Licensed-to-kill Bond star Daniel Craig is only half-way down the list at 12/1. Leonardo DiCaprio is doing slightly better at 9/1. But leading the polls at 6/1 to play the role of the icy blond WikiLeaks master Julian Assange in the inevitable Hollywood movie is his fellow Aussie, Russell Crowe.

Then again, if reports of the man's colossal ego are correct Assange may insist that no mere actor would be up to playing the most influential personality of the century -- bar himself, of course.

Because to many -- and quite possibly to himself -- Julian Assange is nothing less than a god.

Here's how journalist Johannes Wahl-Strom fawningly described an encounter with his hero last April: "To meet Assange is a bit like meeting James Bond. The man behind WikiLeaks has no public background. His name is spelled in different ways. His age is uncertain. He has no fixed address. No one has seen him in the hotel where he is staying, and when we finally meet, he suddenly appears a half a metre in front of me."

God or vampire?

Currently this self-appointed proponent of all that is True and Free and Good, is facing extradition to Sweden for alleged sex crimes. Last week, he lost a UK appeal to stop his extradition to face a rape claim almost 11 months after he was arrested in London. The UK Court of Appeal said that the 40-year-old Australian must return to Sweden, where he's sought in an investigation of two sexual- assault cases.

But Assange is still viewed by many as the hero of the down-trodden, the voiceless, and the oppressed. To public delight, he has embarrassed politicians, royals, diplomats and military elites throughout the world -- making public events, decisions and opinions that they would far rather have kept hidden from view. Some revelations have been amusing and benign rather than earth-shattering. Some, like the appallingly titled 'Collateral Damage', the infamous video that saw Reuters journalists shot down by the US military, shocked us all, but did little to change the war in Iraq.

Some, such as the publication of a US cable listing sites around the world -- from oil pipelines to vaccine factories -- that were considered crucial to American national security, gave rise to the charge that Assange was nonchalantly putting American lives in danger for his own aggrandizement.

Then the Taliban announced that they were going through the documents published by WikiLeaks and would punish Afghans who had co-operated with the Afghan government or with its international supporters.

Thank you for the heads-up, Mr Assange, they said.

And of course there's the case of Bradley Manning, the US army intelligence analyst, who is currently in "pre-trial" detention and faces the possibility of more than 50 years in prison if convicted of espionage and other charges

In mid-2010, Manning allegedly confessed (online) to ex-hacker Adrian Lamo that he was the guy who had leaked classified war documents to WikiLeaks. (Assange still insists that the first he ever heard of Manning was in the newspapers). Following the online publication of sensitive Afghan war documents, Lamo revealed his story to CNN.

The jury is out on whether Assange should bear any responsibility for the fate of Manning -- who took an oath not to reveal sensitive information -- but meanwhile other criticisms of the hitherto unassailable hero are building up.

Commenting after Assange's original arrest Lamo said: "[Assange's] ego was so strong he thought he could bend light and get people to do whatever he wanted." This week he said: "Do I get personal satisfaction from Julian's extradition? Well, I think Julian took Bradley for everything he was worth and hung him out to dry." (This, despite the fact that he, Lamo, shopped Manning to the authorities).

Left-wing commentator Dan Josefsson recently remarked that Assange was not the radical hero he supposed, but a solitary and shabby libertarian who wants to tear down democratic societies.

And Gavin Sheridan of the influential Irish Freedom of Information website Story.ie told me: "Whistleblowing and leaking is important in any society but unfortunately WikiLeaks now seems to be more about Julian Assange than it is about the original vision. People have left the WikiLeaks because of this very issue. The Guardian also appears to have parted ways with WikiLeaks mainly because of Julian Assange."

Dear me. Where did it all go wrong?

Unsubstantiated claims of sexual assault and megalomania aside, the rot seemed to set in when word went around that Assange himself had turned into one of the secretive, controlling entities he had always purported to want to expose.

Last November in London, he threatened The Guardian newspaper with legal action if they went ahead and published stories based on the quarter of a million documents that he had handed over to the newspaper just three months earlier.

Vanity Fair reported -- and I think it useful to quote in full -- that: "Assange's position was rife with ironies. An unwavering advocate of full, unfettered disclosure of primary source material, Assange was now seeking to keep highly sensitive information from reaching a broader audience. He had become the victim of his own methods: someone at WikiLeaks, where there was no shortage of disgruntled volunteers, had leaked the last big segment of the documents and they ended up at The Guardian in such a way that the paper was released from its previous agreement with Assange -- that The Guardian would publish its stories only when Assange gave his permission. Enraged that he had lost control, Assange unleashed his threat, arguing that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released."

This Orwellian twist to Assange's new-found reluctance, indeed refusal to allow newspapers he has worked with in the past to disseminate information to the public demonstrates that perhaps for Assange it was not about freedom of information, but about power and control -- exactly the attributes he criticised in those he exposed.

Mind you, many of his former co-workers had already suspected that.

Over the past year, many core specialist computer volunteers have said that they've had enough of Assange's "eccentricity and imperiousness" and left WikiLeaks to form their own document-leaking sites. Additionally, companies like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western union have blocked donations to WikiLeaks, further damaging the group.

Even more concerns arose last August when, as reported in the New York Times, WikiLeaks published 134,000 leaked diplomatic cables -- many of which showed the names of people who had spoken confidentially to American diplomats and whose identities were marked in the cables with the warning "strictly protect". Human rights groups (which previously applauded him) are very concerned that this may result in journalists, activists, academics and diplomatic sources in authoritarian countries facing reprisals that could include dismissal, prosecution or violence. Consequently, Assange is hemorrhaging followers by the hour.

As Christopher Hitchens noted: "When he says that his aim is 'to end two wars', one knows at once what he means by the 'ending'. In his fantasies he is probably some kind of guerrilla warrior, but in the real world he is a middle man and peddler who resents the civilisation that nurtured him."

And what about the sex charges -- which Assange insists are trumped up?

All eyes are now on Sweden, a country rightly proud

of its impartial justice system; a passionate defender of freedom of speech and certainly no lackey for the US, as some have suggested.

Sweden is also proud of its high measure of sexual equality. Consequently, the Swedes were probably not too impressed when Assange called their country: "The Saudi Arabia of feminism," complaining that he had fallen "into a hornets' nest of revolutionary feminism" -- opinions that are surely supported by his new champions the Taliban and those who think like them.

Which ultimately tells you all you need to know about our friend -- supposed defender of the poor, the victimised and the powerless: Mr Julian Assange.

Originally published in