If Daniel Craig's reign as James Bond ended with Skyfall instead of No Time To Die, this would have fixed two problems with the long-running spy franchise. The James Bond franchise is filled with interesting missed opportunities, from Pierce Brosnan almost playing the fourth Bond to Die Another Day's canceled cameo from Sean Connery's 007 (which, if it had happened, would have confirmed the popular fan theory that James Bond is just a codename passed down between different secret agents). However, one of the later "what if" scenarios that would have saved the series a lot of grief occurred between two of Daniel Craig's James Bond movies.
2012's Skyfall featured Craig's best James Bond plot. This surprisingly poignant and personal adventure saw him face off against a ruthless villain who eventually managed to kill Judi Dench's M. If this had been Craig's final Bond movie and the actor had wrapped up his tenure in the role here. This could have seen him leave on a high and allowed the franchise to continue this story with a new actor playing the same version of 007. Instead, however, Craig went on to star in Spectre and No Time To Die, and the eventual dramatic ending of his James Bond arc left no room for a replacement.
Skyfall Was The Apex Of Daniel Craig's Bond Era
While Spectre's original plot brought back Skyfall's cleverest storytelling elements, the 2015 movie was a letdown compared with its predecessor. Skyfall was superb, and Craig's subsequent James Bond adventures struggled to measure up, even though No Time To Die significantly improved on Spectre. Even after No Time To Die, Skyfall is still widely regarded as the high point of the Craig era, and this is reflected in the fact that Craig became less outwardly interested in playing Bond after the 2012 movie. In interviews, at least, he had a love/hate relationship with the part, famously claiming he would quicker slit his wrists than play 007 again after Spectre.
With Craig's disinterest in the franchise considered, ending on Skyfall would have been an excellent way for the actor to bow out. While Spectre and No Time To Die were never anywhere near as silly as Roger Moore's wild James Bond movies, they were campier, goofier efforts than Craig's earlier, more grounded 007 movies. Additionally, when viewed as a standalone trilogy, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall felt tonally cohesive, while the later Craig movies were more uneven. Not only that but recasting James Bond two films earlier in the series would have solved another significant issue with the franchise.
Recasting Bond For Spectre Solves A Bond 26 Problem
Since Daniel Craig stayed in the role, his version of James Bond had to die. It was almost inevitable, given how much trauma the character has been through and how much the post-9/11 reinvention of the franchise insisted that, for all his wrist bombs and train-set fist fights, this version of the spy wasn't invulnerable. So, while No Time To Die cut its Spectre connection, the final Daniel Craig movie still needed to be a fitting send-off for Craig's version of 007, and, after all of the brutality that this version of the character had both inflicted and endured, there was no way his story would end with a cheeky quip.
However, if Craig had left after Skyfall, the Quantum/SPECTRE storyline could have continued with the new actor. This is how the James Bond franchise worked in the 70s and 80s when the series often carried over some villains and supporting characters while dropping any inconvenient plot points or love interests after changing actors. However, famously, that is not what Craig did. As a result, James Bond died (although not as brutally as he did in No Time To Die's first draft death) and, as a result of this, Bond 26 needs to do a total reset of the franchise timeline for the first time in the history of the series.
Why Daniel Craig's 5-Movie 007 Arc Still Works
Even though it meant that Bond 26 was left with the tricky task of completely reinventing 007's story, Craig seeing through his Bond arc from start to finish is still something to be celebrated. Despite the uneven tone of the actor's final two outings, No Time To Die is still a fitting, poignant end to his time in part, and some of Craig's most memorable moments as 007 come from Spectre and his Bond swan song. The Daniel Craig era is filled with scenes that didn't quite work or moments that felt airlifted in from a sillier version of the series, but the five-movie arc still functions as a story.
Before Craig took on the role, Britney Spears auditioned for a Bond role, with franchise producers meeting the singer's representatives in 2004. The James Bond franchise was well on its way to becoming a campy, irrelevant mess, taking the Madonna cameos and invisible cars from Die Another Day and pushing them to even further, more ludicrous heights. With Casino Royale alone, Craig's bruising, humorless take on James Bond brought back the character's vulnerability and humanity. By the time Skyfall arrived in cinemas, the actor had even started to access some of 007's sense of humor again. Admittedly, Spectre and No Time To Die struggled to balance camp and self-seriousness at times.
However, that didn't stop Daniel Craig's five-movie arc as James Bond from being a success. No Time To Die's Bond death killed the codename theory and effectively ended any chances of viewers seeing Craig's version of 007 onscreen again, but the movie also provided a moving coda for this version of the character as well as trying out a risky franchise first. Eventually, someone was going to be the first Bond to die onscreen. While Craig could have called it a day after Skyfall, his James Bond still came to a dignified end when the actor opted not to, and the five-movie arc still worked as a story, despite the risky ending of No Time To Die.