Vesper saves his life, and Bond ultimately wins the game and bankrupts Le Chiffre with additional financial backing from CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). Later that night, however, Le Chiffre kidnaps Bond and Vesper and reveals that Mathis is working for him. Le Chiffre tortures Bond for the password of the account in which his money has been stored, but terrorist liaison Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) interrupts and executes Le Chiffre for losing his clients' funds.

While recovering in a hospital in Venice, Bond has Mathis arrested, and decides to resign from MI-6 and start a new life with Vesper. Soon afterward, however, M calls him and reveals that the money from the poker tournament was never transferred back to MI-6, and Bond figures out that Vesper embezzled it. He finds Vesper handing the money over to a group of terrorists, who take her prisoner; he manages to kill Vesper's kidnappers, but he fails to stop her from committing suicide by drowning herself.

He deals with the loss by renouncing Vesper as a traitor, but M tells him that Vesper only betrayed him because the organisation behind Le Chiffre had kidnapped her boyfriend and threatened to kill him unless she did their bidding; she also reveals that Vesper made a deal with Le Chiffre's superiors to give them the money in return for sparing Bond's life. Bond finds Mr. White's name in Vesper's cell phone, tracks him to his home in Lake Como, and shoots him in the leg. As he takes White into custody, he introduces himself: "The name's Bond, James Bond."

Video games

Craig lent his voice and likeness to four James Bond video games created by Activision: 007: Quantum of Solace (2008), GoldenEye 007 (2010), James Bond 007: Blood Stone (2010), and 007 Legends (2012, Likeness only).

Casting

After Pierce Brosnan, who had portrayed Bond since 1995's GoldenEye, retired from the role in February 2004, several actors were considered for the part, including Karl Urban, Goran Višnjić, Sam Worthington, Dougray Scott, and Henry Cavill.

In October 2005, British actor Daniel Craig was cast as James Bond in Casino Royale, an adaptation of Ian Fleming's 1953 novel of the same name, which introduced the Bond character. Craig read all of Fleming's novels to prepare for the part, and cited as influences the Mossad and British Secret Service agents who served as advisers on the set of Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich, in which he played a supporting role.

Craig was initially a controversial choice to portray Bond, with some critics and fans protesting that he did not fit Fleming's characterisation of 007 as "tall, dark, and handsome"; there were even Internet campaigns, such as "danielcraigisnotbond.com", threatening to boycott the film.

Reception

Casino Royale

Casino Royale was a critical and commercial success, and Craig's performance as Bond was universally praised, despite the earlier controversy about his suitability for the part. Some newspaper columnists and critics considered Craig's performance worthy of an Academy Award nomination.

Critics praised Craig for making Bond a more complex, morally ambiguous character than previous 007s. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave Casino Royale four stars out of four, wrote that "Craig makes a superb Bond ... who gives the sense of a hard man, wounded by life and his job, who nevertheless cares about people and right and wrong." Time Out New York's Joshua Rothkopf called Craig "the best Bond in the franchise's history... This is a screwed-up Bond, a rogue Bond, a bounder, a scrapper and, in the movie's astoundingly bleak coda, an openhearted lover." Paul Arendt of BBC Films wrote, "Daniel Craig is not a good Bond. He's a great Bond. Specifically, he is 007 as conceived by Ian Fleming—a professional killing machine, a charming, cold-hearted patriot with a taste for luxury. Craig is the first actor to really nail 007's defining characteristic: he's an absolute swine."

Four of the previous actors to have portrayed James Bond – Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan – all praised Craig's performance. Moore in particular called Craig's Bond "the Bond", the definitive version of the character.

Quantum of Solace

Craig's performance in the following film in the series, Quantum of Solace, was also critically praised, even as the film itself received mixed reviews. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, "Quantum of Solace isn't as good as Casino Royale: the smart elegance of Daniel Craig's Bond debut has been toned down in favour of conventional action. But the man himself powers this movie; he carries the film: it's an indefinably difficult task for an actor. Craig measures up." Shawn Levy of The Oregonian wrote, "Craig is a substantial actor who convinces us at once of the character's human pain and animal ferocity". Craig himself, however, described his performance in Quantum of Solace as his least favourite of all of the Bond films he appeared in.

Skyfall

Craig won widespread critical acclaim for his performance as an embittered, physically vulnerable Bond in Skyfall, his third appearance in the franchise. Ryan Gilbey of The New Statesman praised Craig for having "relaxed into Bond without losing any steeliness". Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote of Craig, "He owns Bond now, and the role is undoubtedly his for as long as he might want it." Philip French of The Guardian wrote that Craig "manages to get out of the shadow of Connery", while Daniel Krupa of IGN called Craig's performance "defining", praising the actor for playing Bond as "brutal when he needs to be, and charming and suave when the situation arises".

Spectre

Upon the release of 2015's Spectre, the fourth Bond film starring Craig, some critics remarked that his performance suggested that he was growing tired of the role. Craig, who broke his leg during filming, expressed frustration with the franchise during an interview with Time Out, saying he would "rather slash [his] wrists" than star in another Bond film, and that he wanted to "move on" from the part.

Even critics who praised Craig's performance in the film noted that the role was wearing thin. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called Craig a "tightly coiled, deadpan funny, hardcore charmer", but opined that "Bond looks weary and battle-scarred, and he's getting a bit sloppy in his work". Lawrence Toppman of the Charlotte Observer characterised Craig's performance in the film as "Bored, James Bored", while Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Craig... seems to be feeling increasingly strait-jacketed as Bond".

No Time to Die

For Craig's final film as James Bond, he portrayed the secret agent as having been retired and out of action for five years when he decides to engage once more with a world of espionage that has moved on without him. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga compared Bond to a "wounded animal" and described his state of mind as "struggling to deal with his role as a '00 agent'. The world's changed. The rules of engagement aren't what they used to be. The rules of espionage are darker in this era of asymmetric warfare".

Critics praised Craig for playing an older, wiser Bond. Jason Solomons of TheWrap wrote that Craig "may well have delivered the most complex and layered Bond performance of them all," and that "You feel all the wear and tear on Craig's body and face, all the strain on Bond of having to save the world one last time (again) yet also all the tantalizing freedom of someone approaching the end of a long run." John Nugent of Empire wrote, "Craig can still wear the hell out of a tux, but he has a few more years on his face than he did in 2006's Casino Royale, and plays into them. His performance — which has always been rich with contradictions, the playboyish smile contrasted with a stoic inner turmoil — is the most interesting it has ever been in this film. This Bond is more passionate, more impulsive, more sensitive and — dare we say — more romantic, breathing remarkable new dimensions into a decades-old character."

Regarding Bond's death at the end of the film, Craig explained that he had first brought up the possibility of eventually killing Bond off with producer Barbara Broccoli in 2006, following the release of Casino Royale. He also commented that Bond sacrificing his life to protect his loved ones made for what he considered a perfect end to the character's journey: "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."