The Daniel Craig Era is definitely over. After a very long wait and a welter of hypotheses, the name of the new James Bond seems close to being revealed. According to an indiscretion from Sunalso confirmed by Daily Mailthe production would finally choose and offer the role of 007 ad Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Which, at this point, he should just accept. The English actor has never denied that the role could be right for him. “It's a great honor to know that people see me in this role. It's a great compliment” he commented recently. It's true that the English tabloids are behind the rumor, and the news would have already been denied, but when the rumors become so thick they seem to be an important clue. At this point we almost feel like saying that all that's missing is the official status, and we will finally have the seventh James Bond in history after Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and, indeed, Daniel Craig. If this will really be the case, then we need to ask ourselves as Aaron Taylor-Johnson's James Bond could be?.
The difficult task of replacing Daniel Craig
AAron Taylor-Johnson will have a task that is not at all easy, that of replacing Daniel Craig, defined by many as the best Bond seen on screens along with Sean Connery. Given Craig's particularity, perhaps it's a good thing that we're going in a completely different direction. Taylor-Johnson is 33 years old, still young, a necessary requirement to take on the role of 007 and carry it forward for a series of films and not just one. Compared to other actors, however, who came to the role when they were still little known, Aaron is already quite famous and has a very respectable CV behind him.
Youth and fragility
Fit physique, clean, almost adolescent face – and this is what marks the clearest break with Craig's Bond – Aaron Taylor-Johnson embodied youth and fragility in the first films in which we met him. We still have in our eyes the first time we saw him on the screen, in the role of a very young John Lennon, still stripped of his iconic look, in Nowhere Boy (directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, who would become his partner). It is a role that immediately brings out all the sensitivity, the one necessary to talk about a child who has never grown up, and who terribly misses his mother. By the way, Bond was also an orphan, having lost his parents as a child. Even when he was a superhero, in Kick-Ass, he was a superhero sui generis, and Quicksilver from the Avengers was also a hero in training.
A decidedly flexible face
But Taylor-Johnson is not just that. He is also capable of throwing himself into violent and dangerous worlds, as happens in Beasts, where he is directed by Oliver Stone. He is capable of bringing out madness, as in one of his most successful and rewarded characters. Which? Ray Marcus from Nocturnal Animals, sadistic killer and rapist without soul and conscience, not surprisingly awarded the Golden Globe for best supporting actor. If necessary, that almost child-like face can be dirtied by a beard, or by mustache old fashioned, as in Bullet Train. If the role requires it, those good, clear eyes can be tinged with madness, as in Nocturnal animals. What we understood, seeing him repeatedly on screen, is who Aaron Taylor-Johnson is an extremely versatile actor. And then we are even more curious to understand what Bond will be.
A more sensitive and attentive Bond towards women?
It will certainly be one of the most beautiful and elegant James Bonds. His physique will allow him to best dress both in the standard tuxedo and in clothes more suited to action. But Aaron Taylor-Johnson seems like the right actor to take over that a discussion started by the screenwriters in the Craig Era, that is, to build a more sensitive and attentive Bond towards women. In the narrative arc of five films, from Casino Royale to No Time to Die, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who, apparently, should also be the authors of the script for the next 007) told a James Bond who suffers for love and is betrayed, and then a man who falls completely in love, reciprocated, and thinks of a woman and a daughter as part of a family. Miraculously, the authors managed to tell all this while maintaining a rude character, determinedruthless, fascinating as 007 must be.
James Bond as a conscious male?
Aaron Taylor-Johnson's new Bond could be a new character and at the same time linked to tradition. Today there are those who have not hesitated to define the classic Bond, that of Sean Connery, as one “rapist”, a man who never asked women for consent, or never accepted no. A vision perhaps a little extreme, of course, but it is clear that, like it or not, today even a character like James Bond is asked a code of behavior towards women that conforms to the contemporary, more balanced world. The English actor seems to be the right character also in terms of personality. In fact, it had made the news that, once married, he also took on his wife's surname, Sam Taylor-Wood and became Aaron Taylor-Johnson. James Bond as a conscious male? With the English actor it could be more than a suggestion…
Bond Begins: sarà un’origin story?
The other trend carried forward in the five films of Daniel Craig's saga by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, present above all from Skyfall onwards, is Bond “to be scrapped”il “wreck” approached to The Bold Valorosa by William Turner, the painting that tells of a ship being towed to its last anchorage to be demolished after many battles. Craig's body and face, his age and his background allowed this discussion. Which won't be possible with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whose physical appearance demonstrates an age that is perhaps even younger than his actual age. With such a young Bond, the hypothesis of a sort of reboot could take hold Bond Begins, an origin story of the characters. The beginning of the Craig era was also a reboot, with Casino Royale**, but it was more about the origins of the license to kill and its double 0. With a face, a body and an aura like that of Aaron Taylor-Johnson it would be possible to start from the beginning. Origin stories today work more and more because they allow us to enter the soul and motivations of the characters. The last three films, Heavy rain, Spectre e No Time To Die, they started to do that somehow, with characters and dialogue. But you could really see the beginnings of Bond here.
Will James Bond be a killer?
A further theme carried forward by the last Bonds was that of defining 007 for what he is, a murderera bold way of calling what we have always considered a secret agent, a spy, a charming and elegant man. 00 it means license to kill, we know it from the first film. Yet they had never called him a “murderer”. If it's an origin story, maybe we'll talk about this too, or maybe not. But Aaron Taylor-Johnson (back to The Beasts and ad Nocturnal animals) has the temper, the look, the character to also be a killer. If you choose to underline this aspect, in short, Johnson will be ready. He will be a killer in a different way than Craig, of course, but the last Bond has shown that highlighting the sensitivity together with violence in the same character is possible.
A new way to seduce
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is also a sex symbol, so in this sense he will have no problems being 007. With a new sensitivity and a renewed way of treating women, James Bond will have to continue to be a seducer, a lover, because this it is an essential aspect of the character. It will be interesting, then, to understand how Taylor-Johnson, together with the director and screenwriters, will be able to construct a new way of seduction, more modern, more current, more empathetic. A romantic character, like Count Alexei Vronsky of Anna Karenina.
A film set in the 1960s?
A new way of seducing, it is clear, would be linked to our times and the issues at play in recent years. Daniel Craig's Bond, in the latest films, and especially in No Time To Diehas already given a glimpse of a change of direction and an evolution of its way of being. Bond 26, then, will be set in current times, as has been the case with every film. But rumours, or just hypotheses, also spoke of the possibility of going back and setting the new film in the 1960s, thus creating a vintage and nostalgic operation. A bit like it was with X-Men: First Class, directed by that bondiano by Matthew Vaughn, who by taking the heroes back in time recovered the canons and styles of the Sixties, and therefore an imagery that owes a lot to that of James Bond. With his innate elegance, Aaron would look great even in the fabulous 60s.
Who is the best James Bond in cinema?
Sam Taylor-Wood: what if a woman directed the new Bond?
By the way: what the new Bond will be like will still depend on the director's choice. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, not surprisingly, has worked with both Matthew Vaughn and Christopher Nolan, directors who, in their films, have demonstrated that they have Bondian imagery in their DNA, each reinterpreted with their own sensibilities. The first could give life to an iconic and ironic 007, the second to a more cerebral and mysterious Bond. Apparently, however, the Bond 26 project will not be handed over to a filmmaker capable of giving his vision of 007, but the screenwriters and the production will dictate the line that the director will have to follow. This is why a name like Christopher Nolan as director seems like a utopia today. But the experience of Sam Mendes (Heavy rain e Spectre) proves that an auteur Bond is possible. At this point, remaining on the elective affinities of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, why not have him direct his set and life partner, Sam Taylor-Wood? A quintessentially masculine character directed by a woman could open up really interesting scenarios…