Did Daniel Craig really say this about Bond? (Face palm alert)

“The question I keep asking myself while playing the role is, ‘Am I the good guy or just a bad guy who works for the good side?' Bond's role, after all, is that of an assassin when you come down to it. I have never played a role in which someone's dark side shouldn't be explored. I don't think it should be confusing by the end of the movie, but during the movie you should be questioning who he is.”

Well, I think that that rather encapsulates the complexity of James Bond, all the way from Fleming's blunt instrument creation. I see nothing wrong there, personally. A bit like the morality speech between Bond and Mathis in the novel Casino Royale, if you like.

Quote :

‘Am I the good guy or just a bad guy who works for the good side?'

Seems a fair enough question to me, especially coming from Craig, whose Bond is not a nice guy (a point that's even addressed in dialogue between Bond and Solange in CASINO ROYALE). His 007 is colder, darker, more brutal and more morally ambiguous than usual (although, granted, none of the actors exactly played Bond as an angel). He's not an avuncular Moore or a quipping Brosnan, whose basic goodness one never doubts for a single second.

What's wrong with like that? Like Loomis and Dragonpol said above, Bond isn't exactly a boy scout. He's a shady guy, always has been. I like that Craig said that, it means he's done his homework and that he takes the character seriously.

I give up.

Lazenby, the guy who near enough strangled someone with a ski board and tried to bed half of Piz Gloria with a missus back home, is even in your avatar. I don't see your problem.

Nor do I, though I like what perdogg brings to the table in online Bond forums.

Python wrote:

Ian Fleming wrote:

Bond is not a hero, nor is he depicted as being very likeable or admirable.…He’s not a bad man, but he is ruthless and self-indulgent. He enjoys the fight—but he also enjoys the prizes.”

Daniel's opinion doesn't really contradict Fleming's. When the shit hits the fan though, Bond is clearly a good guy.

GeneralGogol wrote:

Python wrote:

Ian Fleming wrote:

Bond is not a hero, nor is he depicted as being very likeable or admirable.…He’s not a bad man, but he is ruthless and self-indulgent. He enjoys the fight—but he also enjoys the prizes.”

Daniel's opinion doesn't really contradict Fleming's. When the shit hits the fan though, Bond is clearly a good guy.

Agreed, I see it as an affirmation much more than a confirmation. This reminds me of a question Roy Newquist asked Ian Fleming in Counterpoint to the effect that James Bond was the bad guy in every citizen!

Playboy Interview December 1962 - Alex Haley the interviewer.

Playboy: One reviewer has written of Bond, “He the bad guy who smoulders in every good citizen.” Do you agree?

IF: I don’t think that he is necessarily a good gut or a bad guy. Who is? He’s got vices and very few perceptible virtues except patriotism and courage, which are probably not virtues anyway..”


In other words, he sounds like a pretty normal guy.

Dalton said of Bond in an interview that 'He's a bad lad. He's a bad lad who happens to be on the side of good'.

So Craig's not the first Bond actor to feel that way about the role.

perdogg wrote:

“The question I keep asking myself while playing the role is, ‘Am I the good guy or just a bad guy who works for the good side?' Bond's role, after all, is that of an assassin when you come down to it. I have never played a role in which someone's dark side shouldn't be explored. I don't think it should be confusing by the end of the movie, but during the movie you should be questioning who he is.”

How would you prefer Craig describe Bond? As a bachelor playboy who jet-sets around the world, sleeps with glamourous women, eats at fine restaurants, drives exotic cars and very occasionally has to kill somebody?

^ That sounds alright.

Indeed. I think that Craig and Dalton are spot on on this one.

CJB wrote:

^ That sounds alright.

That's basically what Brosnan was. And what DC007 thinks is the ideal Bond film.

I'd say Connery and Moore were too. Dare I say even the literary Bond.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

CJB wrote:

^ That sounds alright.

That's basically what Brosnan was.

Considering Brozza's massive body count, you can't really say he "very occasionally had to kill somebody."

Largo's Shark wrote:

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

CJB wrote:

^ That sounds alright.

That's basically what Brosnan was.

Considering Brozza's massive body count, you can't really say he "very occasionally had to kill somebody."

Yes, Brosnan was the Terminator Bond, if ever there was one.

Brozzer's bodycount is mostly down to the military archives scene in GOLDENEYE, and to a lesser extent, his shooting up Carver's stealth boat. If you disregard those two scenes, his bodycount is much closer to the other actors.

The point I'm trying to make is that Brosnan was a playboy first, and agent second. Craig has it the other way around, and I think that is much closer to Fleming's interpretation.

Yes, but look at the Terminator Bond on display in the PTS of TND and DAD. This was mainly what I was referring to - mass murder on a grand, nay industrial scale. The likes of this had never been seen in a James Bond film before or indeed since the Brosnan era. The only thing that comes close for me is the infamous Zorin Miner's Massacre scene from AVTAK some ten years before, and he was a Bond villain, not James Bond himself.

I think the influence of video games and Sly, Dolph, JCVD and Arnold's action heroes, paved the way more than anything.

I still regard the issue as really coming down to trying to make the unreal make sense in the real world, Fleming idealised Bond's Job, idealised the British Empire, Bond is the good guy yet he works in dark places and has to act in some cases before he can indulge the luxury of satisfying his conscience...the 00's are sent in when normal espionage has failed or the situation is critical - the modern films tend to forget this and reinterpret Bond as a straight forward spy often when no direct threat is known to exist (acutely this occurs in QoS and Bonds involvement in CR should actually have been down to his coincidental talents at 'chemin de fer' it was not automatically a 00 class operation). However all that said Bond retains a chivalrous side and considerate side when pushed he can assert his own observations i.e. when he recognises a target that doesn't know one end of a gun from another etc, or when he learns something contrary to his orders - I think its a bit indulgent and self important to really see him as just like the bad guy per se but with Fleming at least he has to act with a degree of faith in the rest of his service (again something the modern films undermine with their pretensions of grit and realism).

Brosnans Terminator Bond and Craig's Hulk Bond are sad concessions to the generic Hollywood model, both lack the professionalism that Bond should really reflect imo, and that does rather echo the approach of the old school 'bad guys'.

Largo's Shark wrote:

I think the influence of video games and Sly, Dolph, JCVD and Arnold's action heroes, paved the way more than anything.

Yes, well the Brosnan Bonds were surely a sop to this if nothing else.

lachesis wrote:

I still regard the issue as really coming down to trying to make the unreal make sense in the real world, Fleming idealised Bond's Job, idealised the British Empire, Bond is the good guy yet he works in dark places and has to act in some cases before he can indulge the luxury of satisfying his conscience...the 00's are sent in when normal espionage has failed or the situation is critical - the modern films tend to forget this and reinterpret Bond as a straight forward spy often when no direct threat is known to exist (acutely this occurs in QoS and Bonds involvement in CR should actually have been down to his coincidental talents at 'chemin de fer' it was not automatically a 00 class operation). However all that said Bond retains a chivalrous side and considerate side when pushed he can assert his own observations i.e. when he recognises a target that doesn't know one end of a gun from another etc, or when he learns something contrary to his orders - I think its a bit indulgent and self important to really see him as just like the bad guy per se but with Fleming at least he has to act with a degree of faith in the rest of his service (again something the modern films undermine with their pretensions of grit and realism).

Brosnans Terminator Bond and Craig's Hulk Bond are sad concessions to the generic Hollywood model, both lack the professionalism that Bond should really reflect imo, and that does rather echo the approach of the old school 'bad guys'.

Well written post, there. Thank you. It makes a lot of sense, plus I like the idea of the Hulk Bond of the Craig Era!