Idris elba james bond 0079/17/2023 You may recall the internet campaign against Daniel Craig being cast as 007, which assembled a laundry list of complaints: Craig didn't look like the previous actors, Craig was blonde, Craig was too "uncouth" to play a suave superspy. These controversies about the "true Bond" are in a perpetual cycle. And 2006's Casino Royale was an attempt to correct for the goofy excesses of the Pierce Brosnan era - a rebooted superhero origin story for the world's most famous superspy. 1989's Licence to Kill drew direct inspiration from the hits of its era, including Lethal Weapon and RoboCop. 1979's Moonraker is a goofy failed attempt to infuse James Bond with Star Wars. (Today, his favorite tipple tends to be whichever alcohol brand is willing to pay most for its product placement.) He has also, repeatedly, been brought in line with the cultural norms of the era despite his two-plus-packs-a-day smoking habit in the novels, it's been many years since James Bond lit up a cigarette on-screen.Īnd the franchise has never really stopped evolving. Popular culture will always associate 007 with the vodka martini, but in the novels, he also drinks gin, scotch, bourbon, champagne, and beer - including, at one point, a Miller High Life. None of the six actors cast as 007 has featured the three-inch scar that Bond, according to Fleming's novels, bore on his right cheek. Filmmakers departed from Fleming's Bond from the very beginning. What I think Horowitz is trying to say - albeit clumsily - is that he prefers a cinematic 007 in the Sean Connery vein: cold and violent and basically guilt-free, without the angst or hand-wringing that tends to characterize modern-day Hollywood heroes.īut the "true Bond" turns out to be a trickier ideal than it might seem to pin down. To my mind, that's a fairly dull version of James Bond, but it's not a surprising sentiment from a writer who just spent months trying to capture the "true Bond" by sounding as much like Ian Fleming as possible. I don't want to know about his doubts, his insecurities, or weaknesses. "But I'm saying, 'Don't tell me, I don't want to know. "I know the fans are all terribly excited to know more," says Horowitz. He's equally skeptical about this year's Spectre, which seems to be doubling down on Skyfall's unusually revelatory approach to James Bond's personal history. In the full Daily Mail interview that blew up on Tuesday, Horowitz elaborates on his problem with Skyfall, the franchise's most recent installment, which he calls his "least favorite" 007 movie. That might be why he was so willing to judge what he views as the missteps of the current cinematic incarnation of James Bond, which stars Daniel Craig. Sebastian Faulks' Devil May Care, Jeffrey Deaver's Carte Blanche, and William Boyd's Solo have had no significant cultural legacy, and despite a sort-of disingenuous claim that Trigger Mortis contains previously unpublished, "original material by Ian Fleming" - the first chapter was adapted from one of Fleming's failed ideas for a TV series - I suspect that Trigger Mortis will quickly be ignored and forgotten by all but the biggest 007 diehards. Horowitz is the fourth novelist to take a crack at a new Bond novel within the past decade alone. (Horowitz has, for what it's worth, since issued an apology: "Clumsily, I chose the word 'street' as Elba's gritty portrayal of DCI John Luther was in my mind but I admit it was a poor choice of word. Despite his insistence that his aversion to Elba playing 007 wasn't "a color issue," Horowitz said he thought Elba was "a bit too rough" and "a bit too street" to play Bond - with the latter, in particular, sounding a lot like thinly veiled racism. Of course, these kinds of debates over the casting and recasting of iconic characters happen all the time - but Horowitz waded into controversy when he attempted to justify his skepticism.
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