Daniel Craig and Jeffrey Wright Talk 'No Time To Die,' Ian Fleming, and The Power of Blockbusters [The Fourth Wall #41]
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When Daniel Craig was announced as the sixth James Bond, the media had a field day. He wasn't tall enough, good looking enough, lackluster, underwhelming, a "Blond Bond?" Rubbish. In the mind of a vocal minority that was blown way out of proportion, Craig did not fit the traditional stereotype of what a Bond actor should look like and took a thrashing for it. Nevertheless, he held his head high because he knew the work they were doing on "Casino Royale" was something special and would immediately shut down the naysayers. Sure enough, it did and that was the first time Daniel Craig subverted the Bond expectations. Perhaps it's therefore fitting that the man who was unlike anyone who came before would go on to continue reinventing and revitalizing the almost 60-year-old franchise culminating in the most Ian Fleming, yet least traditional Bond film"No Time To Die." Over five movies and fifteen years, Daniel Craig pushed the boundaries of not just what a James Bond movie should be, but what it can be. He proved to a world inundated with cheap, monotonous looking blockbusters that you can recruit people like Sam Mendes, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Roger Deakins, Javier Bardem, Naomi Harris, Lea Seydoux, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Hans Zimmer, and countless others - the best artists in the world - to make these films. To prove that while not every film is guaranteed to be a "Skyfall" or "Casino Royale," you shouldn't settle for anything less than the very best. Blockbuster cinema can be prestige cinema if you try. With each of his five films, Craig, and to their credit EON Productions, helped bolster the artistic value that all modern blockbusters should have.

Die" picks up after the events of "Spectre" with Bond and Madeline (Lea Seydoux) living in tranquility before it's all uprooted. Five years later, living peacefully in retirement, Bond is thrust back into the world of international espionage after his friend and colleague Felix Leiter (Wright) calls for his aid.

While so much care is put into physically crafting these films, what separates Craig's tenure from the rest is the equal amount of care that goes into character and story. It wasn't always the plan to make each of Craig's five films interconnected, but as the series progressed, it felt inescapable to ignore the natural progression of the character. In so doing, Craig managed to get to the heart of Ian Fleming’s iconic superspy mining the psychology of the character, comprehending the prose in Fleming’s words, and having a fearless vision that says, within the trappings of a Bond movie, anything is possible, and it shouldn’t be beholden to the exact same things that have come before. The way Craig interrogated the character and made bold choices that serviced his arc as a human being, thrusting him into our world, whether popular or not, is what resonates.

see the status quo challenged, the changing landscape of our world represented on screen and the different ways in which we as humans choose to engage with it. These stories and these characters allow us as audience members to learn and grow from their experiences because we know and understand them. We trust them as Wright puts it.

No Time To Die" hits theaters October 8.

Additional reporting by Brody Serravalli

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