NO TIME TO DIE: DANIEL CRAIG’S FINAL MISSION AS 007 Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as 007 arrives in April, fourteen years after rebooting the series In 2006 there was outrage when a blonde-haired, blueeyed Daniel Craig stepped onto our screens as the iconic 00 agent James Bond. With No Time to Die confirmed as his fifth and final film, it’s time to look back at the best – and worse bits – of Craig’s time as 007.
BEST: CASINO ROYALE With his debut, Casino Royale, Craig made the role his own expelling the memory of the cheese-laden disaster, Die Another Day, starring Pierce Brosnan. A grittier, darker version of Bond with a stellar supporting cast including Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green and Judi Dench, Casino Royale was everything a new audience was hoping for and left us wanting more.
WORST: QUANTUM OF SOLACE What could have been a fantastic sequel to Casino Royale fell flat with a forgettable villain, (no, really, try and remember the villain without having to Google it) and a generally uninspiring storyline. Luckily Craig made Bond his own, because other than that, this movie with the confusing title fell flat.
BEST: SKYFALL Luckily Quantum of Solace proved to be a one-off with Bond back to his best in 2012’s
8
PROPERTY NEWS
Skyfall. Sam Mendes took over directing duties and an all-star supporting cast including Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney backed up the wonderful chemistry between Craig’s Bond and Dench’s M. Audiences loved it and it was the first Bond film to hit $1 billion dollars worldwide.
WORST BOND GIRLS If anyone thought it couldn’t get much worse than Denise Richards as the ridiculously named Dr. Christmas Jones in Brosnan’s final Bond film, then they were wrong. It wasn’t that Olga Kurylenko wasn’t pretty in Quantum of Solace, it was that – much like the villain – she was utterly forgettable, and Lea Seydoux in Spectre has so little personality and chemistry with Craig, that she simple looks bored on screen.
BEST VILLAINS Mads Mikkelsen, Javier Bardem and Christopher Waltz; three A-list actors with some serious bad guy chops. Mikkelsen was terrifying as Hannibal Lecter on the small screen, Bardem was scary in No Country for Old Men and Waltz’s horrid Colonel Landa in Inglourious Basterds is one of the greatest bad guys ever put onto the silver screen. They were perfect villains for the more grown up Bond movies.
WHO WILL BE THE NEW BOND? Craig’s Bond may have had his ups and downs, but generally he should be pleased with how he has helped to reboot an ailing franchise. Now with a new reboot looming, let’s check out the favourites to take his place… • • • • •
Michael Fassbender Richard Madden Tom Hardy Idris Elba Tom Hiddleston
No Time to Die is released on 3rd April 2020.
DID YOU KNOW? American popstar Billie Eilish has recorded the title song for No Time To Die – making her, at just 18 years old, the youngest artist in history to write and record a Bond theme!
