Massive Bond fan that I am, I’m keeping a very close eye on the speculation over who will next play 007. If you ask me, Daniel Craig left two very big shoes to fill: at least four of his five Bond films were smash hits, and his cold, brutal interpretation of the character has surely left a lasting impression on the series. His was the 007 to outplay Le Chiffre, and the one who went rogue and take M to Skyfall. Arguably most stunning of all, Craig’s was the Bond who escorted the late queen to the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, surely securing the phenomenal position of the Bond franchise in our culture. After Craig, it would be harder than ever to argue that the Bond films are just another bit of popular culture; they are very much part of British national identity. How, then, could any actor pick up the baton from him?

Whoever the producers select, they will come under massive media scrutiny. They will have been asked to portray a character who has been part of our culture for over sixty years and to carry on the legacy of twenty-five films and the six actors before them. Frankly given the cultural footprint that the Bond franchise now has, it would be an impossible task; the pressure would be unbearable.

How could anyone possibly follow Craig without being compared to him? It was bad enough when Craig took over from Brosnan. Whoever is chosen, they will be expected to stun us in the way Craig did in Casino Royale. Everyone will be looking forward to being reacquainted with an icon who, by then, we would not have seen for a while, and expecting them to do great, great things. I fear the expectation will be so immense, largely thanks to Craig, that whoever they choose is almost automatically doomed to fail.

There is, however, a solution which quite a few people are now pointing out: Bonds tone needs to change. To avoid any comparison, positive or negative, with Daniel Craig’s Bond films, there needs to be a complete break from them. The franchise needs to be reset, which means any new films have to be totally different from what went before. Whoever next plays Bond needs to give a completely different performance to Craig: where Craig’s 007 was a cold, brutal government assassin, perhaps we now need to see a more jovial, lighter, more humorous character. After all, as I found when I watched the series in order, portrayals of Bond have always changed – it’s one of the things which makes the series so interesting.

Thus if Craig’s Bond can be best paired with Connery’s or Dalton’s, what we need to see now is a return to Roger Moore’s. His was the camp Bond; the Bond of the raised eyebrow and witty one liner. The Bond who inspired Austin Powers rather than the one who gave rise to Jason Bourne. As explained very well in this Den Of Geek article, ”James Bond needs to have fun again” with lots of weird gadgets and contrived, totally unrealistic plots.

I must admit that at first I did not like this idea. I come to Bond from a pretty straight place: to me, he’s a cold, brutal government assassin capable of awesome things and who always gets his way. Nobody – absolutely nobody – does it better. Thus when I came to Moore’s films, I didn’t like them one bit: the character he was playing didn’t seem to have anything to do with the one created by Fleming. The 007 I knew did not make jokes or do circus tricks. To be honest I thought Moore was just using the figure of James Bond to project his own persona onto. Yet as time went on I realised that James Bond is just as open to interpretation and reinterpretation as anything else – that’s why he’s so interesting, and why he has endured. After Craig perhaps we need another reinterpretation, another reset. Casting a similar actor would probably feel like ”more of the same”, or like the producers had just opted to keep using their tried and tested formula. We now need something lighter, which doesn’t take itself too seriously. With the world as it currently is, we all know we could do with a bit of fun right now.