Glass Onion: Bond to Blanc, Daniel Craig’s reinvention continues in the Knives Out mystery-verse

Daniel Craig returns with a new whodunit adventure as detective Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery this weekend, and the actor’s reinvention of screen image in the post-James Bond phase continues. The film, a standalone sequel to the 2019 murder mystery hit, Knives Out, presents Blanc as a more precise and nuanced version of the character compared to the original, where the focus was on the detective’s professional traits as a quickwitted crimebuster with a charming persona to catch suspects off guard and an instinct to dissect human psychology. In the 2019 first film, Blanc also emerged as one of the finest tributes to the goddess of whodunit Agatha Christie, whose generic tropes have been intelligently utilised by Knives Out series creator Rian Johnson to craft an original mystery-verse.

In Glass Onion , Craig ’s Blanc does more than reveal his sleuthing skills. Retaining his signature Deep South drawl, the film lays bare an identity detail about Blanc that fosters inclusivity. If you think of the superspy James Bond, Craig’s calling card as a global star, the automatic recall is of a dashing action hero who is very much a ladies’ man. Benoit Blanc reimagines that prototype without disturbing the essential Daniel Craig charisma. From Bond to Blanc, Craig has smartly traversed from one end of the debonair crimebuster spectrum to another.

Writer-director Johnson imagines Blanc as a classic Agatha Christie sleuth, but his world draws creative inspiration from 007 prototypes as well as new-age moviegoer preferences. Blanc’s Glass Onion canvas is one of self-proclaimed “disruptors”. It includes a multibillionaire hawking hazardous alternative fuel, a global designer who illegally manufactures apparel in Bangladesh sweatshops, and a men’s rights activist who lives to trend on social media. These are all new-age characters, yet they seem to come from the same powerful and affluent universe that harks back to the classic Bond villain. While the setting is contemporary because the story unfolds during lockdown, the all-important element of murder, in sync with Christie convention, happens in a secluded spot where all the key characters congregate — in this case, the billionaire’s private island — and, of course, any of them could be the killer. For Craig, that balance between vintage Agatha Christie tropes, James Bond formula and a new-age course correction has been key to reinventing his image.

Before Craig, no other James Bond actor barring Sean Connery managed to survive the pressing legacy of being Agent 007 over multiple films, and we would discount Connery because he does belong to an elite league whose stardom lasts forever. Most other Bond actors struggled with reinvention despite being household names as the British secret agent. Pierce Brosnan, possibly the most popular among the new Bond actors, has spent the past two decades after his final 007 act in Die Another Day (2002) juggling comedy ( Mamma Mia! ), thriller (The Ghost Writer), fantasy ( Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Lightning Thief ), and the espionage drama (The November Man) before giving comic-book cinema a shot as Doctor Fate in Black Adam earlier this year. Despite being a phenomenal Bond, he hasn’t been able to replicate the success in his later works. Roger Moore, who played Bond in the maximum number of films (seven) before bowing out with the 1985 release A View To A Kill, was never out of work in films or on television till his last day. Yet, the nearest he came to courting Bond-level spotlight in the post-007 phase was when he was knighted in 2003. George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton, the comparatively less prolific Bonds, are around facing the camera, too, But can you seriously recall a single role of either, after their shortlived James Bond runs?

Craig on the other hand started his post-Bond reinvention strategy even before No Time To Die , his final act as 007, released last year. The first Knives Out film was out in 2019, setting the template for the actor’s future plan of action. This was preceded by Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, a wildly entertaining heist comedy with an ensemble cast that released in 2017, between Spectre (2015) and No Time To Die. For Craig, there has been a pattern through these films. These were all about a dapper man of action whose life is soaked in a world of crime and deceit. The pattern hasn’t been broken with the new Knives Out film, and yet there has been a gradual shift from the James Bond archetype.

Interestingly, Craig’s James Bond was a more dynamic version of the character compared to the ones before him who stuck to a template. Through five releases from Casino Royale (2006) to No Time To Die, you notice an evolution of Bond as a fictional hero in the Craig films. Craig’s Bond reinvented the character as a vulnerable protagonist fighting angst in his personal space, far removed from the larger-than-life Casanova prototype of yore. The fact that fans accepted Craig as the Bond actor who ushered a humane makeover to Agent 007 has been an advantage. It gives his current reinvention bid an interesting twist if you consider from Ian Fleming’s heady world of espionage to an Agatha Christie-inspired setting that celebrates the whodunit, Craig was actually moving from one classic thriller template to another.

Benoit Blanc would seem to have happened at the right time, too. Craig is 54, and the role lets him play out his trademark star power without going over the top with violence in the way the Bond films demanded. He has not wholly discarded the essential Bond when it comes to realising Blanc — you spot the trademark mix of the sly and the sensitive — even as Johnson’s writing lets him draw inspiration from Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple at the same time.

Rian Johnson has already promised Knives Out 3, scheduled to be out in 2024. The narrative structure of these films is such that each sequel tells an individual story, which, incidentally, is a structural similarity the franchise bears with the Bond series. The strategy suits Craig, because while he focuses on a new adventure every time, revelations on Benoit Blanc’s personal life will pour in with each film. That’s more room for Craig to explore his range before the camera.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.

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