Aaron Taylor-Johnson has been named by bookies as a favourite for the Bond role. Photo / Getty Images
Aaron Taylor-Johnson has been named by bookies as a favourite for the Bond role. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
Another week, another spin of the “next Bond” roulette wheel, which has kept bookies in business since well before the release of No Time to Die.
Some of the bigger names – Henry Cavill, Tom Hardy – are lingering in the mix, and so’s Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page, who’s still my personal hunch. But the frontrunner, insofar as this means anything at all, is now apparently Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whom credible sources say has done screen tests with the producers, and has even gone as far as to shoot teaser footage firing down the gun barrel.
On some levels ATJ (not Anya Taylor-Joy, alas) wouldn’t be a particularly surprising choice, but this is arguably the rub: Bond likes to surprise. It won’t be Idris Elba any more (he’s 50). It would be practically rebellious to go down the patrician/private school route, surely bad news for Tom Hiddleston and/or James Norton.
Aaron Taylor Johnson as Quicksilver/Pietro Maximoff and Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
ATJ is very much a known quantity – a blockbuster veteran, with not just one but two footholds in the MCU, and another hit franchise (Kick-Ass) he fronted at only 20. His star profile has risen steadily since his first major break as a teenage John Lennon in Nowhere Boy in 2009, directed by his partner, Sam Taylor-Johnson. He’s six-foot-ish, white, chiselled, with a brutish masculinity. On a good day, he can act.
Is he too much like Daniel Craig, then? This could be one strike. Bond doesn’t like to repeat: it’s why Moore followed Connery, Dalton followed Moore, and Brosnan, and then Craig, brought their own thing. Craig has said he’ll be remembered as “the grumpy Bond”; there’s something sullen and pouty at ATJ’s core which feels distinctly adjacent to that. They’re both bruisers. They would also be the most ripped back-to-back Bonds since Connery.
Another strike is age. Because of all that acting experience, especially in action flicks, but also such pungent turns as his Golden-Globe-winning sadistic kidnapper in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, you’d hardly call ATJ a pipsqueak any more. But he’s still just 32, which is right at the junior end of what the producers have said they’ll consider. Speaking last year at a panel, Michael G Wilson put his cards on the table. “We’ve tried looking at younger people in the past but trying to visualise it doesn’t work,” he explained. “Remember, Bond’s already a veteran, he’s had some experience – he’s a person who has been through the wars, so to speak. He’s probably been in the SAS or something. He isn’t some kid out of high school that you can bring in and start off.”
True, Connery was ATJ’s exact age when he debuted the role, but the situation was different – he landed it baggage-free at that point. Since then they’ve only dabbled once with a younger name (30-year-old George Lazenby), and look how that panned out. Craig was 38, Dalton 41, Brosnan 42, and Moore an overripe 45 (which puts Hardy on a fast-ticking clock, since he’s that age already).
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brad Pitt in Bullet Train. Photo / Supplied
Yes, it’ll be two years before the next film gets in front of cameras. But during that time, ATJ may simply become too famous. Following up big, flashy hits with Tenet and Bullet Train, he has the second of those Marvel tenures on its way, and is squarely the name-above-the-title lead this time: the film’s called Kraven the Hunter, is due for release this October, and will probably be enormous.
As will he – the character, Sergei Kravinoff, is a musclebound big game hunter. He’s clearly clocked a punishing amount of gym hours to bulk up for it, and Marvel could easily have sequels in mind. Do we actually want a brick-outhouse Bond, or one so familiar as a multiplex hero?
ATJ’s potential chief of staff, Rory Kinnear, has just poured a bit of cold water on the rumours: “It tends not to be the frontrunner, historically.” Cavill had his moment in the spotlight, but Bond surely can’t be Superman, already, and now it’s someone else’s turn. A lot of this feels suspiciously like noise to keep the odds bouncing about: I get emailed every week by betting agents’ PRs excitedly announcing whatever the latest shake-up has been.
A comment of Barbara Broccoli’s, at the same event last year, makes me especially dubious that ATJ’s our man, with no offence to him whatsoever. “We’re working out where to go with him,” she said. “Because, really, it’s a reinvention of Bond. We’re reinventing who he is and that takes time.”
Regé-Jean Page is the current second favourite to play James Bond after Daniel Craig's departure. Photo / Getty Images
Would a Taylor-Johnson Bond really be that much of a reinvention? Young as he is, the optics are just same old, same old. And this is why my money is, quite literally, on Page, who has sat on the shortlists for a couple of years now, usually at #2, biding his time, quietly entering his mid-30s with a modest film profile, and not getting any less debonair.
He may not be the fanboy choice, but I think, for suavity and sex appeal, he’s the best choice. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the deal is agreed, and they’re merely delaying the drum-roll, while the bookies continue to spin the wheel and have their field day. It’s even bonus publicity for ATJ, in a year when he needs that oxygen. Everyone wins, but the house wins the jackpot.
