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James Bond is one of the most prolific characters ever put to screen. With over 60 years of history, and 7 different actors playing the part, James Bond has become one of the most sought after roles for British actors. But it takes a specific type to step into the shoes of 007. Which is why, after Daniel Craig said goodbye to the role, the rumors of who would take over as Bond started to swirl. But what exactly does it take to land one of the biggest roles in the film industry? What type of actor can not only fill the shoes of his predecessor, but take the legendary character in new and bold directions?
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Vesper, I do hope you gave your parents help with that
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This audition landed Daniel Craig the role of a lifetime in 2006's Casino Royale
0:09
However, multiple future megastars auditioned for the role. The process of finding a new James Bond
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is notoriously difficult and strenuous, with only a select few actors even being offered the opportunity
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However, right now, maybe more so than ever before, the field of who's going to be James Bond
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feels staggeringly wide open. So the question is, what should the new owners of Bond be looking for in the next 007
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My friends call me Bond. James Bond. Bond is nothing short of an enduring cinematic icon
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The role was obviously created by Scottish weightlifter and model Sean Connery
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However, he's been remade for each subsequent generation. The character seems like he'd be a relic of the Cold War, as the films continually remind us
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but audiences keep returning to the cineplex to see what world-ending threat Bond will attempt to stop next
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Your dream, whatever sort of nightmare it is, has no chance, Drax
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Do you think not? While failure is an orphan, success has many fathers
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And as such, many men have claimed ownership of the role of Bond. While the character is adapted from Ian Fleming's long-running series of novels
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it was Dr. No director Terrence Young that gave Bond much of his screen persona
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The finely tailored suits, stiff upper lip, and dry wit were directly from Young's personal habits
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In fact, after Connery was cast, urban legend tells it that Young took Connery to his personal
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tailor and had multiple suits made for him. He instructed Connery to never take them off. He
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wanted to instill in him the physicality of a brute in a suit. Therein lies the secret to Bond's
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screen persona. In the books, he's much more of a down and dirty thug, a brooding killer. He's a
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simple and direct tool. In the movies, he has that same core
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but wrapped in the gentility of Young's personal obsessions. What drinks were fashionable
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What suits were trendy? What customs were gentlemanly? Red wine with fish That should have told me something I know the right wines You the one on your knees And it this tension that is at the core of what makes a great Bond actor
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Since Connery, there have been five actors to play Bond in the long-running franchise
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George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and of course, Daniel Craig
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Each of these men have worked to remix what has come before. Some of them have delved into the depths of the brooding nature of the character
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Others chose to focus on the comedic tendencies, each brought something unique and individualistic to the role
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However, there have been a cornucopia of actors who almost played the man with a license to kill
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from James Brolin to Sam Neill to Henry Cavill to Hugh Jackman
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My agent rang me and said, are you interested in playing Bond? Not that it was an offer for Bond
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When I was being asked if I was interested, about eight other actors were being asked at the same time
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However, for Eon Productions officially handing over the reins of the franchise to Amazon
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speculation is at an all-time high. For a long time, certain subsets of the fans were clamoring for Idris Elba to take over the role
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And while he wouldn't be the first black actor to inhabit the character, David Oyelowo played Bond in the officially sanctioned Trigger Mortis audiobook
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He would be the first black actor to play him on film. He has the brooding, brutish, and complex nature that you want in a Bond
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He would have been perfect if Daniel Craig's Bond had stopped after Skyfall
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Tragically, at 53, Elba is just a bit too old. The general opinion is that you want a Bond actor who is in his late 30s or early 40s
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That way he can age into the role, but you still have some runway before they get into Roger Moore in A View to Kill territory
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Cubby Broccoli, the producer who's most widely known as the creative powerhouse behind the series
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always said that no one wants to see Bond as a young man. The whole fantasy of Bond is that he's the most competent person in any room
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Therefore, even when they went back to the basics and tried to do an origin story Bond film in Casino Royale
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Bond was still a man in his late 30s. He might not have all the skills or tricks of the trade down
3:55
but he's not a 21 year old in the 00 Academy. The thing that makes this franchise so great is the fact that they don't over explain everything
4:02
There have been over 50 years of movies and we just recently learned what happened to Bond parents There no phantom menace syndrome here No one wants to see Bond get the adventures of young Indiana Jonesed
4:14
You missed Mr. Bond. Did I? According to rumors, the most recent stack of potential Bonds
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are Aaron Taylor Johnson, Tom Holland, Jacob Elordi, and Harris Dickinson. It's understandable why Aaron Taylor Johnson
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has so much hype around him. He's an actor of the right age, height, and nationality
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But does he have the swagger that Bond demands? He always kind of feels like a guy pretending to be a ladies' man
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Jacob Elordi? No, he's too tall. Bond is a spy who needs to be able to move seamlessly in and out of a crowd
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not be immediately spotted due to the fact he's a giant. Same thing for Tom Holland
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He's too short, too timid, and overall just not a Bond type at all
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The only reason he's even in the conversation is that he's English. Harris Dickinson is the closest of the recent crop of actors
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but he just doesn't really seem to fit the archetype. When Daniel Craig was announced as Bond, the fans went crazy
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A blonde Bond? It couldn't be. Daniel Craig's going to prove a very fine Bond
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I think critics are going to like him. It's a question whether audiences will take to him. I think they will
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Henry Golding is another name that's been bandied about. However, since Crazy Rich Asians, he's had one flop after another
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Golding has the suave attitude, and the fact that he's British and Malaysian
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would bring an interesting spin to this new reboot. But let's be real, it's probably unlikely that he's going to get cast
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It seems pretty apparent that this new Denis Villeneuve version of Bond is going to be a standalone film
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and it's going to continue down the gritty and grounded lane the Craig's films established
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Obviously, nothing has been confirmed, but just looking at who's involved and their taste
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this seems to be the direction they're going in. With that in mind, a simple checklist for qualifying candidates should be employed
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Are they from the UK? Do they have a brooding quality? and are they over six feet tall? Yes, I am aware that George Lazenby was not from the UK
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but Connery was Scottish and Brosnan was Irish. The character is inherently from the UK
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What do you think you're doing? Keeping the British hand up sir Here hoping the producers and Villeneuve keep Terence Young original brute in a suit approach It should be someone who has hard edges is believable in a fight
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and has a naturalistic body language when you put him in a suit. Stinging in the rain
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Bond is a metaphor. His struggle to do the right thing and the contradictions within himself
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are what people latch onto. Whether we realize it or not, we all feel like Bond in our daily lives
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living in a metaphorical suit. We all have to find ways to compromise
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We're all attempting to navigate no-win scenarios. It just happened to be much smaller stakes
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Casting a Bond film is arguably the biggest decision a Bond relaunch makes
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If Casino Royale had gone with Henry Cavill, Rupert Friend, or Anthony Starr, the franchise would have had to be constructed in a completely different way
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They'd have had to tailor this newly constructed Bond to the specific actor's strengths
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Look at what happened with Pierce Brosnan. GoldenEye was obviously written before he was cast
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and intended to be sculpted from what Timothy Dalton had brought to the role
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And then, once the writers and producers figured out who Brosnan was, they tailored his other films more to his personality
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They're more about the organic humor he can bring to the role. Backseat driver
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If this choice was just up to Denis Villeneuve, we'd be in safe hands. The man is a genius and makes films in a holistic and genuine way
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He knows what he's doing and is a lifelong Bond fan. The unfortunate circumstances at hand are that Bond, the crown jewel of film history
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has been bought by the largest international corporation in the history of the planet
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and they're only interested in one thing, maximizing profit. It won't be surprising if we get a massive movie star who's completely wrong for the role
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because Amazon thinks their face in a thumbnail will drive clicks on Prime
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It's depressing that this is the world we live in now, but we can hold out hope that Villeneuve and the other filmmakers will rise to the magnitude of the task at hand
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Even if they do get this casting wrong, now that Amazon owns the rights to Bond
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we're going to get a new film every few years, whether we want it or not
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Yes! I am invincible