Shaken-up cast can’t cause a stir as 007’s charm goes awol
Without a title or any real plot details, hopes are dwindling that Bond still has his licence to thrill
The official announcement of a new Bond film – a live reveal, no less – ought to have been an occasion for some small degree of excitement. Instead, the Bond 25 event had an unmistakably funereal air. It was strange, subdued and full of long sighs, as if everyone involved was there under sufferance, and would rather be off on their own somewhere, grieving privately.
The location was Goldeneye – Ian Fleming’s private villa in Jamaica – with sun, sea, surf and plenty of Bond history, since Dr No and Live and
Let Die were both shot here. But the glamour of the setting didn’t stop everyone looking miserable from fatigue, jet lag or some other unexplained depression as they doled out crumbs of casting news.
Nothing that was “revealed” – including Rami Malek’s widely-tipped involvement as the villain – had much genuine headline value. Perhaps the general lethargy had something to do with the script still being incomplete. As had also been reported, it was confirmed that Phoebe Waller-bridge is joining the screenwriting team, with production just about to commence. Few films resort to such hasty polishing measures if they’re in tip-top shape and ready to roll.
Back in 2015, Daniel Craig notoriously said he would rather “slit his own wrists” than return to the role of 007. His appearance here added little to that general joie de vivre. Fielding online questions through a #Bond25 hashtag, he mumbled something about “consistency”, looked skyward for help and just kept sighing. He cracked a weak joke at presenter Clara Amfo which made it look like he was snippy with her.
Rami Malek sent a needlessly creepy video message – he’s becoming a bit of an expert at these – laboriously feigning a lack of jealousy about being in
Jamaica and saying he had no intention of making Craig’s life easy on set. Neither, from the look of it, does Craig.
As for director Cary Joji Fukunaga – Danny Boyle’s replacement – few people on camera have ever used the expression, “I’m chomping at the bit” while looking more inclined to spit the bit out and sprint off.
He kept pausing and rephrasing rather than admitting he was simply helping Craig sign-off as Bond: “In a lot of ways, Daniel is my favourite Bond, and I just want to … continue that. I want to make sure this run of films have a really great … next chapter?”
Meanwhile, newcomer to the cast, Ana de Armas, gave the distinct impression she hadn’t met her director yet. Asked how she set about preparing for the role, De Armas simply replied: “I haven’t yet. Cary, any ideas?” His half-serious response to “play it by ear” was either a feeble joke or a withering summation of the state of play.
Everything about this production still looks to be stumbling towards the brink of an abyss. They’ve so far built one set; a villa on the Jamaican coast which looks perfectly nice, as generic Jamaican holiday villas go. At the beginning of the new film, Barbara Broccoli explained, Bond is on holiday – which sounds like a shrewd way to delay the action-packed business end of production by starting with some languorous, indefinitely protracted scenes of R&R.
The press release actually doled out a smidgen more plot: CIA pal Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) lures Bond back into service to rescue a kidnapped scientist, which sets him on the trail of a new villain, described only in suspiciously cut-and-paste fashion as “mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology”.
You want to assume airtight production secrecy, rather than panicked uncertainty, is the situation underlying all this caginess, but it’s ever harder to give them the benefit of the doubt. The collective hope is that Bond 25 – still without a title, by the way – is less of a shambles than this.
Few films resort to such hasty polishing measures if they’re in tip-top shape and ready to roll