The "Who Will Be the Next James Bond?" Chatter: A Note

As the claqueurs of the entertainment press endeavor to keep people talking about James Bond, and especially the unannounced next Bond film, on the basis of nearly nothing in the way of actual information, they have devoted much attention to speculation about and suggestions regarding the recasting of the lead, in the main going over the same list over and over and over again. (Yes, they are still talking about Henry Cavill. And Idris Elba. And all the other names you have heard three billion times already, as well as lots of names you have probably never even heard of at all. Like this Aaron Taylor-Johnson person they aren't shutting up about now.)

This seems to me to put the cart before the horse--given that the vision for the character, which is in turn a matter of the broader vision of the series, is what would make a particular actor more or less suitable to the role, especially with this not merely a matter of recasting but rebooting something that has already been repeatedly rebooted, and some serious change apparently in order after the uneven performance of the last film. (The point cannot be emphasized enough--No Time to Die was the series' weakest performer in North America since Licence to Kill, and probably not just here but elsewhere James Bond, like Indiana Jones, has failed to renew his fan base, with all that this promises for interest in a series that has only had one new film out since 2015.)

Do the series-runners have a new vision? One that actually stands a chance of appealing to a broad public? The silence on everything important to that possibility (the more obvious amid the noise about nothing at all, or what may yet turn out to be nothing at all) makes it difficult indeed to tell--but I am personally struck by the tallness of the order. The Bond movies, after all, succeeded by inventing the high-concept action-adventure franchise film--and kept the series going by adapting to that genre's evolution, putting up the ever-bigger budgets required for the first-stringers and shamelessly imitating every other success out there (from Jaws and Star Wars in the '70s to Jason Bourne and Christopher Nolan's Batman saga in the '00s). But now the whole game looks like it is drawing to an end--implying that a viable reboot will have to deliver a more fundamental overhaul of the series. And given the extreme reluctance of Hollywood to break with its longtime standard operating procedure, it seems to me that no one is offering any model for what the series might do on this score--forcing that much heavier a burden of imitation on those who would hope to bring Bond back to the screen successfully. If they do so it will be a striking feat--in marketing terms, if not artistically. But I cannot picture any possibility that would work (emphasis on the latter, as the claqueurs have not been short on ideas--the problem instead that all the ones I have heard from them have been completely unconvincing).

What do you think, readers? Anyone seeing the Bond series pull off the needed feat of reinvention to keep the franchise chugging along through another decade or more?