Daniel Craig’s Bond in Spectre looks ripe for replacement

If Daniel Craig isn’t prepared to do another Bond film, who will fill his patent leather shoes?

The Sightgeist: Jon Kudelka

It was shortly after the opening scene of Spectre, the new James Bond film, when my friend leaned over and expounded her thoughts on Daniel Craig. We’d been arguing about his appeal, or lack thereof, over lunch. Five minutes into the film her thoughts crystallised. “I just don’t fancy him,” she hissed. “He looks like a nightclub bouncer!”

As an ardent fan of Craig and his reinvention of Ian Fleming’s legendary spy, I couldn’t allow this remark to stand. “Exactly!” I countered, restating my argument in a hot whisper. After the frivolity of Roger Moore and suave bonhomie of Pierce Brosnan, Craig was the facelift 007 needed. To do Fleming’s original creation justice you want a bloke with a bit of spit in his eye. And for me, that bloke is Craig.

It’s hard to believe that before he even made his debut as Bond in Casino Royale (2006) Craig, then 37, had been deemed a casting blunder. The producers had opted for “James Bland”, the critics said. How wrong they were. For it was clear from the opening sequence of that first filmthat Craig had reinjected 007 with his most appealing — and polarising — traits: grit, hedonism and ruthlessness. In short, he had brought back the nightclub bouncer strut.

Yet, despite thoroughly demolishing my friend’s argument, I couldn’t help but feel a pang before, during and after Spectre. Before seeing the film I’d made that elementary error of reading the reviews and they were lukewarm. Seeing the film confirmed my fears.

Sure, the stunts are spectacular; there’s an excellent blue between Bond and a bearded colossus on a train; and of course, there’s French siren Lea Seydoux. But not once did my heart race. At 148 minutes, it is long (I caught my friend nodding off twice) and predictable. And perhaps its most fatal flaw: it fails to conjure any suspense — the driving force in the Fleming novels.

Soon I began to think the unthinkable: what if it were Craig’s fault that I felt so indifferent? Could it be that I want someone new to step in?

While Craig is reported as saying he’s happy to sign on to a fifth and final outing, he’s certainly not showing it. He has gone so far as to say he’d rather slash his wrists than do another one. He later clarified that, saying he’d just been caught on an off day.

Off day or not, Craig, 47, looks fed up. Each film is a roughly two-year commitment, and that’s not including the slog of promotion. In every photo shoot Craig looks to be saying, “Just take the damn shot.”

Who then could step into the breach? Topping the list of potential successors is Damian Lewis, who starred as US marine sergeant Nicholas Brody in the TV series Homeland. At 44, he would be older than Craig when he debuted. But he’s a plausible choice and in the Craig mould.

Another English actor, Tom Hardy, who recently starred in Legend, the biopic on the Kray twins, has long been touted as a potential Bond.

But if you’ve seen his portrayal of notorious criminal Charles Bronson in Nicolas Winding Refn’s psychological thriller then Bond might be a little humdrum for Hardy. Then there’s Tom Hiddleston, better known as Loki in the Marvel series. At 34, he’s got age on his side, and as a classically trained actor he would meet Fleming’s aristocratic stylings. But the most interesting option is Anglo-African actor Idris Elba. I used to bristle at the idea of changing Bond for the sake of it. To do so would be to succumb to the very force he resists: political correctness.

But after seeing Spectre I’m open to the idea. After all, Bond’s cinematic evolution has always been a reflection of — and rebellion against — the attitudes and views of the day.

Casting Elba would, if anything, subvert the typecasting to which Hollywood is so prone. That said, Elba has already signalled his reticence, saying he fears being forever known as the “black Bond”.

Perhaps the people who originally floated the idea merely see Elba for what he is: a talented, versatile actor with the requisite, charm, guile, and ruthless aversion to political correctness that makes 007.