James Bondaka Secret Agent 007 is one of the most iconic roles in cinema history. The character casts a long shadow, andactors who play Bondhave historically struggled to be known for anything else to the same extent. For the rest of their careers, most Bond actors became typecast in Bond-like roles. Being the latest Bond actor who recently played the role for the last time inNo Time to Die,Daniel Craigwas faced with a similar dilemma.
Fans wondered if Craig would be able to move on to playing different types of roles in the post-Bond phase of his career, especially considering how popular and impactful his take on 007 has been. As it turns out, Craig already has another role lined up in a popular franchise that is in many ways the perfect anti-Bond. In director Rian Johnson’sKnives Outseries of films, most recentlyGlass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Craig has flipped his Bond persona on its very head.
Benoit Blanc: Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths
Audiences were first introduced to Benoit Blanc in the 2019 whodunit featureKnives Out. Starring an eclectic ensemble cast, the movie was a throwback toclassic murder mystery filmsin thevein of Agatha Christie novels. Daniel Craig played the role of Benoit Blanc, a southern gentleman detective who is clearly modeled after Christie’s famous Belgian detective character Hercule Poirot.
Blanc pops up once again in 2022’sGlass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. This time he is much more of a central character, and audiences get to know more about Blanc as he investigates the case ofa Musk-like eccentric billionairewho invites a bunch of his friends (and Blanc) to his private beach house for a weekend of murder mystery games. But the game soon turns deadly as dead bodies start piling up.
Daniel Craig’s Different Kind of Action Hero
On the face of it, both Blanc and Bond exist in similar worlds where violence is common and murders occur at the drop of a hat. But the way the two characters deal with their realities is diametrically opposed to each other.Bond is a man of action. He has yet to come across a gun he won’t shoot henchmen with, and Daniel Craig’s Bond in particular was notorious for wading into bloody battles with his bare fists.
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On the other hand, Benoit Blanc freely admits inGlass Onionthat he does not like to run around getting into trouble looking for clues to solve murder mysteries. At one point Blanc bluntly tells an associate whose life is in danger that she will have to depend on herself for protection rather than him since he does not have the capabilities of a bodyguard. Blanc is a cerebral creature, and his method of dealing with danger is to sit back and interpret available clues in his mind until he can reach a solution that clears up the whole thing.
James Bond’s Suits vs. Blanc’s Flashy Looks
One of the most iconic scenes from Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond was inCasino Royale, where Craig’s character walks out of the sea in tiny swimming trunks, showing a muscular body unlike anything seen on a Bond actor before. The sequence perfectly showcased that here is a new type of 007 who is a man of action with a much more pronounced type of hyper-masculinity for the modern age.
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Glass Onionparodies that moment in a scene where Craig’s Benoit Blanc is shown emerging from behind a body of water near a pool. Instead of being all hunky and bare-chested, Blanc is wearing beach clothes that fully cover his torso, indicating that this character is more about the mind than the body. In other parts of the movie as well, Blanc wears bright, colorful clothes that you can never imagine 007 would be caught dead wearing.
The Anti-Bond Is Not Interested in the Ladies
The thing that makes James Bond the ultimate male wish-fulfillment archetype for so many fans is how the character manages to sleep with any and every attractive woman he meets. No matter how urgent the mission, Bond always finds time to bed each preposterously named femme fatale who gets in his way. This habit of his has drawn more than a little amount of criticism over the years, even from Daniel Craig himself.Craig has nothing nice to sayabout Bond, once responding to the question of if there’s anything people can learn from 007 that would help in day-to-day lifve with a simple, “Nothing.”
With Benoit Blanc, there is no danger of the character having any kind of nefarious designs on the women he meets. InGlass Onion, a brief flashback scene reveals Blanc lives with another man, played by ’90s heartthrob Hugh Grant. If some fans were confused by the implication of the scene, the film’s writer-directorRian Johnson has confirmedthat Blanc is indeed gay.
All these differences would have come to naught if audiences were unreceptive to Daniel Craig’s turn as Benoit Blanc. Fortunately, the actor has been getting rave reviews for his performance in theKnives Outfranchise. The role seems to be one that will continue to garner a fresh fanbase, allowing the actor to effectively move on from being typecast as the perennial James Bond.
