Tophat665

I agree with you 100% that Daniel Craig is in the same league as Bauer and Norris (one of whom just got out of jail and the other of whom is stumping for Mike Huccabee, but that's neither here nor there). They are (and Craig is) a badass of the first water.

That Craig is capable of effortlessly dealing in metric tonnes of badassery, though, is also beside the point. This is a baseline for playing James Bond, a gating criterion, not a ranking one. You must be at least This Badass to play this role. (Where "This Badass" is Roger Moore on his best day - say blowing up Drax's Moon Base.)

So while Craig in his initial appearance is in the same league as Connery and Brosnan in the dealing of Smackdowns, he is more in the same leauge as Moore and Dalton in the Panache/Finesse department.

However, with only one film under his belt, it is unfair of me to compare him to anyone other than Lazenby and Niven, and, frankly, neither of them are really applicable, though Niven was Fleming's first choice for the role. Of all of them, Brosnan comes closest to Niven in style. What Craig's style will eventually evolve into is an open question, but he is likely to suffer from being written as a more "human" Bond. I wonder if it is even possible to truly play the character of James Bond in a world where women have begun to successfully demand their right to rise and fall on merit. Unless the Quantum of Solace solidifies the mysogynistic/emotionally detached Bond, I would not be surprised to outlive the series.

/ End threadjack

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