Barbara Broccoli is messing with you. It is worth keeping that piece of information in mind every time another industry podcast sends the who-will-be-the-next-Bond speculation machine into yet another frenzy.
In an interview, Broccoli, the franchise’s executive producer and widely acknowledged kingmaker, told Deadline that when it comes to casting the next generation of the world’s most famous spy, Idris Elba is “part of the conversation”.
“We know Idris, we’re friends with him, and he’s a magnificent actor,” she said. “... but it’s always difficult to have the conversation when you have someone [Daniel Craig] in the seat.”
Many have taken this as cast-iron proof that only time and a formal announcement stands between the Luther star and a license to kill. That is exactly what Broccoli intends – which is why you can be sure that it isn’t true.
Of course, the case for Elba is substantial. His CV is dominated by violent, magnetic men entangled, on one side or the other, in high-level crime. In The Wire he played fixer Stringer Bell, whose quiet ruthlessness, cold pragmatism, and fondness for a well-cut jacket saw him rise to the top of the Baltimore drugs gang over the course of the show. In Luther, he was the tormented, compromised Detective Chief Inspector, whose boundless commitment to the ends of justice was constantly threatened by the violence of his means. It is hard to imagine two more perfect Bond auditions.
Yet Luther began more than a decade ago and The Wire came off air three years before that. There is a reason that Elba’s name remains at the top of the pile and that is because it’s been there for longer than anyone else’s. Elba turns 50 this year – his appointment to the job would make the oldest Bond ever, beating the previous record holder Roger Moore, by the time the next film is finished, by at least half a decade.
And while Bond’s age, like almost everything else about a character whose on-screen life has so far outlasted 60 years and six actors, is flexible, it seems highly unlikely that Broccoli would deem an over-50 a prudent investment in 2022. For one thing, it places a tight limit on his tenure. Given that over the last 20 years, discounting pandemic delays, we’ve had one film every three to four years, and that it’s hardly credible to imagine Elba continuing with the part into his 60s, it seems highly unlikely he would appear in more than two films (three at a push).
For another, the franchise, like anything in the glare of mainstream culture today, is under significant pressure to modernise when it comes to agenda-topping political issues like diversity. This is why the next Bond will almost certainly not be white and another good argument for Elba.
But as long as the sexual exploitation of women and the power-imbalances inherent to patriarchy sit firmly at the top of the political issues list, shacking up the firmly heterosexual Bond with a love interest at least a decade his junior (modernise all you want, but let’s face it: we’re light-years away from getting a menopausal Bond girl) is hardly an ideal look – especially given the outcry over the 17-year age gap between Craig and his most recent flame, Lea Seydoux.
While Elba is by far the oldest of the front-runners, similar objections can be made to at least half the other candidates currently topping the bookies’ favourites: Tom Hardy is 44; Jamie Dornan is 39; Henry Cavill, James Norton, and Richard Madden are all approaching the danger years.
But even more importantly than his age, the real reason that neither Elba, nor, for that matter, Hardy, Dornan, or Cavill will ever get their hands on the keys to a vintage Aston Martin (not on-screen, anyway) has nothing to do with the odd grey hair. It is simply that they are far too famous.
Cast your mind back to 2005, when a blonde pretender called Daniel Craig was announced as the next 007, via an underwhelming PR stunt involving a speedboat down the Thames on a sluggish October day. Craig, hand-picked by Broccoli, who reportedly fell “in love” with him after watching the gritty British gang thriller Layer Cake, was not a popular choice.
At the time, Bond fans might know him as Ted Hughes, playing opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the arthouse film Sylvia, or as one of the five terrorists in Steven Spielberg’s Munich, or perhaps as the sexually-voracious handyman in Roger Michell’s taboo-busting domestic drama The Mother, none of which exactly screamed cocktail-slinging super spy. Or they might not recognise him at all.
“I don’t think anyone really knows who David Craig is. He has played numerous, forgettable bit parts in films where he had made about as much impression as an invisible orangutan” wrote one angry fan on craigisnotbond.com, a website devoted entirely to bashing Craig.
Few websites in the history of the internet can have aged so badly. Peter Bradshaw’s Guardian review of Craig’s first outing, Casino Royale, called him “inspired casting” and 17 years later, as he finally shelves his Walther PPK, Craig is widely considered one of the best Bonds in the franchise’s history.
Relative obscurity
Such praise comes in part because of, not in spite of, his relative obscurity. Unhampered by preconceptions or beloved previous roles imprinted into public consciousness, Craig was able to inhabit the character with the kind of intensity and attention-to-detail then unfamiliar to a franchise that preferred broad brush strokes and light satire to complex characterisation.
Through Craig (plus a few determined modernisers including Crash writer Paul Haggis and Skyfall director Sam Mendes), we discovered the man behind the muscle: weighed down by childhood trauma, wounded and repressed, yet capable of and desperate for love. Would we have taken him so seriously if we saw him refracted through the lens of a Baltimore drug lord or a lycra-clad superman? Of course not.
Such is the fundamental false economy of the who-will-be-the-next-Bond hype machine. Because the thing is, Broccoli will never choose someone remotely famous enough to generate the sort of odds that proper speculation requires. It will most likely be someone the majority of casual film-goers have never heard of or at best, a name familiar only from the very periphery of celebrity culture – someone like Kingsley Ben-Adir or Dev Patel.
The Bond franchise doesn’t need to hire a star when it can so easily make its own, which is why Elba is probably lounging at home right now, working on the fabric for his next designer sandal and waiting for the storm to pass. He knows Broccoli is messing with you. The next Bond will surprise us all.
The Daily Telegraph
