Boy Movies #39

Lyvie Scott on the girlishness of Daniel Craig

You’re reading Boy Movies, a weekly newsletter about movies for boys. Today, I’m thrilled to hand the reins over to Lyvie Scott, who returns with a guest issue about what it is that makes noted woman Daniel Craig such a woman. As a notorious Craighead myself, I was VERY enthusiastic about this idea when Lyvie pitched it to me and she absolutely knocked it out of the park. As always, her writing inspires and delights me. Enjoy!

Daniel Craig is a girl

I’ve always loved the way James Bond can define a generation. My mother’s Bond is Roger Moore, and she loves him more than any other man that’s slipped into the suit, sipped a martini, or romanced an unwitting Bond Girl. I don’t really care for Moore, but if I’d grown up watching him I’d probably be in the same boat. Pierce Brosnan was almost my Bond for this reason, and he was great until the franchise decided it wanted to go Full Camp with him, which he must have hated. There are so many stories about the put-upon Bond actors trying to commit to the material they’re given, bless their hearts, and Brosnan might just be the one that suffered the most. It’s all relative, of course, but the difference between GoldenEye and Die Another Day (his first and last film as Bond, respectively) is shocking, to say the absolute least.

Anyway, sorry for the history lesson. I’m saying all this to remind you just how dire things were for Bond until Daniel Craig stepped up and fixed nearly everything wrong with the franchise. That sounds like hyperbole; it’s really not. Bond was a relic of an offensive bygone era until very, very recently. The franchise came close to evolving with the times with Brosnan at the helm, but it quickly slipped right back into the casual (almost comical) racism and misogyny that make the early Bond films so hard to watch now. They were the worst kind of boy movie: the kind that alienates anyone who’s not watching ironically. 

Craig’s Bond films also tried hard to be boy movies, albeit slightly more mature ones. Craig’s first outing as Bond was in Casino Royale, and it was clear that the franchise was starting to turn a corner. It helped that it lifted so much from The Bourne Identity, the poster child of sexless, post-9/11 spy fare, which eliminates most misogyny right out the gate. But Casino Royale took things one step further by actually introducing romance. It steeps its hero in a genuine love story, only to break his heart before the credits roll. That’s an extremely effective choice, one that both softens and complicates his character (but more on that in a sec).

It should be noted that Casino Royale was not the first Bond movie to try this. But it might be the first to really get it right, and Craig’s performance has a lot to do with that. It’s not only because Craig is a brilliant actor with an innate grasp on what the franchise actually needed. It’s because Craig is a girl actor trapped within the boy movie industrial complex — and damn if he isn’t determined to leave it a little better than he found it.

A couple of years ago (that is, before Knives Out), I don’t think I would have classified Craig as a girl actor. The Bond movies served as my introduction to Craig, and James Bond is, like it or not, a man’s man. Craig’s take on the character might be the first that actually kind of isn’t, though. The Bond braintrust was clearly trying something new with him. They wanted to start fresh with Casino Royale, to reintroduce their gentleman sleuth as a rough hunk of marble that could be chiseled into Bond’s familiar, sophisticated image later on. 

Craig’s Bond is younger, brasher, and blonder than all of the previous Bonds for that very reason. The blondness caused a huge controversy at the time, which I still find hilarious and more than a little ridiculous. Before he had even shown the world what he could do in Casino Royale, Craig was written off as “the bimbo Bond.” I’m sure everyone thought they’d be forced to endure a sissified version of the hero, which is a crazy thing to assume of someone just because they're blond. But this was 2005, at the dawn of the Internet — or at least, the dawn of people being really, really weird on the Internet. It could have been a lot worse.

This might have been the moment where the girlification of Daniel Craig effectively began. Tabloids were on his neck in a big way, and even respectable journalists were waxing poetic about his chestiness to varied effect. Rumors swirled about his competence on set — “Craig lost his two front teeth while filming a fight scene,” “Craig can't drive 007’s classic car,” “Craig’s afraid of handguns” —  while Bond’s most vocal fans threatened to boycott the film. The success of Casino Royale eventually shut the haters down, of course, but I do like the fact that Craig never felt the need to clap back. Minding your business and letting the work speak for itself will never not be a flex, especially when the work is as good as Casino Royale. 

You know what else is a flex? The fact that Craig essentially got away with what is perhaps the girliest Bond performance yet, and that it only got girlier as his subfranchise chugged along.

Don’t get me wrong: Craig’s Bond is still very much a Masculine Bond. He’s ruthless, he’s bitchy, and I think his boss (that’s M, portrayed by Judi Dench) even describes him as a blunt instrument at one point. But beneath all his snark and pomp was a real primal wound. That’s always been a staple of the Bond franchise, but it’s one that earlier films would rather gesture to instead of outright show. Craig knew how to show it better than anyone; he knew how to subvert Bond’s machismo armor, and get to the real core of the character in the process.

It helps that Craig isn’t afraid to lean into his more “feminine” role as Bond. His predecessors were, for the most part, oglers: on-screen paladins for the male voyeurs in the audience to get off through. But Craig-Bond allows himself to be the ogled. He inadvertently recreates Ursula Andress’ iconic “coming out of the water” scene in Casino Royale, which caused many to joke that he’d been cast as a Bond Girl, rather than Bond himself. He does retain his role as the seducer in other ways, but I’ve always felt like he goes about it in such a slinky, girly way. This is all 100% a complement, especially if we’re looking at his run-in with Monica Belluci in Spectre. All he does is breathe on her and she’s effectively seduced. This is after Bond kills her husband, stalks her at his funeral, and later shows up at her home unannounced, by the way. And she still wants him. That’s crazy. I’d likely fold too, but that’s just… crazy.

It also doesn’t hurt that Craig-Bond seems to game to flirt with men too, even when they’re evil and casually trying to destroy the world. Action films have always dealt in homoeroticism, even the Bond saga, pre-Craig — but post-Craig got real fruity with it. Casino Royale sees Bond tied to a chair (completely nude) while Mads Mikkelsen’s very-sexy villain literally whips his undercarriage with a rope. That’s crazy! Director Martin Campbell had to step in to keep it from getting any crazier, apparently! And who can forget his fateful flirtation with Javier Bardem in Skyfall, the one that essentially gave Bond the Tom Hardy treatment? No one, at least no one that was on Tumblr in 2013, constructing feverish defenses in favor of Bond’s alleged bisexuality.

That wasn’t me, by the way. But I did read the thinkpieces. (How could I not?)

So we’ve established that Craig-Bond is a slut. With any other Bond, that’d be kind of annoying. I can think of a handful of Bond films where the action is completely derailed by a random love scene that adds just nothing to the plot. And I think if I were a boy I’d understand the sudden urges that compel Bond to just seduce a woman out of the blue. But it’s only with Craig that I actually, truly get where he’s coming from. 

I’ve mentioned Casino Royale and the tragic romance it entails. And I’d argue that Casino Royale is the most romantic of the Bond films, if only because it sours Bond on love for the rest of his tenure as 007. Bond risks everything to traipse into the sunset with Eva Green’s enigmatic Vesper Lynd (God, what a name), only to watch her betray him — and then sacrifice herself for him — at the very end of the film. Her treachery is the wound that informs so much of Craig’s arc as Bond. Her ghost follows him wherever he goes. And I find myself the least annoyed by Craig-Bond’s slutty escapades because of this. 

Bond’s wanton whoremongering is that much easier to understand when you realize he’s heartbroken. His hookups just tend to mean something, even if they don’t seem to mean much to him. We understand why he seduces, why he throws women away, and why he doesn’t seem to flinch when said women become inevitable casualties. We understand why he throws himself away too, because Casino Royale took the time to explain it to us. I don’t know if that’s a basic take, but I don’t really care. It’s still so damn effective, and I’m so glad Casino Royale actually took the time to lay it out for the naive girlies like me. 

The nice thing about Craig-Bond is that he never really becomes that chiseled, stoic marble sculpture the Bond producers were clearly working towards. Like, sure, he looks better in the suit than anybody — his silhouette in Skyfall, in particular, is something that can be so personal — but he remains a mess throughout his tenure as 007. He remains human, I guess. He fails. A lot. And funnily enough, he also hates to work. He hates what he’s come to represent: not just as an extension of the British Empire’s iron grip, but the face of a crumbling regime. Craig’s films were 100% in conversation with the franchise as a whole; with the world’s waning interest in espionage. With the pockets of intelligence that sprung up everywhere and wrenched the “truth” from the hands of the elite. 

Craig-Bond knows he’s obsolete from the very beginning, probably because every character makes sure to tell him to his face at every opportunity. It’s like that scene in Top Gun: Maverick, where Ed Harris pivots briefly from his role as the curmudgeonly boss to tell Tom Cruise just how old he is, just how extinct he’s supposed to be right now. Except Cruise (who’s also without a doubt a girl actor) defies it in that fist-pumping, patriotic way that makes such shameless propaganda as Top Gun: Maverick actually work for our disillusioned times. And Craig… well, Craig just keeps on reluctantly doing his job, suffering for the system. His relationship to MI6, to Britain at large, is one that could be classified as toxic. He goes on fighting for Queen and country because that’s what he and his “type” are expected to do. He’s filling a role, a traditionally masculine one — but all he really wants to do is hole up on a beach somewhere in his teeny-tiny swim shorts, catching his own fish and ignoring every problem the world throws at him. And like… that’s such a girly thing to do. He’s so real for that. It’s such a shame that he never really got to do it for very long.

Bond has always sort of been a very tragic, insane male character. He’s like Batman for the Brits. Just a psycho, incorruptible masochist with a tragic backstory and a string of hoes in different area codes. And that didn’t really click for me until Craig took on the role. Now that I see it, though, I can’t unsee it — and I clearly can’t stop myself from going on and on about it whenever the opportunity arises. (Thanks Allison!)

I just think he’s neat. I’m really sad he’s no longer playing Bond, and I’m not looking forward to seeing who they tap to take his place. Maybe I’m beginning to see what the anti-Craig people were saying. I’m not gonna be crazy and start a petition about the next guy. He’ll go on to define some other generation, and make Bond relevant again in his own way. And if he can bring some additional girliness to the conversation, that’d also be incredibly neat. Good luck to him!