Daniel Craig will show more skin in the upcoming No Time to Die than Bond girls, says the 53-year-old star. As the 25th installment in the iconic spy franchise and the last of Craig’s career as 007, No Time to Die has a great deal of expectation heaped upon it. Whether or not it can move forward in a new direction that suits the current zeitgeist is no easy task, and there has been much debate in recent years over who can help give Bond new life after Craig.
Of course, the extensive delays that have occurred as a result of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic have played no small role in the somewhat tense environment surrounding No Time to Die. This isn’t the first time that an outside event has had the potential to affect the latest Bond installment, either. In 2008, when Casino Royale follow-up, Quantum of Solace, began shooting, it didn’t have a finished script, thanks to the writers’ strike. The end result was a Bond film that is widely considered to be the weakest of Craig’s tenure as the super spy. There’s also the issue of a franchise that has depended on a certain degree of toxic masculinity to build momentum over the years. Gone are the days where a hero treats women as objects – something the Bond series has had difficulty jettisoning.
What is promising about No Time to Die is that steps have already been taken to push Bond into a new era. The fact that Phoebe Waller-Bridge was brought on to polish and rewrite the script, means that she’s only the second woman ever to work as a screenwriter on one of the franchise’s entries. What’s more, Craig himself knows that it’s time for Bond to change, and as The Guardian recently reported, 007 is even ready to bare more flesh for the cameras than any of the Bond girls in No Time to Die. As Craig said on the issue, he’s “more naked than the women. I’ve designed it that way.”
While some might see Craig’s admission as proof that he’s more interested in escalating his sex symbol image than helping to give the franchise a new direction, it’s true that the series is very much in need of offering its female characters something more to do than show off skin. His claim that he “designed” the character to be more naked than the women of the film is perhaps a bit strange, but it does speak to a greater truth about where Bond is heading. That direction has the potential to change the entire series in favor of something never before seen in the Bond canon, and that sort of progress is fascinating to some and concerning to others. Ian Fleming’s 007 has been a film icon for over six decades now, so tinkering with the formula that has made it thrive can cause concern over what’s next.
Perhaps it’s best for fans to consider the fact that the sort of instant transformation that Casino Royale brought the franchise was part of the greater picture for 007. No Time to Die might be Craig’s final Bond, and what’s acceptable socially is much different today than it was in 2006. But that doesn’t mean that any changes in No Time to Die are sudden and unexpected. There were signs in Casino Royale that Bond was becoming someone different than his womanizing past iterations offered. And just as No Time to Die won’t be the start of a completely brand new Bond, it also won’t be the end of many aspects of the traditional 007.
Source: The Guardian
