SINGAPORE – James Bond the movie character first appeared in Dr. No (1962) and in several more films as a British gentleman who enjoyed good food and drink, who smoked and used coercion to get what he wanted from women.
English actor Daniel Craig took over as secret agent 007 in Casino Royale (2006). That movie – as well as the following three films (Quantum Of Solace, 2008; Skyfall, 2012; and Spectre, 2015) – showed a Bond that had evolved with the times.
This Bond was a non-smoker with a gym-refined physique, who entered into affairs that were wholly consensual. He falls in love and endures heartbreak.
Craig steps away from the role with his last Bond film, No Time To Die, which opens in cinemas on Sept 30.
The much-delayed title made its world premiere in London on Sept 28 and is set to open around the world in the next few days and in the United States on Oct 8. On the review-aggregating Metacritic website, it has a score of 76, indicating generally favourable reviews.
The actor and American director Cary Joji Fukunaga are asked at a virtual press conference: Could there one day be a Bond so politically correct that he would no longer be recognisable as Bond?
raig, 53, says: “No, there’s a lot of conversation now about where we have taken this Bond.”
In the new film, Nomi, a black woman played by British actress Lashana Lynch, takes over Bond’s 007 licence to kill after he retires.
Also, with the film marking the end of the Craig chapter, there has been chatter about the film possibly being sentimental.
The rumours grew stronger after director Fukunaga was quoted in trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter saying that Sean Connery’s Bond in Thunderball (1965) raped a woman in a scene that, at the time, would have been viewed as seduction.
“But I think people should wait and see. They are worrying too much. We haven’t tried to make this Bond so politically correct because we are bringing something to a close,” he says.
“The contradictions about the character of Bond, about who he is, are still in place. They are different from how they were when Sean Connery or even when Roger Moore did it, but they are still very much in place,” he says.
In No Time To Die, Bond has retired. American intelligence officer Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) seeks his help in locating a missing Russian scientist whose trail would lead to mastermind Safin (Rami Malek), a terrorist leader with genocide on his mind.
Unlike his character who is lured out of retirement, Craig ruled out the possibility that he would come back to play Bond.
“I’ve done five movies. I’ve had an amazing, amazing experience, but it’s time to move on,” he says. But he says that he would never consider retiring as an actor – “I don’t know what that would look like”.
He is married to British-American actress Rachel Weisz, with whom he shares a daughter. He has another daughter from a previous relationship with actress Fiona Loudon.
Over five films, he is proudest of how the production team has kept the stories interlinked. Previously, Bond films did not rely much on story continuity, despite using recurring characters played by the same actors.
“I feel the five films work as one narrative thread, which hopefully made the movies more engrossing,” he says.
Fukunaga, 44, who was seated next to Craig at the conference, also addressed speculation that the Bond in the new film would be unrecognisably gentle and mild.
Bond is an outsider, says the director. He is a civil servant who hates authority yet willing to assassinate on behalf of the state as a double-O agent. That internal conflict was baked into the character by Ian Fleming, author of the books that were the source material for the films.
“That stems from how Fleming wrote the character after his experiences in World War II. So I think the DNA of the character can never change,” he says.
However, with every movie, Bond “has evolved with the times”. That ability to respond to current realities helps explain his appeal, one that has endured for five decades.
“It’s a character in constant development – he is always being renewed,” says Fukunaga.
English actress Naomie Harris, 45, returns as Eve Moneypenny, Bond’s friend in the spy agency MI6 and secretary of agency head M (Ralph Fiennes). In the new film, she is a person who is “at peace with herself”.
“In Skyfall, we saw that she wasn’t really suited to being out in the field and wanted to be behind a desk,” she says. That is where she is in No Time To Die: desk-bound and content.
Saying goodbye to Craig will be tough, she says in a separate online interview.
“If anybody asks, ‘Who is your favourite (Bond)?’, and I really do think it’s Daniel because he brought such humanity, vulnerability and sensitivity that I haven’t seen in any of the other Bonds. He made Bond a man of the 21st century and I really admire that,” she says.
No Time To Die picks up after the events of the previous film, Spectre. It deals with the aftermath of an MI6 shattered, both by explosives and by the betrayal at the top levels of the organisation. The terror organisation Spectre, headed by Ernest Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), has been uncovered and found to be responsible for unfortunate events in Bond’s life.
“The loose ends are tied up in the movie,” she says. There will not be a need to revisit any story points in future films, adding that fans are owed this clean break with the past when a new chapter begins following the selection of the new Bond, expected to happen next year (2022).
“The film is the completion of Daniel’s journey as Bond. So whoever comes in next, I think, will have to start afresh,” she says.
No Time To Die opens in cinemas on Sept 30.
