Madhulika Sikka defends Daniel Craig and the character he plays, a Bond with a broken heart:
Here’s the truth — I’ve been a Bond fan since I was a child. Look, I grew up in England, and James Bond movies were a must-see event in my family. He’s a character who made Britain feel good about itself at a time when the empire was definitely a distant memory. (And it seems he still does. Quantum‘s opening day smashed box-office records in Britain two weeks ago, even beating out previous record holder — another British icon — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.) The movie Bond I grew up with was all about cool gizmos and gadgets, exotic ports of call, a bit of wit and the occasional double entendre. What’s not to love? Moneypenny and I were in agreement on that.But I found Ian Fleming’s Bond when I re-read Casino Royale, the book that launched the franchise more than 50 years ago. The Bond in these pages actually has feelings — feelings of doubt, fear, love and loss. So, I am here to tell you to forget about those cartoonish renditions you know from the movies. You need to go back to the source.
Gentlemen, Craig’s Bond works because he went back to the source. I’ll be the first to admit I thought the choice of Craig as Bond was ill-advised — why was this actor with the steely blue eyes who looks more like a Russian gangster taking the role that rightfully belonged to Clive Owen? But I was so wrong.
When he exploded on the screen in Casino Royale, he had done his homework. This Bond is a man that women can love because he loved a woman — Vesper Lynd — a woman who died. If you are looking for motivation, here it is. In the chapter that describes Lynd’s death, Bond is clearly a broken man.
Now maybe it was the heartbreak that turned him into the carefree sex machine, the cavalier Bond that most men would like to be and the Bond that we know so well from the movies, a man who went through as many women as he went through ports of call. But Daniel Craig’s Bond is not that Bond — yet.