Even though it’s been beaten at the box office by dancing penguins, James Bond’s Casino Royale outing has to be considered a success. The reviews are glowing, audience response is positive, and really, the movie’s pretty good. How’d they do it? They changed James Bond.

Though the movie works well, I have a problem with that. James Bond is an icon, and you don’t fuck with icons. Whether or not the changes in the character are big or not will vary depending on who you talk to, but I think they’re big. Really big. The character being played by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale is barely Bond at all. There’s nothing suave or sophisticated about him. The man doesn’t even look comfortable in a suit. Craig’s version is a grittier, grimier, musclier spy. He’s neither subtle nor debonair. He’s a thug with a gun. As M says, “a blunt instrument”. Brosnan and Connery’s Bonds were subtle and sharp knives.

Now the reasons for the film going that route are irrelevant, as are the excuses. We all know this is supposed to be a prequel and that presumably; this mass murderer up on screen will turn into the epitome of cool embodied by Brosnan and Connery. Doesn’t matter, what we’re watching is a guy named James Bond when he’s nothing like James Bond at all. Superficial martini references don’t change that.

We’re tampering with an icon here folks. The name James Bond means something. When people say “Bond movie” they think of something specifically. Sure he’s been played by different people and he’s been in different kinds of movies, but the basic core of the character was hasn’t changed. Until now that is. Who cares? Why does it matter?

Because you don’t fuck with icons. Imagine if in the next Indiana Jones movie George Lucas decided to turn Indy into Sherlock Holmes instead of the charming and sometimes reluctant adventurer we know and love. Would that be acceptable? Of course not, and I’ll tell you why.

When you mess with icons they cease to be icons. If you change their basic nature, modify them, retool them or just slap the same name on a completely different character, then the name ceases to have meaning. James Bond becomes Jack Ryan; the James Bond label becomes the equivalent of National Lampoon. Names like James Bond, characters like Bond have MEANING in our cultural consciousness because they are attached to a well defined character or idea. Almost by definition, that’s what makes them iconic. Their personality is so strong, their character so well defined that it takes on a life of its own. If you change any of that, then the name starts to mean less and eventually the character ceases to be iconic.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at Darth Vader. Before Lucas revealed him as nothing more than a petulant, whiny teen the Dark Lord of the Sith deserved his title. The guy was dark, scary, powerful, pure evil. Lucas tampered with his icon, showed us something new behind the mask. Suddenly Darth Vader seems a lot less scary. Nooooooo!

The question is how much can you tinker before destroying? Some people like the changes to James, and I’m not going to begrudge them that. But personally when I go to a Bond movie I go for fantasy, I don’t go for gritty realism. When I want that in a spy movie, there are plenty of other options. I don’t need the Bond version of The Bourne Supremacy. We have that already. James Bond used to fill a certain entertainment niche, a niche which is now apparently gone… or perhaps rather ceded to Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. Casino Royale has abandoned ship on whatever it was that made James Bond, James Bond. The franchise continues onward, but to me 007 is dead. Which iconic character is next?