Daniel Craig is Pierce Brosnan

So, Daniel Craig has been inserted into the new GoldenEye computer game instead of Pierce Brosnan. Is this perfectly understandable or a sodding cheek? You can see how it made sense to Eon as it was obviously going to be a lot easier for them to use Daniel Craig's mug than Brosnan again and Craig is the current Bond. Brosnan is clearly not on great terms with Eon these days and Craig presumably has a contract of some sort that says he is James Bond in relation to all media. Plus, it keeps him in the public eye as 007 while the Bond series is mired in a tangle of studio trouble and gathering dust. However, GoldenEye was Brosnan's film and computer game and you can't help feeling they wouldn't have done this to one of the Connery film titles. The symmetry of Daniel Craig in any incarnation of GoldenEye just seems off. You wouldn't use Timothy Dalton in a Goldfinger computer game would you?

The success of the original GoldenEye computer game has inevitably led to it being dusted off and rebranded again. It seems like the whole world revolves around making you buy a slightly newer version of something you already own and computer games are no different. People remember GoldenEye as a pretty good game so the money men will hope lightning strikes twice and that they get a good game and make as much money as possible. The update of the GoldenEye game beyond its cold war trappings is another argument for having the current Bond in the game but then it still brings us back to the problem of inserting one Bond actor into a title that is associated with another Bond actor because he was in the ACTUAL film! It just never quite sits right with me. Even if the current Bond was someone I liked an awful lot more than Daniel Craig I still wouldn't be happy to see, whether it was Sam Worthington, Henry Cavill or anyone, a present Bond used in a computer game based on a film that one of the previous Bonds had starred in.

For those of us who aren't huge fans of Daniel Craig being the face of Bond for the time being it is galling to see a previous Bond almost erased from history (or his computer game anyway) to make way for the current incumbent. In business terms, there can only be one Bond at any one time and that Bond, whether we like him or not, is going to get the magazine covers, the ludicrous world's best dressed man awards and his image in any Bond computer games that are released during his tenure. Although having said that, wasn't Bloodstone supposed to feature the image of a young actor from EastEnders rather than Craig originally? The question of why Craig is in GoldenEye is easy to answer as is the question of why GoldenEye has been updated and released again. The only question is: could they not possibly have contented themselves with making up new games and new titles and have avoided treading on the toes of a previous actor in this way? The answer is that they clearly didn't give a monkeys.

Is the new GoldenEye game be any good? I have no idea but if you aren't happy about this jumbling of Bonds and titles and eras then you can always buy Football Manager 2011 or Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage instead.


- Greg Haugen

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