The James Bond franchise celebrates its 60th anniversary next year, with 25th installment No Time to Die already hitting big at the international box office ahead of its domestic debut this Friday, but the series has deliberately avoided one of the major tropes that almost every other property in Hollywood leans into; the origin story.
Sean Connery brought 007 to our screens as a fully-formed character, one who didn’t need his early days spelled out in exhausting detail. However, the Daniel Craig era has shed more light on Bond’s beginnings than any other iteration of the character, and it’s led to a popular theory gaining traction among fans.
Casino Royale showed him earning his stripes as a covert operative, while Skyfall dived into his family history before Spectre established a childhood connection to iconic arch-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld. As a result, the theory posits that Craig’s five-film tenure are all prequels that take place before Dr. No in canon.
In an interview with Wired where he answered the most Googled questions about Bond, Craig hilariously didn’t understand the prequel theory at first before having it explained to him.
“[Prequels] to what? Sure, yeah. Why not? That’s a nice idea. I can maybe make ten more.”
The timeline and continuity of the James Bond saga is muddled at best, and Craig’s stint is really the only time we’ve seen one overarching storyline threaded through a large number of movies. It’s interesting to think about, but it doesn’t sound as though the prequel theory is official.
