Rant #1,676: Bonded

After I read this report this morning, I knew that it was the end of the world as we know it, for sure.

In the midst of everything else that is going on in our world, it was announced that the current James Bond, Daniel Craig, has turned down an offer of about $100 million to play the character in a fifth film.

Craig had given hints since the last James Bond film, "Spectre," that he wanted out of the series. He said something to the effect that he would rather "slash his wrists" than play the British super spy ever again, and true to his word, according to the British press, he has rejected an offer to star in a fifth film.

The actor, somewhat of an unknown when he took the role, brought a sullen, more gritty presence to the character.

Honestly, a lot of people liked that, and probably just as many people hated it.

I was kind of in the middle. No, he was not Sean Connery--nobody did it better than he did--but I could get into the layers of the character that Craig brought to the role, depending on the film.

In the last one, Craig looked as bored as can be, and that pretty much doomed him, at least in my eyes, from doing another Bond film.

The previous big-screen Bonds all kind of had careers after they left the character, but from Connery to Pierce Brosnan, and everyone in between, they still had to answer to the name of Bond even way after they played 007 for the final time.

So who should be the next James Bond?

I am sure there are a wealth of British actors who would give up a body part for the chance to play this iconic role.

The PC Police are even asking for the producers to consider Bonds out of the box, like actors of color and females to play the role. The former might be somewhat interesting, although it might be considered nothing more than an oddity or a novelty, the latter, somewhat stupid, as it goes against the very credo of Bond as a playboy, but nothing has been decided yet.

But I think after the grittier Bond that Craig portrayed, a little lightening up of the character is in order.

Dating back to the Connery days, even though Bond was all business, there was a certain charm to the character that enthralled him to audiences.

He was all business when he needed to be, but he could laugh at himself when necessary, too.

No, I am not necessarily asking to go back to the Roger Moore Bonds, where comedy was really the backbone of most of the movies starring the actor.

But a good mix of drama, comedy and coolness couldn't hurt the character, and I don't expect the character to ever be fully PC either.

That is not what the majority of the audience wants from its Bond, they want to escape for two hours into his very un-PC world, where women are objects to be desired and guns and other weapons are the way that arguments dealing with world domination are handled.

In other words, we don't need another brooding Bond, one who looks like he is fighting constipation along with the bad guys.

I don't know where the search is going to lead to, or who will be chosen, but this actor will be representing a character that has had its ups and down over the years, but stands as the movies' longest running franchise, now dating well over 50 years on the big screen since "Dr. No."

Good luck to the producers to find just the right actor to play the character. Will they find the next Sean Connery or the next George Lazenby (who, by the way, I thought was quite convincing as a Connery wannabe in his one Bond role, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," still the most underrated film in the series)?

Bond. 007. Shaken but not stirred ... .