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He looked incredible for his age untill the late 70's.
After MR he really started (visibly) ageing, it's as if there was a good 5 years between filming that and FYEO...
DC will be fine for one more and likely two. The next one should feature beach scenes and Craig in swimsuit and no one will question his age given the shape he keeps himself in. No other Bond has maintained his conditioning like DC
Or bring in a new actor but start the film with Madeline moving out of Bond´s flat, and then Bond being depressed for 15sec, only to turn the happiest man in the world when the red phone rings and he gets a new assignment :-).
But seriously, Craig is much too young to quit. He looked older than he really was in SF, and in SP there are scenes where he looks exactly as in CR, so age is really no issue here.
Aah but that´s not age that was showing, but lack of workout. Or do you suggest that he was completely put together again by esthaetic surgery for NSNA? He doesn´t look really older in NSNA than he did in DAF, but much fitter.
Bond will return, he always does that much we know and quite frankly the BO results I don't care for really. If the producers are happy, good for them, if they're not I hope they have the good sense to address and rectify the real problems and issues.
SP was enjoyable but it had a weak story and as long as the film was, everything felt rushed, Mendes was too reliant on throwbacks and the cost of the movie was ridiculously too much. A better Bond movie could have been made with around half the budget.
The producers need to step up and cull this overrelliance on their current writers and their neediness over Mendes. Had we got SP in 2014 people would have been saying the movie needed another year to get the script right. Bullshit. Good writers are good writers, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years or 4 it doesn't matter. Hire and pay the right people and you'll get something special. Relying on the goodwill of a fluke movie isn't enough and now look, SP critically isn't garnering the kudos many people were expecting and to a number of people it's a meh movie. I don't want to wait 3 years for a meh Bond movie and I certainly don't want a Bond movie to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
I love Craig in the role and I think he should do a 5th for many reasons i'm too lazy to get into but if he decides to walk, then thanks and good luck with your future endeavours. There's a lack of dedicated focus that needs to be sorted out and an alarming sense of complacency from the producers to ensure we're getting something solid. It doesn't matter who's in the role, fundamentally if the script is fractured and the director lacks visual agility then there shouldn't be any surprise if there's a backlash of varying degrees.
Have to agree with you here.
When all the 'will he won't he' bullshit from Mendes ended up meaning it would be 3 years till the next film I took it as a positive as I naively thought 'at least we'll get a polished script then' but is SPs script any more well put together than QOS's? It's slightly better but with an extra year it should be so much better.
I was happy to go to a 3 year cycle as I thought it meant we'd get better scripts but as I'm getting older I can't wait so long between films if all we get is half finished scripts.
SP could've been sooooo f**king good if they had decent writers on board. Such a missed opportunity.
Logan has bottled it big style and P&W have had more than enough chances so its well past time for them to get the boot as well.
Given his age and the superiority of the 80's scripts he wrote (namely FYEO, OP, TLD, LTK) I'd like to see MGW have one last crack along with Gatiss to finish off the Craig era (unless they can somehow persuade Craig to do two more in quick succession 2 year cycles but that would mean starting filming basically 14 months from now - I really can't see it).
It seems odd to persist with clowns like P&W when they still have a bona fide Bond writing legend still on the staff.
Let Babs do the producing and have MGW put all his efforts into the writing.
Had they knocked it out of the park with SP, my opinion on Craig staying would be different obviously.
As someone whom loved the Maibaum\MGW scripts I'd heartily endorse that. Get MGW to plot out the new film and someone decent in to provide the dialogue.
I am one of the few who actually likes the QoS plot I think, which I believe was an MGW idea.
Agree.
Perhaps for Daniel Craig himself. But he will leave the franchise begotten and in shambles.
First of all because there are so many open-ended questions with SP. If Craig leaves, he will force the franchise basically in another reboot. And I don't want that. I don't want a reboot.
I think Craig's run can end much more neutral. In such a way that a successor can easily continue the new Bond timeline that has been created with "Casino Royale".
Secondly, I still think "SPECTRE" isn't the film that gives us a remarkable send-off. Most reviews are mainly talking about the flaws of the film, and not about Craig's performance as Bond. It would help if the screening of the MI6-team will be reduced considerably. A story that is not set for a large part in London anymore.
With all due respect, but the ending of "DAD" was like any other Bond film up to then:
--> Bond beds the girl
--> One last sexy line uttered by the girl "Ooowh James!"
--> The End
The Brosnan films were not knitted together with tight continuity/chronology. Everything could have been done without many -narrative- problems. Showing Pierce the door. Keeping Pierce. Introduce some continuity. Follow the same 'stand-alone-film' route that has been going on since 1962. Or really really fiercefully reboot the series, which was done with "CR". Everything was possible with not too many big consequences.
That however is slightly different after "SPECTRE". For me the ending of "SPECTRE" is dragging too much 'weight' on the Bond franchise. And how easy it may look to you to continue the Bond franchise, it actually isn't that easy anymore. Please let me elaborate that with three possibilities:
A) There is the possibility of "SPECTRE" being the very last film in this "Craig-Quadrilogy". A wonderful send-off for Craig so to say. Good for him. But what about his successor then? And the future of the franchise? We continue with every character from "SPECTRE" --Lucia Sciarra, 'M', Madeleine Swann, 'Q', Blofeld, Tanner, Hinx & Moneypenny-- and use them in Bond #25, but only re-cast the role of Bond? So that the new Bond is way more a replacement in the same Craig-timeline? Making the actual film look rather...unbelievable?? A bit like how George Lazenby was cast as a 'Connery 2.0'? In my opinion an undesirable possibility.
B) Then there is the possibility of -again- radically rebooting the franchise entirely, similar to what DC Comics is doing with The Joker and Batman in the upcoming "Batman vs. Superman". Frankly, ignoring the Batman from "The Dark Knight Trilogy" for me looks weird and unsettling. It's like "hoppa, let's reboot again!", and I'm getting a bit tired of this concept in moviemaking. Moreover, introducing a new Bond played by a new actor, set in a completely rebooted timeline is way more risky to the Bond franchise. There is no larger cinematic universe for the world of Bond, in which you can create several spin-off's or focus on several 00's. There's only Bond....and no one else. So despite the fact that a new Bond actor would welcome a similar treatment like the one Daniel Craig got, it's another undesirable possibility for the Bond franchise. I think it'll actually weaken the continuity of the Bond franchise.
C) Last possibility is actually bringing back Daniel Craig one more time, in a film that continues the open-ended storylines from "SPECTRE", but with less prominent continuity/chronology when the movie proceeds (after the main titles). Make Craig's 5th film one in which the entire screentime of the MI6-team will be dramatically reduced. Just one big storyline, that's entirely written around Bond's mission against an evil scheme. Kill off Madeleine perhaps in the PTS, let Blofeld and Lucia Sciarra/Bunt/Klebb go underground, so that there roles are much more like cameo's, just a quick mission-briefing from M (also to make MI6 a more credible secret service again) and drastically enhance Daniel Craig's screentime. It sounds traditional, but there are SO many ways to make this look like a very fresh film. With action for instance, there are so many more ways I think you can say "This is wow! First time that we see this in an action film!". Think about Formula-One, Jerry Brückheimer's "Grand Prix", Steve McQueen's "Bullett", but also about GoPro actionfilming (paragliding, skiing). Or real-life space content from the ISS. And the end? Bond beds a girl, girl says "Ooowh James!". And there you have a way more typical Bond ending, that carries less consequences with it. And now it becomes way easier to cast a new Bond that can 'play around' in the same Daniel Craig universe.
That last option C) is my preference. That choice has my support. And I think it's the most logical choice. It's the best send-off for Daniel Craig. It hasn't got too many negative implications for the future of the Bond franchise. And by doing so you can also downscale the production of the 26th Bond film a bit, with more 'unknown European actors'. And Barbara and Michael are more fiercefully in the driver's seat again for choosing a new, young, unknown Bond actor (Those damned Sonyleaks, please not again!).
I agree with a lot of what you say except they have painted themselves into a corner by opening up the whole Blofeld can of worms up to the point where they sort of have to get Craig to do at least one more because to have introduce a new Bond is hard enough as it is. To do it with all the emotional baggage left over from SP such as Madeline and Blofeld (especially with the misguided Oberhauser shite it's now even more personal) is a really tricky thing to pull off with a new Bond.
I really wish they could've held back with ESB on SP rather than spunking their entire wad the moment they got their hands on Mcclory's rights. Spectre need to be dealt with in at least a trilogy. Now it seems unlikely to me (given that Craig will probably only do one more) that Blofeld won't survive the next film.
Plan it all out properly:
In SP we reveal the shadowy organisation Spectre with Blowers just shown in silhouette and have C as the main villain in a sort of Largo role (perhaps with Blofeld overseeing and ordering Hinx about but not crucially in this film not actually meeting Bond).
In B25 if Craig leaves the new actor already had the building blocks in place and you can cast Christoph Waltz as Blofeld then. If Craig stays you have a YOLT (film) type story where Bond comes face to face with Blofeld (and gives him the scar if you like) finally.
B26 it all comes together. Madeline (who you introduce in B25 is killed) and then we have a final showdown a la YOLT (novel).
The problem with where are now and the trilogy outlined above is that Craig would not do all three so personally I'd have held back with even mentioning Spectre until the new guy starts in the role or at least make sure the first mention of Spectre is at the end of Craig's final film. Then the new actor gets time for a full trilogy battling Spectre.
In their hastiness to use their newly acquired rights they have spunked all their Spectre and Blofeld reveals in one go and don't really have anywhere to go but kill Blofeld in the next film.
It took Sean 4 films to come face to face with him. But here he goes from 'never having heard of him' to 'nicked' in the space of one film.
That's very simply put. But you do know that every Bond actor in the period 1962-2002 were more or less operating in the same Bond universe no? They didn't rebooted the franchise with Lazenby. They didn't reboot the franchise with Moore. Or with Dalton. Or with Brosnan. With Craig the most radical reboot took place in the history of the franchise. Everything got re-introduced completely. It's like a similar clean sheet that Sean Connery had when he started the franchise in 1961.
Not plausible, as for both Bond's, Moore and Dalton, their late wife Tracy was referenced: In TSWLM, FYEO and LTK. Moreover in GE and TWINE they start openly referencing to Judi Dench' predecessor, who was Bernard Lee...as Miles Messervy.
But that's beside the point. The implications of the reboot with Craig's introduction as Bond in CR were way bigger than every single introduction of a new Bond actor before him.