With one noteworthy exception (which didn’t work out too well in my opinion), no movie in the James Bond series has ever been directed by a marquee-name, rock-star filmmaker. And when you think about it, that’s quite a startling statement. Because…why not? Quentin Tarantino? Christopher Nolan? Who on earth would want to see a Bond film directed by one of those losers?
The directors of the Bond films have mostly been veteran craftsmen (like Terence Young or Guy Hamilton), or journeymen (like John Glen), and a few have had a prestige aura (like Michael Apted or Lee Tamahori). But it was only when Sam Mendes was tapped to direct “Skyfall” that one felt the series was suddenly aiming higher than it had been. I was excited to see a filmmaker as gifted as Mendes take the reins, but suffice to say: While much of the world loves “Skyfall,” I do not. I have never understood the reverence for that film. To me, Mendes did a smooth, workmanlike job but undercut the Bond mystique by producing a movie inflated with therapeutic backstory. To me, the film couldn’t hold a candle to what I think of as the greatest entry in the Bond series (apart from “Dr. No” and “Goldfinger”), and that’s “Casino Royale.” And “Casino Royale” was directed by Martin Campbell, who had no great track record (and had made “GoldenEye,” a Bond movie I thought sucked), so maybe this was all just a big unpredictable crapshoot anyway.
And yet, in recent years, the weird canyon that seems to exist between James Bond films and the great, blue-chip artist-filmmakers who’ve expressed a passion about directing them has begun to narrow. When Tarantino first voiced enthusiasm about the possibility of directing a Bond movie, it sounded like a sublime combination, almost too good to be true. But that went nowhere.
The same thing happened with Nolan, though by that point it was actively reported that he wanted final cut, which was something that the legacy producers of the Bond series, Barbara Broccoli and her half-brother, Michael G. Wilson, simply weren’t going to allow. One mourned, on some level, for the out-of-the-box Bond adventures, helmed by visionary filmmakers, that we weren’t going to get to see. Yet the message couldn’t have been clearer: Broccoli and Wilson were the series’ real auteurs. They would not cede the control.
But all that has changed now, with the absorption of the Bond franchise into the Amazon MGM empire. I initially had disparaging thoughts about the potential of this merger to snuff what was left of the Bond legend. I did not — and do not — want to see the James Bond series strip-mined and sold for parts, turned into a streaming “universe” that converts Bond into content and markets it into the ground.
But the announcement, this week, that the new Bond producers, Amy Pascal and David Heyman, have chosen Denis Villeneuve, the director of the “Dune” films, to make the very first Bond movie for Amazon casts the situation in a bold new light.
Villeneuve, at his best, is a fantastic filmmaker, one with a sixth sense for investing drama with the quality of danger. Have you ever seen Villeneuve’s “Prisoners,” from 2013? It’s a dazzlingly executed plunge into the abyss. And while I’m not a major “Dune” fan, I do think that the dark majesty he has brought to those films is stunning. Villeneuve has proven to be a master at building a world. And to make a great James Bond movie for our time, you need to imagine and build the world of Bond. You also can’t apologize for who Bond is — for what some regard as his dated qualities. If that’s your opinion of Bond, you probably shouldn’t be making a James Bond film. To some of us, the cutthroat charisma of Bond’s retro macho mystique isn’t dated so much as it is timeless. What the Bond series needs now is a filmmaker who can bring that to life in a way that reasserts the mythological magic of Bond.
That’s what Martin Campbell and Daniel Craig did in “Casino Royale.” It was a movie that came closer to the Sean Connery classics than any 007 film in decades, and at the same time it was a complicated and emotionally tricky romance. I think the colossal mistake that was made after “Casino Royale” was deciding that Bond, at the end of that film, had gone cold inside, so there was nothing left for him to engage in but his missions.
In the ’60s, the fact that Bond was such a ladykiller, at times almost literally (if you consider what happened to that girl painted in gold), also made him a culture-shaking novelty, because the sexual revolution was just taking off. That we’re now in the post-#MeToo era is supposed to render that side of Bond an anachronism. But I’d argue that what we want from a James Bond movie today, precisely because it is the post-#MeToo era, is a rediscovery of the danger of Bond. A danger that’s at once personal and spiritual and sexy and deadly. That’s the quality Craig brought to “Casino Royale,” where his Bond was a roughneck doing all he could to tame his instincts. I have an instinct that says Denis Villeneuve could bring that off again. He needs to return James Bond to being a sleek sociopath in a dinner jacket.
Of course, he’ll need the right actor to do it. And to me, the actors who are being talked about for the role — Jacob Elordi, Tom Holland, Harris Dickinson — may be talented dudes, but they’re too young. They’re all in their late 20s. Sean Connery, when he first played Bond, was 32 but seemed older; he possessed a been-around-the-block quality. So did Daniel Craig, who first took on the role at 38. Today’s movie actors don’t seem to age (they’re all fresh as daisies, which is one reason why Brad Pitt’s weatherbeaten sexiness is so appealing), but James Bond, I’m sorry, cannot be a babe in the woods. As far as I’m concerned, the actor who should play him is Josh O’Connor, who is 35, and who has the kind of skewed magnetism — handsome in an offbeat way, and a bit of a ruffian — the part needs.
There’s no question that James Bond is at a crossroads. With new ownership, he threatens to melt into oblivion. Yet the bitter truth is that he’s been melting away anyway. Much as I hate to say it, I think that the Daniel Craig series, after the sophistication and modified time-machine glory of “Casino Royale,” became a chain of disappointing follow-ups. The series kept chugging along, but that’s all it did. I, for one, am beyond tired of seeing routine James Bond films. But oh, would I love to see one that gave Bond back his quality of danger. That quality comes from his paradox, the fact that he’s two things at once: exquisitely civilized and licensed to kill. A humane brute whose conquering eroticism makes him romantic. If Denis Villeneuve does this right, James Bond will leave us shaken again, and stirred.
