The year was 2006. On the cinema screen, Daniel Craig rose from a blue sea somewhere in the Bahamas, water clinging to abs and trunk alike. It was a writer in the theatre, a woman working on every word, surprising many others: “Oh. My. God.” “Casino Royale” was 29 minutes into its run time, but a new James Bond was born in that moment.
The audience has Craig to thank for that moment, but also someone else: his conditioning coach, Simon Waterson. In the 15 years since the actor was cast as 007, he has repeatedly turned to Waterson. Now, with Craig’s fifth and final outing as Bond in “No Time to Die,” they’re warming up for the last time together.
That routine has remained the same in all five movies, and it shows. Waterson’s and Craig’s bodies are in equal proportion. With the same crew cut, Waterson is also very similar to the actor.
James Bond fit man
For “No Time to Die” he tailored workouts to match the action sequences in the script, to help Craig perform his stunts (when allowed). “It just makes their lives easier,” Waterson said. Easy, not easy. “The shooting schedule is very brutal. Asking an athlete to perform as an athlete every day, six days a week, is not an easy task.
Beyond muscle, Jim was integral to character development from a movie, suggested Waterson. “As far as developing the character’s mindset and physicality is concerned, he had a firm idea of what he wanted to do, which is great,” he added. “The way we work isn’t really around overall aesthetics. It’s about performance.”
Craig, a wise actor whose subtleties haven’t always been appreciated as much as he should have, has in many ways played a subversive Bond. The other 007s tried to live up to the deadly Adonis image; So far Craig has spent four movies with it, whereas you’re most likely to see a twig-like twig.
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Crab Key, “Dr. No” (1962) – Dr. No Compound was located on the fictional island of Crab Key off the coast of Jamaica. Its underground living quarters had charming touches – a glass wall with underwater views, a Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington – and wine and food all the homely comforts of Bond. But the island also had a secret laboratory. That’s where metal-handed Specter Agent Dr. No had planned to use nuclear-powered radio beams to interfere with NASA’s rocket launches.
In real life, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, was used to shoot novelist Ian Fleming’s Villa Goldeneye not too far away. For the interiors that were filmed at Pinewood Studios outside London, according to Meg Simmonds, “Bond By,” production designer Ken Adams used back projection to mimic the ocean and enliven the living quarters with some of his antique furniture. prepared. Design: The Art of James Bond Films.” Credit:
BFA/NaturalThe Craig era has seen the franchise “adopt a more body-centered model of the masculine”, which first appeared in the last Brosnan film “Die Another Day”, argued Lisa Funnell, a Bond scholar and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma. Gave. . “(Craig’s Bond’s) identity isn’t about women lying in bed, it’s about physical resistance.”
The series’ axis of serial storytelling has reconfigured Bond’s relationship with his body. We all know he could have hit a punch, but now we see bruises, and the violence that has been committed is more visceral, more personal than in previous incarnations. He took a bullet in “Skyfall”, a drill for the skull in “Spectre” and was poisoned in his nether regions in “Casino Royale”. These movies have made a point in saying that the body is not made to endure that long. In “Skyfall”, Bond fails his physical and psychological assessment. He has been repeatedly asked to retire. “There’s this notion about his coming back from the dead in the Daniel Craig era,” Funnel said. “Their body becomes this living collection of trauma.”
‘Making Bond Journey’
The vulnerability is two-fold, and along with physical trauma, Craig portrays emotional trauma as well. We see her fall for Vesper Lind in “Casino Royale”, then watch her die, fall in love in “Quantum of Solace”, lose her mentor in M in “Skyfall” and relive her childhood. Get lost in “Spectre”. For a character who was never burdened by the past, Bond is now haunted by him.
“I owe a lot to Daniel Craig for Bond’s journey, not only physically but emotionally,” Funnel said. “He’s someone who has expressed what he wants to take on as a serious actor, he wants it to come from the inside, but it’s a character where there’s a lot of stuff.”
Vesper Lind (Eva Green) and Bond in “Casino Royale” (2006), Craig’s first outing in the series. Credit: Danjak, LLC / United Artists Corporation
It’s probably a double bond. Craig and Waterston have worked together to create a physique that meets the character’s masculinity prerequisites, allowing the actor to explore what else Bond could be: vengeful, awake, loyal, Loving, even mournful. Yet, the surface still gets attention.
How the physical and emotional journey ends in “No Time to Die” remains to be seen. Speculation that Bond would be killed remains constant, and will not be completely unscathed with Craig’s iconoclastic tenure. Maybe the body really can’t take any more.
In any case, the actor survived the production, so Waterson’s mission can already be considered successful. And if the detective can still pick up a flutter in the audience… well, that’s just the cherry on the cake.
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