We’ve had over 50 years of 007, 25 movies, and 6 actors portraying the suave yet endlessly badass British spy. A lot of different people have different faces that come to mind when they hear the words “Bond, James Bond” but to me, the face I see is Daniel Craig’s.
The once-controversial blonde-haired, blue-eyed actor caught flack for his looks that didn’t fit the Bond mold when cast. The character is historically a tall, dark-haired man but Craig stands at 5’10 (which, let’s be real, is not that short) and doesn’t have the traditional traits of the character. The tone of the public changed incredibly quickly once his 007 debut released in the form of 2006’s Casino Royale.
Craig kicked things off by embodying a younger Bond, still fresh in his career and wreckless. He’s a brute that will plow through drywall during a foot chase, drown a combatant in a sink, or naively kill a person of interest without thinking of the repercussions. We see him evolve from a casually-dressed bull in a China shop to the sharp secret agent we are more familiar with and that’s why he’s interesting.
He’s not already the James Bond we’re typically used to when we find him. Yes, he’s still a lady killer, he’s still a badass, and he looks fly as fuck in a suit but there’s something about his cadence that doesn’t ring true to past Bonds. That’s in part due to the fact that he’s a realized person, not just a vehicle or excuse for explosions and espionage.
Casino Royale shows us a Bond in love, not struck with lust. We’ve seen him have sex with dozens of women over the years but Vesper is the first one that has captured his heart. She’s able to show Bond humanity again and bring out a side of him we’ve never really seen before. A lover, not a womanizing misogynist.
One of the best scenes in the entire James Bond franchise is the shower scene with Vesper. After she witnesses Bond strangle a man to death and narrowly avoids death, James sends her off to get someone to discreetly clean up their mess. Bond licks his wounds back in his room and downs a glass of scotch in one gulp without even wincing. He’s clearly shaken by the ambush but he’s done this before, it’s just the job. He shakes it off and returns to the poker game.
He then goes to check on Vesper who is sitting in the shower, fully clothed but absolutely drenched. Bond joins her, only taking off his jacket and tie. She’s rattled by what has happened and it’s going to take more than a pull of booze to get over it. We even see a broken wine glass when he enters the room, showing a sharp contrast to how they both deal with this problem.
They sit next to each other, Vesper reaches out for his arm but before she can even touch him, he extends it towards her for her to lean on. She mutters how she feels like she has blood on her hands but it can’t be washed off. Bond embraces her, bringing him closer to someone than ever before. The two sit there as the water beats down on them but it’s not sexual, it’s not even really sensual. It’s intimate.
There are no one-liners during any of this. Bond doesn’t make a smug remark after he kills the man who attacked them, he acts with urgency and then soaks in what just happened. It’s raw, real, and not a dressed-up moment of fun spy action. It brings him down to Earth.
Even after Vesper betrays him, he still makes an effort to save her. Not because he’s just trying to be a hero but because he still loves her. When he fishes her body out of the water and sits over her lifeless corpse, see the pain in his eyes. It’s endless grief but also him coming to terms with the betrayal.
This is what molds the James Bond we know, this is the moment that James Bond dies and 007 is born. The cold and sex-driven secret agent who has no interest in settling down because he’s been hurt badly by another woman. M calls him, tells him they need him back but if he needs time, he’s allowed to have it. He quickly responds telling her he’s fine and that “the bitch is dead”. He just gives into the fact Vesper screwed him over and if he tries to romanticize her, it won’t do him any good. He simply allows the narrative of her being the bad guy to be undeniably true.
Still, in the sequel Quantum of Solace, James Bond’s love and pain feels unresolved.
There’s a great scene between Mathis and Bond where our hero is up late at night, sitting at a bar sipping on a martini. Mathis asks him what the drink is called, Bond just directs it to the bartender.
3 measures of gin, 1 of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, shaken over ice, with a slice of lemon peel. The same drink Bond ordered during the casino tournament in Casino Royale. The cocktail’s name? A Vesper martini. He can’t even vocalize her name or the ingredients, he still has this great sense of hurt inside him and is grappling with his trauma.
These themes are even reflected in the title. Obviously, the evil organization in the movie is called Quantum but it means more than that. The title comes from a short story written by 007 creator Ian Fleming.
“Bond is looking for his quantum of solace and that’s what he wants, he wants his closure. Ian Fleming says that if you don’t have a quantum of solace in your relationship then the relationship is over. It’s that spark of niceness in a relationship that if you don’t have you might as well give up,” said Craig.
Daniel Craig echoed these thoughts in another interview. “And at the end of the last movie, Bond has the love of his life taken away from him and he never got that quantum of solace.[Bond is] looking for revenge … to make himself happy with the world again.”
The entire movie centers around his quest for revenge and closure, as well as his would-be-partner Camille Monte’s same quest. By the end of the film, neither of them feel totally satisfied after getting what they thought they wanted. That quantum of solace isn’t enough to fill the void or remedy that pain.
This carries through to the subsequent movies with Bond’s unresolved emotions being a weakness in Skyfall and far more notably, Spectre. Now, with No Time to Die slated to come out later this year (fingers crossed), it looks to be putting that trauma front and center once again. His new lover has seemingly betrayed him as well and he’s paying the price for trying to open up and trust once more.
Bond isn’t a character that can be broken physically. You can tie him to a table and aim a laser at him, you can shoot him, you can do whatever but he’s almost incapable of death. Craig allows defeat and weakness through his emotional vulnerability of the character.
James Bond has always been a character known for his ultra-masculinity. In reality, James Bond is a persona, a mask to hide behind to shield himself from his vulnerabilities. He dons his suit and tie as armor. Daniel Craig takes a sledgehammer to that macho-man ideal and exposes Bond for who he really is: A fragile man wearing Kevlar to shield his heart from heartbreak, afraid of any sense of humanity or connection. A man who buries his problems only for them to come out at the worst moment. A man who uses bullets, alcohol, and women as a detractor from his problems, medicine for the pain.
