Daniel Craig Suggests Rewatching All Of His Bond Films Before 'No Time to Die' & Talks 'Knives Out' Sequel

As usual, Daniel Craig remained tight-lipped when it came to any discussion of his final outing as James Bond. But he did offer one suggestion to fans anticipating “No Time To Die“: rewatch all of his previous 007 films. (With the film’s release now delayed until November, due to the impact of the coronavirus, you can pace them out at watching one every two months— a reasonable feat.)

“I’m not saying you need to do this,” Craig told a packed house at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday night, “but if you feel like it, watch all the movies because it will inform you of things in the movie that are connected all the way through.”

On the occasion of a mid-career retrospective of his decades of film acting, Craig sat down with MoMA’s chief film curator Rajendra Roy to discuss everything from his humble beginnings to bringing his tenure as Bond to a satisfying close.

The actor confirmed that “No Time To Die” closes out his stint with a large dose of awareness about where the character has been. Despite their intentions and efforts to create standalone films for the franchise, Craig said that each time they end up coming back to the same emotional throughline. “I feel like [it’s] incredibly satisfying because it’s my last movie, and we’ve connected all the dots and answered all the questions,” Craig offered up about his fifth and final 007 flick.

As for the future of Craig’s other inquisitive justice-seeker, Benoit Blanc from “Knives Out,” the actor is in a holding pattern just like the rest of us. “That’s in the hands of Rian [Johnson],” said Craig on the status of a sequel. “Rian is hopefully [laboring] away on the script, and we’re going to have something fairly soon. But who knows? The world is Blanc’s oyster, I think.”

But when it came to chat about his past work, Craig proved much more forthcoming and conversational. Like many actors, he admitted he does not make a habit of rewatching his past work, though the nature of “No Time To Die” and the finality of his time as James Bond forced some introspection. “What’s been so nice about something like doing a ‘Bond’ movie is looking back at what we’ve done,” Craig acknowledged. “It’s been incredibly emotional because it’s massive. I didn’t realize how big it was.”

He won’t have much cause to forget, either. There’s a new documentary about Craig’s time as 007 coming soon (release TBD, though it’s hard to imagine it won’t accompany the release of “No Time To Die” in some fashion) entitled “Being James Bond,” and MoMA debuted a world premiere clip for the crowd gathered. The footage included Craig’s screen test for the role of James Bond and featured heavy voice-over from Craig as well as producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. While Craig expressed his doubts and fears about assuming the character that Rajendra Roy described as “the embodiment of a nation,” the Bond brain trust had no such qualms, describing the actor as “the most charismatic man I’d ever seen” and immediately recognizing his leading man potential.

“It could have gone the other way, I could have not become an instant icon,” Craig confessed to the audience. “I fully expected it.” He knew that “Casino Royale” had the goods at the production stage but had uncertainty over how fans would take it. “I squared it away with myself that if it was a swing and a miss, it was a swing and a miss. It’s one movie and you can walk away saying, ‘Hey, I tried it.’” But the film was more than just the old college try; it scored with critics and audiences alike, effectively pulling the series out of the rut post-“Die Another Day.” Nearly 15 years later, it still played well to a rapt and engaged crowd at MoMA.

If everything does come full circle with “No Time To Die,” then perhaps Craig’s comments on how he approached playing the darker side of James Bond in “Casino Royale” offer some clues to the fate of his iteration of the character:

“I wouldn’t have known any other way to do it. Unless it was something based in reality or truth, I couldn’t figure out how to play it, how to say those lines. The line ‘Bond, James Bond,’ how do you do that? It’s got to mean something, otherwise it’s just a repeat of what someone else has done. And that was a discovery up until this past movie. I just wanted to think about an emotional part. We know that the world needs saving at the beginning of a Bond movie, and we’re pretty sure that the world is going to get saved at the end of a Bond movie. So, what happens in between? Is there a moment where we’re in doubt of this man? His safety? His personal life? Load the movie up with those things, and maybe the movie would become something a little more emotional and connected.”

Despite his debonair confidence on-screen, Craig got a little bashful when discussing how the series approached sexuality. He made some interesting observations in response to Roy’s claim that his version of the character was the “least horny Bond,” though perhaps a Bond who flirted with the edges of sexuality more openly than other incarnations:

“A lot of thought is behind all this, clearly, but I wanted to explode some of the things that had come before. I did want to make the appearances of the women mean something. It was hopefully something we managed to do throughout the five movies. Sex wasn’t always the endgame; it was part of it, and the idea of sex and death being closely related was something to do with the original books. It wasn’t the go-to. There was a twist to it.”

Inquisitive fans will have to wait and see whether past is prologue for “No Time To Die.” For now, New York-based fans of the actor would be wise to check out the museum’s full “In Character: Daniel Craig” screening series, which kicked off with Craig’s introduction of “Casino Royale” but resumes in earnest on Tuesday, March 10. The retrospective offers a chance to see how Craig has explored doomed, dark characters for over two decades – a fascination which he openly confessed. “Quite frankly, I think that the darker side of people’s characters is often the most interesting,” he divulged. “Dark emotion is what I connected with at the time. But also, I had a chance to work with these amazing directors, and you don’t turn jobs like that down.”

The “In Character” program features a wide array of films from Craig’s career, and it’s impressive to see the sprawl and the diversity laid out all in one place. Personally speaking, I think he doesn’t get nearly enough credit for his skill as performer. The series gives attendees everything from his early leading roles in films like “The Mother,” “Love is the Devil,” and “Layer Cake” to breakout supporting roles in “Road to Perdition” and “Munich,” along with some post-Bond leading turns such as “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Knives Out.” (Sadly, the programmers did not include Craig’s uproarious turn in Steven Soderbergh’s “Logan Lucky” – a clever subversion of his associations with the superspy archetype that foreshadowed Craig’s turn in “Knives Out.”)

And, of course, Craig’s two most acclaimed outings as James Bond, “Casino Royale” and “Skyfall,” will play and get the 35mm treatment. Since we’ve got some unexpected time on our hands before seeing the next one, we might as well treat ourselves to seeing the best ones we already have on the big screen.