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😂 Not wrong.
It's modern masculinity, which is now a softness and almost distant approach to life and people I think. Jewlery and a little makeup. Sean famously wore hair, and makeup on screen, so not much has changed, but Sean's era asked something different of men than today. However I would argue that Sean's classic masculinity, the harder edge, involved man is a universal attraction, whereas this modern soft man stuff is just temporary and subversive.
What I'm saying is Doherty just needs a Guy Hamilton to show him the way of Bond, and he'd be golden I think. This video is better as a representation of what he offers, but he's still a little too self-aware and smug to seem Bondian to me. The closest he comes is to Brosnan I think. Has a smooth, clean look and approach, but an edge of smugness and constant aesthetic calculation that some may reject.
That's what I thought of Robert Pattinson until The Batman. Then I saw how it could work. Come to think of it, I think Doherty is a low-rent Pattinson, for my money I'd take the Bat guy for Bond.
Well I’m in the minority who loathed “The Batman “ and wasn’t impressed by the sullen, charmless, goth performance of Pattinson . Hopefully being cast as Batman will keep him from being considered for Bond.
Well fair enough, I respect that. I think they call that checkmate, my congratulations sir, a brilliant coup.
I dunno, I think it’s something that goes hand in hand with his acting style/previous roles. I don’t particularly care if an actor wears particular clothes, jewlrey or make up offscreen or whatever (of course no actor is Bond offscreen - not Connery with his balding scalp and not Craig who admits he prefers drinking in gay bars on nights out) but there are other potential candidates I’d say who just seem to possess more of that natural Bondian hard edge/grittiness/charisma or whatever regardless of their lives offscreen - Sope Dirisu, Jack O Connell, Jack Bannon etc.
I get what you’re saying about Pattinson, but for what it’s worth I always saw him as more ‘emo’ or brooding than soft (there’s a difference). I think his roles post Twilight and the fact that he’s older helps him in this regard too, not that he’s a Bond contender (great actor and a great Batman though).
I can see that, I think you're right re: brooding versus soft, per se.
To shuffle along, new Italian-based film "La Chimera" featuring Josh O'Connor has been ranked no. 20 on IndieWire's top films of 2023, with costuming I found that looks alright for Bond under cover or off assignment:
All of Us Strangers with Paul Mescal is no. 9 on the list.
As much as I like to look at Mescal, I don't ever see Bond.
Is it just me, or does he have a very very very slight Lewis Collins resemblance in that shot?
Ha, I see it.
Generally I think he's a little bit geeky to be Bond, but I've not seen him in much.
Edit: I've just looked at all the award nominations, and yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Eon asked him to audition based on that.
Yes, indeed. Good shout, I dig it. I've only seen RedLetterMedia talk about Who Dares Wins/The Final Option on YouTube, never seen any of his films in full.
Also on IndieWire's list of 2023 top films is Passages (no. 8) featuring one Jack Barton (IV), who has a short CV with about 10 theater credits, two film credits, and a half-dozen TV credits including BBC's SAS Rogue Heroes (now on season 2). Most images online of him show him looking very young, but he's 28 and has bulked up in recent years. He's 6'2. Has a great war face:
It's the TV series The Professionals that is his best work. I think he got typecast because of it.
You want someone with a touch of swashbuckler in his performance.
Indeed…
I've found the perfect actor then...
Oh wait, I don't think you want an Australian though??
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2023/11/18/outlanders-sam-heughan-interview-id-be-a-brilliant-bond/
Red Letter Media talked about Who Dares Wins?
Pretty sure! It may have just been an aside, some bit of trivia mentioned in context. I could be wrong about it being RLM. I also know I've seen it discussed on this forum, so I may be confused. I can't find anything when I search; like I said it could just be a quick aside in a video. Not a Collative Learning channel vid either, unless it's in his action movie ranking video I may have seen. Could have also just been some random raid clip compilation I watched.
Well said. It’s why I can’t get on board with some of the younger suggestions in this thread. Bond moves with the times and I do want someone who can reinvent it and make it his own, but the kind of masculinity you’re talking about is an integral part of the character and the success of the series.
It’s part of why I think Jack O’Connell would be a good choice. He’s young enough to appeal to Gen Z (Skins still seems popular even now) and to feel fresh and different after years of Bond as an old dog, but unlike Chamalet, Elordi* and some of the other younger names mentioned, he actually has that masculine alpha male energy that Bond needs. So, I don’t think he’d drive away older viewers and more masculine younger blokes in the same way they would. He’d get stick off some like Craig did for being shorter and more brutish looking than usual, but I could see that dying down once the film came out.
*will admit I haven’t actually seen him in anything so I could be wrong on that one. He doesn’t come across as embodying that kind of masculinity naturally, but I guess I can’t rule out him playing it well.
My only real note so far about O'Connell for Bond is that he might be too close to the Craig look/mold, not that some of the actors haven't looked a bit alike in the past I suppose, so I could easily overlook that if he was excellent.
I like Sope a lot. Agreed. But keep in mind he's already in the workout bootcamp that Craig did for Bond, and works with the same BTS photographer. Which might be why he "fits" so well for us in particular, as he's already been sort of shaped for it.
O'Connell's got the acting chops and charisma to do it. I find him Connery-esque in the sense that his early roles are as brutish thug or chav types, not dissimilar to Sean's early roles, which actually gives him that harder edge. The rest - the suits, charm, suaveness, confidence, wry humour etc - is either there naturally or is just a case of refining it. He moves very well physically too (if you haven't seen it watch Starred Up - he's got a great walk and there's little moments where he looks around a room that to me just screams Bond. He's got some pretty good, albeit more 'realistic' fight scenes in that movie too). Don't even notice his height in his films really. Just needs to neutralise his thick Derbyshire accent slightly (no need to go overboard with a 'posh' accent as such). And yes, he's young and comes across as down to earth enough to appeal to a wider selection of younger - and even older - crowds. I'd be happy if it was announced he was picked.
Elordi's a good actor and certainly has that broad quintessential 'look', but I don't think he quite has those natural raw qualities. As I said before having watched Saltburn I actually thought Barry Keoghan had more Bondian qualities about him.
Yeah he’s definitely got it in spades, he’s another one I like.
Yeah I do think that could work against him. From looking at him, you wouldn’t think he was worlds away from Craig. But I think they’re actually quite different as actors. O’Connell is so emotive and physical in all his roles, so that side of him could set him apart from Craig’s detached hiding his emotions behind the eyes kind of Bond. I think he’s more naturally cheeky and charismatic too, so I could see him playing up that side of the character more than Craig did and leaning into the hedonism a bit more. Craig was Mcqueen sort of cool, I think O’Connell could take us back to a Connery sort of cool, but with a more youthful spin on it.