Ahhh, Mr Villeneuve: I’ve been expecting you. Except, if we’re honest, nobody did quite expect this did they? James Bond doesn’t get rebooted by Denis Villeneuve. A new James Bond actor gets paired with a safe pair of hands, someone from the Bond boot room.
Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig were ushered into MI6 by Martin Campbell, and had the old guard still been in place at the head of the Bond machine, you wouldn’t have entirely discounted them giving him a third crack aged 81.
But no: this feels good. In fact, this feels like a massive coup. Genuine A-list directors who can do imaginative adaptations of literary material just as well as they can do ligament-twangingly tense actioners, and convince enough people to come out to the cinema to make a good few hundred million dollars? There aren’t many around, and fewer with Villeneuve’s mix of pop pedigree and genuine heft.
Remember that the last two times Villeneuve took on a fiercely beloved cinematic property which had been out of action for a while, and which came with a very vocal online fanbase, we got Blade Runner 2049 and Dune.
It’s quite mad to think that for literally decades, everyone said it was impossible to do a Blade Runner sequel, and that Dune was a fool’s errand. But Villeneuve’s great strength has always been that he really gets what it is that makes the thing he’s getting into good. He loved Blade Runner. He loved Dune. And from the sounds of it, he really loves Bond.
"I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr No with Sean Connery. I'm a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he's sacred territory," Villeneuve said. "I intend to honour the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come."
And no, Villeneuve is not Christopher Nolan. Sorry. But really, for all the yearning among the Bond fandom for Nolan, have we not had at least four Nolan Bond films already? Tenet felt like Nolan’s splashy, bananas riff on Bond, and Daniel Craig’s concluding run from Skyfall through Spectre and No Time To Die wore Nolan’s Dark Knight movies very much on their sleeves. We’ve been there; we’ve done that.
If there’s a chance that we end up in a bit of a Mission: Impossible 2 situation—that was very much a John Woo film that happened to have Ethan Hunt in it–then, really, so be it. Let Bond swap his Aston for a sandworm. Let’s go.
So what to expect? There are a few Villeneuve regulars who might pop up in his Bond film. Recent buddy Dave Bautista’s probably out, alas, having been booted from a train in Spectre. But David Dastmalchian as a Bond villain? Josh Brolin as a rebooted Felix Leiter? Oh you betcha. And a return for cinematographic genius Roger Deakins, who’s been away since Skyfall but is Villeneuve’s guy, would be very welcome too.
The other thing to remember is Villeneuve’s not just directing–he’s exec producing too, the first time that’s happened on a Bond film. That puts a big chunk of power into his hands, and confirms one huge thing: this isn’t going to be a Bond film Denis Villeneuve is doing. This is Denis Villeneuve doing Bond. And man alive, is that exciting.
