Have to agree. Even a completely re-booted Bond isn't straight out of Prep School. Bond has had military service and has some years of experience serving in MI6 before becoming a "00".
inspired by the confusion over Judi Dench in another thread, I nominate as the next James Bond: ... Daniel Craig!
...except he won't be playing the same James Bond as seen in his first five films, he will be playing an all-new, all-different character also by coincidence named James Bond!
Don’t assume the next Bond series will return to the standard formula. It might, but a Bond who appeals to younger audiences is probably more apropos. Gen-Xers who grew up with knuckle dragging types like Stallone and Schwarzenegger as the male ideal are going to have a hard time accepting someone boyish and handsome instead, but they’ll be in their 50s and 60s when the next Bind premieres. The Boomers are becoming even less relevant.
I think many young people want the next Bond to be younger, most likely late 20's or early 30's. But I don't think they want an actor who can play a teenager, especially one who's less masculine than most men. I can't think of a single male adult lead in a major action movie who's played by an actor who looks as young and modertately masculine as Chalamet. I see this as a sign that there isn't a great demand for that type of action hero out there.
I think he's a very talented actor and I admire his performances in movies such as Dune and Little Women, but he's wrong as Bond.
I think the change in the Bond type is more likely to be his ethnicity. The ethnic mix in Europe and north America has changed a lot since the 1950's.
Bond was never a knuckle-draging Stallone/Schwarzenegger type. The nearest we ever got to that was Craig (Even though he still was far from their type), and he was popular with young people. Not wanting Chalamet doesn't have to mean a Stallone/Schwartzenegger type. I'd say most men are somewhere between Chalamet and Schwarzenegger in that regard.
I think they'll mold the next Bond series to fit whatever the actor and audience wants, including if that means a more boyish and slim Bond. They certainly did that with Q with no trouble. The hyper-buff 80s type White guy is pretty much what young Baby Boomers and Gen-X internalized as the male ideal, mostly because popular entertainment kept hammering that home for decades. The 80s were neither about diversity nor subtlety, but were largely a redux of the 1950s conservatism on steroids. That's why anything else tends to look strange to them, unless they're among the iconoclasts who never accepted that presentation in the first place. But Boomers and Gen-Xers are increasingly irrelevant to popular entertainment. Millennials and Gen-Z seem to have far less need for that, or at least that's how it's reflected in the latest rounds of casting. Despite the applause for "realism" in the Craig Bonds, something they never really addressed is how a guy like Bond finds two or three hours a day to work out to stay in shape.
If they go for a younger Bond, he'll be more dependent on technology, intelligence, and fast skills for his edge, something more like an anime character than a brutal gentleman thug.
What I sometimes like about this forum, it’s the self righteousness in certain contributions. No offense.
You do know, that the people in those movies are called actors, because they act?
It’s performing art. Something of which Mr Schwarzenegger has little.
You do know, that Daniel Craig played a scumbag in “Road to Perdition”, a homosexual in “Love is the devil” or an insecure intellectual in “Enduring Love”?
You do know, that he’s no “blunt instrument” in real life?
All I was suggesting is, Chalamet has the looks and a degree of potential to impersonate the image of Bond from the books. And that he could be the probably much needed counterpoint to DC.
Sure, the guy's a good actor and we all understand that these are actors are playing a role, but some are more suitable than others. Maybe Calumet would make sense in an origin story (that literally goes back to Bond in the military) but I (and others) just don't see him as Bond at this point. For the sake of fairness, let's break things down a bit more objectively:
Some may find him a bit too "androgynist" looking at his present age.
Calumet is American. I am sure he can develop a spot on accent for the role, but I don't know if the producers are willing to cast non-UK at this point.
His height and weight (5'10" and 150 lbs) IMO are not a problem as the general public embraced a shorter Bond and he could easily be transformed into looking like a middleweight boxer in the gym.
I guess the other thing we need to look at is the time line for the next Bond film. Calumet is about 26 now, so when he's pushing 30, his looks will have matured and he will cross from almost "pretty" to "handsome". A proper Bond haircut and wardrobe will help. Any needed additional "ruggedness" can easily be added with make-up and lighting.
Calumet should appeal to a younger demographic, which could help broaden the box office for Bond.
This could be the real issue: Dune. While Dune has been a success and Dune 2 has been greenlit for a 2023 release (which would not interfere with Bond 26) the film has probably propelled Calumet into a level of stardom that might put him out of financial reach for Bond or he just may not be interested in or be motivated to take on the commitment of the Bond franchise.
I know this, yes. But I also know there's a limit to how different from their own looks actors can look, at least for a series of movies. Charlize Theron played ugly and overweight in Monster, but otherwise she plays tall, beautiful women. This is because she really is a tall, beautiful woman. There are lots of other examples. Good actors like Theron and Chalamet can play a wide range of types, but in the end they are helped or limited by how they look. Chalamet looks younger than he is and less masculine than the majority of men, and this why he doesn't get roles as middle aged soldiers and fishermen. It's not a critisism of his great talent as an actor, it's just how he looks. No matter how good an actor Daniel Craig is I bet he hasn't been offered roles as seven feet tall black men. Because of how he looks.
And do you really think it's okay to imply that I'm selfrightous and don't understand actors can play different kinds of people, just because you say "no offence" after? It's not a "get Out of jail" card.
You asked me / all of us in your (!) thread, who I would want for the next Bond.
I replied to your invitation. And afterwards, you seemed to pose an offensive question to me and seemed to doubt my understanding of a character which we all like so much. For various reasons and from various angles.
I found that offensive, and self righteous, and that it put me in a defensive situation.
I think response to your suggestion of Chalamet was reasonable and within what acceptable in a thread like this. I invited people in to discuss this topic and things can get heated. It's natural I think. It's natural to have different ideas og how Bond should be and challenge each other on it.
While I can accept you questioning my knowledge of movies in general (you did), you got personal and called me selfrightous. And you couldn't even stand by your own words. You tried to cover yourself by saying "no offence". Who calls someone selfrightous and don't mean to offend someone?
I think something to keep in mind, too, is that the definition of masculine may no longer confined to a Northern or Western European's sensibilities anymore, or at least that is changing. Yes, Bond as a character is Northern/Western European, but increasingly, diversity within borders is not only sought after but also audiences around the world. What Western popular culture has fed us from the beginning is that the Northern/Western European ideal is "normal" and everything else is off in some way. Of course, that potentially writes off 90-95 percent of the human race.
For instance, a grotesque, race-based prejudice in the U.S. is that Asian men are hypomasculine, and therefore more effeminate, while Black men are hypermasculine, and therefore more brutish and animalistic. Like Goldilocks and the three bears, it's always the middle that is the standard bearer by which everything else is measured. All this feeds into the assumption about which men are most desirable and "masculine."
Of course, this flies in the face of reality. The United States, for instance, has rarely won a land war in Asia, and the last few in particular have been particularly costly in terms of defeat.
So, depending on how much diversity and the international marketplace matters to films like Bond -- whose profit margins, at least from box office, seem more tight than they were in, say, the 1960s -- we may see newer representations that reflect a broader audience consideration. Generations are changing with their assumptions, especially as people travel and fears about miscegenation recede more and more.
Or they could just as easily return to the old expectations. That's what makes popular culture hard to gauge. It works only because it works.
I don’t think they’ll go with a truly effeminate take on Bond. That said, I’ve seen Brosnan, Moore, and Dalton each described as effeminate Bonds on many occasions (usually by people who are enamored with Craig’s portrayal, and who insist that any actor mentioned for the role who doesn’t look like a professional bodybuilder would need to “bulk up”). That is to say, I think many people associate masculinity on film with either the ultra-alpha vibe of a Connery or John Wayne, or the 80s-style action heroes already discussed. I guess I see a little bit more room for nuance. Actors from the classic era of Hollywood were not so one-dimensional. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, but I believe nuance is the route they’ll take. Indeed, Fleming wrote Bond as a much more layered character than Connery portrayed him. People looking for a redux of Craig (who was, in the producers’ eyes if not in reality, a redux of Connery) may be disappointed.
Masculinity is not so much about muscles. I've seen photos of elite soldiers from WWII such as Marine Raiders. They were buildt like swimmers, volleyball players, fotball players (the type where they mainly use their feet to play) and other athletes in sports where great strength isn't particularely important. Things like voice, bone structure, movement etc. are in my opinion more important. Ideally Bond's body should look like an athlete's, not someone who lifts weights because big muscles look good.
I finally found someone I'd like to see as the next James Bond. Unfortunately he died a year before Ian Fleming published Casino Royale.
I give you Henry Edwards:
I encountered him at this year's Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Jokeren (1928, aka The Joker), a Danish film by a German director based on a British play set in the French riviera with a British cast.
Henry Edwards plays the Joker, "the sobriquet given to a gentleman adventurer who always wins, and on this occasion he plays the part of a modern Sir Galahad to two charming sisters in distress."
Edwards dashingly embodies an international man of mystery equally skilled at cards and fisticuffs: James Bond avant la lettre. If I was making a Bond during the 1920s he'd be my first choice. But nowadays he's better suited to zombie films.
Many are of the opinion that the next Bond should be relatively young, maybe thirty give or take a couple of years. I looked at the actors in this poll (and Rege-Jean Page) and find out who's that age now. None of them are under thirty today. Here's the list (I may have missed someone):
Alex Pettyfer
Jack Lowden
Henry Goulding
Tom Brittney
Tom Bateman
Josh Bowman
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Nicolas Hoult
Rege-Jean Page
Does anyone have names to ad? I'm not a big backer of anyone on the list, but several have potential I think.
You should add Will Poulter who has grown into his face (no longer looking permanently shocked), is 28, would satisfy the height freaks at well over 6'3, can wear a suit and is a fine actor to boot.
This is the first time I have to say I just don't have anyone in mind except names that have already been discussed.
My Bond choices are probably all too old or probably too well known/established and expensive and I just am not that familiar with many actors in the age group that might be in the running.
Comments
Chalamet.
Bc it needs to be someone as a counterpoint to Craig.
Too bad, he‘s not British.
You do know James Bond is supposed to be a masculine icon, right?
The new Bond actor has to make the role his own, but casting one of the least masculine actors I know of isn't right for the James Bond in my opinion.
chalamet is a very gifted young actor and his career is absolutely on fire right now. But James Bond needs to be a man with some testosterone.
Have to agree. Even a completely re-booted Bond isn't straight out of Prep School. Bond has had military service and has some years of experience serving in MI6 before becoming a "00".
Chalamet plays a fifteen year old boy in Dune, indication of how young he looks.
inspired by the confusion over Judi Dench in another thread, I nominate as the next James Bond: ... Daniel Craig!
...except he won't be playing the same James Bond as seen in his first five films, he will be playing an all-new, all-different character also by coincidence named James Bond!
That oughta blow folks' minds!
Don’t assume the next Bond series will return to the standard formula. It might, but a Bond who appeals to younger audiences is probably more apropos. Gen-Xers who grew up with knuckle dragging types like Stallone and Schwarzenegger as the male ideal are going to have a hard time accepting someone boyish and handsome instead, but they’ll be in their 50s and 60s when the next Bind premieres. The Boomers are becoming even less relevant.
I think many young people want the next Bond to be younger, most likely late 20's or early 30's. But I don't think they want an actor who can play a teenager, especially one who's less masculine than most men. I can't think of a single male adult lead in a major action movie who's played by an actor who looks as young and modertately masculine as Chalamet. I see this as a sign that there isn't a great demand for that type of action hero out there.
I think he's a very talented actor and I admire his performances in movies such as Dune and Little Women, but he's wrong as Bond.
I think the change in the Bond type is more likely to be his ethnicity. The ethnic mix in Europe and north America has changed a lot since the 1950's.
Bond was never a knuckle-draging Stallone/Schwarzenegger type. The nearest we ever got to that was Craig (Even though he still was far from their type), and he was popular with young people. Not wanting Chalamet doesn't have to mean a Stallone/Schwartzenegger type. I'd say most men are somewhere between Chalamet and Schwarzenegger in that regard.
I think they'll mold the next Bond series to fit whatever the actor and audience wants, including if that means a more boyish and slim Bond. They certainly did that with Q with no trouble. The hyper-buff 80s type White guy is pretty much what young Baby Boomers and Gen-X internalized as the male ideal, mostly because popular entertainment kept hammering that home for decades. The 80s were neither about diversity nor subtlety, but were largely a redux of the 1950s conservatism on steroids. That's why anything else tends to look strange to them, unless they're among the iconoclasts who never accepted that presentation in the first place. But Boomers and Gen-Xers are increasingly irrelevant to popular entertainment. Millennials and Gen-Z seem to have far less need for that, or at least that's how it's reflected in the latest rounds of casting. Despite the applause for "realism" in the Craig Bonds, something they never really addressed is how a guy like Bond finds two or three hours a day to work out to stay in shape.
If they go for a younger Bond, he'll be more dependent on technology, intelligence, and fast skills for his edge, something more like an anime character than a brutal gentleman thug.
Hmmm…
What I sometimes like about this forum, it’s the self righteousness in certain contributions. No offense.
You do know, that the people in those movies are called actors, because they act?
It’s performing art. Something of which Mr Schwarzenegger has little.
You do know, that Daniel Craig played a scumbag in “Road to Perdition”, a homosexual in “Love is the devil” or an insecure intellectual in “Enduring Love”?
You do know, that he’s no “blunt instrument” in real life?
All I was suggesting is, Chalamet has the looks and a degree of potential to impersonate the image of Bond from the books. And that he could be the probably much needed counterpoint to DC.
Best,
7
Sure, the guy's a good actor and we all understand that these are actors are playing a role, but some are more suitable than others. Maybe Calumet would make sense in an origin story (that literally goes back to Bond in the military) but I (and others) just don't see him as Bond at this point. For the sake of fairness, let's break things down a bit more objectively:
I know this, yes. But I also know there's a limit to how different from their own looks actors can look, at least for a series of movies. Charlize Theron played ugly and overweight in Monster, but otherwise she plays tall, beautiful women. This is because she really is a tall, beautiful woman. There are lots of other examples. Good actors like Theron and Chalamet can play a wide range of types, but in the end they are helped or limited by how they look. Chalamet looks younger than he is and less masculine than the majority of men, and this why he doesn't get roles as middle aged soldiers and fishermen. It's not a critisism of his great talent as an actor, it's just how he looks. No matter how good an actor Daniel Craig is I bet he hasn't been offered roles as seven feet tall black men. Because of how he looks.
And do you really think it's okay to imply that I'm selfrightous and don't understand actors can play different kinds of people, just because you say "no offence" after? It's not a "get Out of jail" card.
Hi Number24,
You asked me / all of us in your (!) thread, who I would want for the next Bond.
I replied to your invitation. And afterwards, you seemed to pose an offensive question to me and seemed to doubt my understanding of a character which we all like so much. For various reasons and from various angles.
I found that offensive, and self righteous, and that it put me in a defensive situation.
If you didn’t mean it that way, I apologize.
Best,
7
I think response to your suggestion of Chalamet was reasonable and within what acceptable in a thread like this. I invited people in to discuss this topic and things can get heated. It's natural I think. It's natural to have different ideas og how Bond should be and challenge each other on it.
While I can accept you questioning my knowledge of movies in general (you did), you got personal and called me selfrightous. And you couldn't even stand by your own words. You tried to cover yourself by saying "no offence". Who calls someone selfrightous and don't mean to offend someone?
I think something to keep in mind, too, is that the definition of masculine may no longer confined to a Northern or Western European's sensibilities anymore, or at least that is changing. Yes, Bond as a character is Northern/Western European, but increasingly, diversity within borders is not only sought after but also audiences around the world. What Western popular culture has fed us from the beginning is that the Northern/Western European ideal is "normal" and everything else is off in some way. Of course, that potentially writes off 90-95 percent of the human race.
For instance, a grotesque, race-based prejudice in the U.S. is that Asian men are hypomasculine, and therefore more effeminate, while Black men are hypermasculine, and therefore more brutish and animalistic. Like Goldilocks and the three bears, it's always the middle that is the standard bearer by which everything else is measured. All this feeds into the assumption about which men are most desirable and "masculine."
Of course, this flies in the face of reality. The United States, for instance, has rarely won a land war in Asia, and the last few in particular have been particularly costly in terms of defeat.
So, depending on how much diversity and the international marketplace matters to films like Bond -- whose profit margins, at least from box office, seem more tight than they were in, say, the 1960s -- we may see newer representations that reflect a broader audience consideration. Generations are changing with their assumptions, especially as people travel and fears about miscegenation recede more and more.
Or they could just as easily return to the old expectations. That's what makes popular culture hard to gauge. It works only because it works.
Good points. I don't think the masculinity of the earlier Bonds is a thing of the past, but a good post.
I don’t think they’ll go with a truly effeminate take on Bond. That said, I’ve seen Brosnan, Moore, and Dalton each described as effeminate Bonds on many occasions (usually by people who are enamored with Craig’s portrayal, and who insist that any actor mentioned for the role who doesn’t look like a professional bodybuilder would need to “bulk up”). That is to say, I think many people associate masculinity on film with either the ultra-alpha vibe of a Connery or John Wayne, or the 80s-style action heroes already discussed. I guess I see a little bit more room for nuance. Actors from the classic era of Hollywood were not so one-dimensional. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, but I believe nuance is the route they’ll take. Indeed, Fleming wrote Bond as a much more layered character than Connery portrayed him. People looking for a redux of Craig (who was, in the producers’ eyes if not in reality, a redux of Connery) may be disappointed.
Masculinity is not so much about muscles. I've seen photos of elite soldiers from WWII such as Marine Raiders. They were buildt like swimmers, volleyball players, fotball players (the type where they mainly use their feet to play) and other athletes in sports where great strength isn't particularely important. Things like voice, bone structure, movement etc. are in my opinion more important. Ideally Bond's body should look like an athlete's, not someone who lifts weights because big muscles look good.
We've learned recently just how much creative control Craig had, unprecedented.
Do we want any future Bond actor to have similar level of input?
Of the various names suggested, have any of them said what they think should be done with the character?
Look at the guys that usually top the 'next James Bond' lists to see what most of the general public wants/expects Bond to physically look like.
Just dropping back in to re-up Nicholas Hoult.
Honourable mention to Will Poulter.
I finally found someone I'd like to see as the next James Bond. Unfortunately he died a year before Ian Fleming published Casino Royale.
I give you Henry Edwards:
I encountered him at this year's Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Jokeren (1928, aka The Joker), a Danish film by a German director based on a British play set in the French riviera with a British cast.
Henry Edwards plays the Joker, "the sobriquet given to a gentleman adventurer who always wins, and on this occasion he plays the part of a modern Sir Galahad to two charming sisters in distress."
Edwards dashingly embodies an international man of mystery equally skilled at cards and fisticuffs: James Bond avant la lettre. If I was making a Bond during the 1920s he'd be my first choice. But nowadays he's better suited to zombie films.
You're no doubt a Fleming Traditionalist (see AJB Glossary) 😂
The answer here is Rege Jean-Paige
Many are of the opinion that the next Bond should be relatively young, maybe thirty give or take a couple of years. I looked at the actors in this poll (and Rege-Jean Page) and find out who's that age now. None of them are under thirty today. Here's the list (I may have missed someone):
Alex Pettyfer
Jack Lowden
Henry Goulding
Tom Brittney
Tom Bateman
Josh Bowman
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Nicolas Hoult
Rege-Jean Page
Does anyone have names to ad? I'm not a big backer of anyone on the list, but several have potential I think.
You should add Will Poulter who has grown into his face (no longer looking permanently shocked), is 28, would satisfy the height freaks at well over 6'3, can wear a suit and is a fine actor to boot.
Alfred Enoch should probably be on the list. (Although he'll be 33 in a couple of weeks).
Not the point of the poll, but i'd like to pitch Jeremy Irons as Q.
This is the first time I have to say I just don't have anyone in mind except names that have already been discussed.
My Bond choices are probably all too old or probably too well known/established and expensive and I just am not that familiar with many actors in the age group that might be in the running.