Daniel Craig: Austin Powers Destroyed James Bond

Daniel Craig has spoken of his hopes that the James Bond series will get back to its more light-hearted roots - and suggests he’d be more than happy to see classic villain Blofeld come back.

With Craig set to begin work next week on the 24th Bond movie (whose title and full cast will be announced this coming Thursday), excerpts from an upcoming interview with the 007 actor have appeared at Bond fan site MI6-HQ, which see him reiterate his long stated desire to make the series a bit more fun again.

The Craig years have seen the Bond franchise reach new heights critically and commercially (‘Skyfall’ is the biggest box office hit in the history of the series), and yet many fans have felt - not unlike 'Kingsman: the Secret Service' director Matthew Vaughn - that the movies have grown a bit too dark and serious.

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Craig acknowledges this: “There has been a lot of talk, from the beginning from ‘Casino’ into ‘Quantum’ because everyone has gone, “Where’s the ‘Bondness’? Where’s all the old stuff?”

"I was given this chance by Barbara and Michael, which is [to adapt] the first of the books, and the conceit is we began again, but I couldn’t come in and pretend to be James Bond, because everyone knows Bond as Pierce or Roger or Timothy or Sean. I couldn’t come in and go, "Hmm, Martini," or whatever. It’s not who I am, and how I kind of approach things."

Oftentimes the more realistic, harder-edged approach of recent Bonds has been attributed to the influence of the ‘Bourne’ movies, but Craig suggests a certain other Hollywood spy series is to blame… namely ‘Austin Powers.’

"We had to destroy the myth because Mike Myers f***ed us - I am a huge Mike Myers fan, so don’t get me wrong - but he kind of f***ed us; made it impossible to do the gags.

"What I am proudest of in ‘Skyfall’ is the lightness of touch we’ve been able to bring to back into it but not lose the drama and the action."

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Craig seems keen that things should only get lighter from here on.

"I think we set a good tone, I think we set a real tone, but I am happy for f***ing exploding volcano lairs.

"Obviously I am joking but what I love and what I really wanted to achieve with ‘Skyfall’ was a level of fantasy, it’s one of the less violent ones, there’s less blood, and people aren’t dying in a horrible way, and it feels like much more of a family movie, and they should be family movies… If Blofeld turned up again, it wouldn’t be a bad thing."

We might debate just how family-friendly ‘Skyfall’ is, given it features a number of quite sombre scenes, some grim deaths, and the first use of the F-word in a Bond movie - but then, it also saw 007 fend off komodo dragons, which is far more Roger Moore-ish territory.

As for that Blofeld remark; could this be Craig’s way of not-so-subtly confirming that the rumours are true, and Christoph Waltz has indeed been cast as the head of SPECTRE? Or does Craig simply mean what he says - that he’d be happy to see the character return?

We wait with bated breath to find out…

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Picture Credit: MGM/EON, New Line Cinema