The casting of Daniel Craig as James Bond was met with some backlash – and part of the protest endures to this day…
“Never in the history of the Bond films has there been a more negative reaction to an actor cast in the role of 007 as Daniel Craig”.
These are not my words. Rather, they’re the opening lines at a protest website, one set up over 15 years ago and still in existence. Not only that, but its forum remains reasonably active as well.
DanielCraigIsNotBond.com feels quite quaint now, in a word where fans have shown, er, ‘less constructive’ ways to protest pieces of casting that they don’t agree with. Granted, the mid-2000s were a time where if you wanted to protest you couldn’t go to Twitter and have a good moan. Some people apparently still wrote actual letters.
But what this particular website captures is just how uneasy many were about the casting of Daniel Craig as 007. More than that: the downright hostility in some quarters to him becoming Bond.
In fairness too, it was a piece of casting that got off to an inauspicious start. It didn’t help that there was consternation Pierce Brosnan had been defenestrated from his tuxedo after headlining four Bond adventures, and even then it was names such as Clive Owen, Hugh Jackman and Colin Farrell that were considered frontrunners for the role. Around 200 actors in all were considered for the role. And at the end of a process that went on for a good 18 months, Craig prevailed.
He was officially unveiled at a press call back in October 2005, a year ahead of his debut outing as Bond. It was a shaky debut too, the actor sped along the River Thames in a speedboat, apparently clinging on for dear life as the Royal Marines escorted him to his unveiling.
Here’s how it was reported at the time…
It was, predictably enough, headline news, and not just because most outlets were jumping to the same gag either. Bottom line was that if you could come up with some variant on ‘James Blonde’ as your headline, you could have an extra coffee that day (the Irish Times gets a Hobnob for ‘the mane’s blond, James Blond’)..
Craig duly did his initial press duties, then headed off to finish the film he was making at the time – The Invasion, alongside Nicole Kidman – and the world began turning again.
Cat stroking
As he got on with finishing up that job, the murmurings of discontent were growing. CNN, for one, described the casting of Craig as “causing one of the bigger movie controversies in recent memory”. The Daily Mirror described the decision as “James Bland”.
Today in America meanwhile reported that “a respected screen actor but not — until Friday — a household name, Craig acknowledged feeling uncomfortable with the level of fame his new role will bring him”.
A flying Sean Connery in a scene from the film ‘Thunderball’, 1965. Photo: United Artists
It clearly wasn’t just Craig uncomfortable (and more recently, he’s been candid about how much the response got to him). Given how successful his tenure as Bond has been, it seems all the more remarkable that the backlash was significant.
Yet, well, it was. In fact, the aforementioned protest website encouraged – and it wasn’t alone – its readers to pen letters of complaint. Thoughtfully, it also came up with a template letter, and a list of email addresses at Sony Pictures to send it to.
The basic letter reads:
I am writing to inform you of my terrible distress over your decision to replace Pierce Brosnan with such an unknown and unattractive actor as Daniel Craig. Craig clearly has the wrong looks to play the role of Bond. To add insult to injury, your decision to reboot the Bond series is a terrible one and amounts to wiping out the treasured history set out by previous films, many of them now cinema classics.
As a result of my overall unhappiness with your plans for James Bond, a film character I have enjoyed for some years now, I must inform you that I plan to boycott the new film Casino Royale, and any subsequent Bond film featuring the dour-looking Mr. Craig. Furthermore, nothing you could do short of immediately replacing Craig can change my mind. I am also urging at least 15 friends and family members to join this boycott. I expect all will follow my lead only because they all share my disappointment with replacing the great Pierce Brosnan with a mug like Daniel Craig.
Craig and his stunt double on set
As noted, we didn’t have Twitter back in those days, so people had to do this sort of stuff longhand. It’s unclear if replies were received to said message, but it turned out not to make a jot of difference, and Craig was duly measured for his tuxedo.
‘Dour’ Daniel Craig was furthermore set to headline what was announced as a ‘gritty’ reboot of the entire franchise, and when set against the fact that the preceding film had an invisible car in it, this was correctly detected as a tonal jump by fans. Again, some were more welcoming of this than others.
A James Bond stunt filmed in Scotland
Ignoring Mr Bond
It all got to the point where there was a call from a small but vocal subset of Bond fandom for a boycott of Craig’s first 007 outing, Casino Royale, and it was a protest that got a reasonable amount of coverage.
Whether it was actually effective? A different matter.
Whilst a few people may have stayed away, the $616m global box office gross for the film suggests most were happy to toddle along, and in fact the acclaim the movie received was far in excess of Brosnan’s previous three outings (Craig even scored a Best Actor BAFTA nomination, one of nine nods the film got). In hard cash terms, it outgrossed Die Another Day by over $150m and change as well. Bond parent company Eon had won its gamble to reboot and recast.
Still, the protesters argued that the US box office for Casino Royale at least was down some $20m on expectations, and also claimed that “tens of thousands of movie goers walked out of movie theaters in protest”. It’s hard to find specific evidence to back either of these up, but conversely, the commitment to the cause is hard to deny.
James Bond will return
As the call to boycott the film’s home format releases took over from asking people to ignore the movie’s cinema debut, Eon rushed ahead with a second Craig-headlined Bond adventure, the rushed and less-well-received Quantum Of Solace. Still, in spite of less upbeat reviews, the film also delivered at the box office.
Like it or not, Daniel Craig was indeed now James Bond. In fairness to the protesters at the aforementioned site, a forum remains mildly active, and their discontent over the casting of Craig can’t be called a fad. There’s some commitment to the cause there.
But still: in the guise of Craig, the character has reached new levels of success. Craig’s third 007 adventure, Skyfall, became the first James Bond movie to cross $1bn in global cinema takings, winning an Oscar and a couple of BAFTAs too. Even the slightly more maligned Spectre overcame a mini-backlash of its own to bank north of $800m. Tellingly, for that film, that kind of money was considered a disappointment, even though it sits as the second most successful 007 adventure – unadjusted for inflation – at the global box office. That’s how much the goalposts have moved.
Regenerate
Casting any major role, of course, invites fan ‘feedback’: just look at what Jodie Whittaker had to put up with when she was revealed to be the new Doctor Who.
Furthermore, in the case of Bond, the cycle is about to start again as Craig completes his service and hands back his Walther PPK later this year. Come the release of his fifth and final 007 outing, No Time To Die (due September 30th, after several pandemic delays), he’ll retire from duty as the longest-serving 007 to date. He’ll do so in, ironically enough, the longest Bond film to date too.
Heck, you can get a price of 500/1 on it being Gerard Butler [next]
Who will replace him? Well, the current bookies’ favourites include Luke Evans, Bridgerton breakout star Rege-Jean Page, James Norton, Tom Hardy and Idris Elba. Heck, you can get a price of 500/1 on it being Gerard Butler too.
Given the process is shrouded in secrecy, at the moment placing a bet on this is akin to throwing coins into thin air. Whoever’s cast though needs to ready themselves for a dramatic change in their life. An instant fame upgrade, the welcoming arms of a huge fandom, the less welcoming arms of another part of the same fandom all lie in wait for whoever accepts the mission.
Just ask Daniel Craig. They said he’d never last, y’know…
