Duneraker

Denis the menace? Or will it be a right Denis-up?

The news broke, or rather detonated, this morning that Amazon have chosen the man to bring James Bond back from the dead. There were rumours for a few days of various names, some so left-field you could put Glastonbury on them, and some so pedestrian you could revolutionise Norwich City centre with them. The one that really stood out, aside from Edgar Wright (who I think would be a bad fit, and surely must do a Ghostbusters film ASAP), was without a doubt Denis Villeneuve. But not necessarily for the right reasons. He has an excellent CV, but not much in there that scream “Bank holiday fun”, apart from “Sicario On Abroad” of course.

However his films all look amazing, and one of his singular gifts from the outside seems to be his ability to choose wonderful directors of photography, whether it be Roger Deakins, or Greig Fraser, his work always looks sublime, though we have been here before and as we know, looks aren’t everything, look at Tanya Roberts.

However the one worry I have is that Bond has spent far too long, nearly twenty years in point of fact, being a miserable, annoying prick, and bringing in a renowned shoe-gazer who favours darkness over light doesn’t feel like it’s going to change too much on that front going forward. It’s like bringing in Van Morrison to do a puppet show for children with PTSD (who have escaped from a harsh care home run by horrible red-haired angry nuns).

But the one ray of light poking out through the darkness is the fact that Villeneuve himself is a self-confessed Bond nerd. Sure, he has to walk the walk and declare that Daniel Craig was the best (when we all know that’s not true), but if he’s that much of a “friend of Bernard Lee”, than I am feeling more hope than sorrow right now.

There’s no doubt that the missing ingredient for the whole of Craig’s tenure with the humour, along with the swagger. There was also an awkward sense of shame; ashamed of what he was, and ashamed to embrace what came before. The Bond theme went missing, the gunbarrel was moved around and badly performed. Villains became underwritten or gimmicks, or both and the films became all about Bond’s complications, and quite frankly, who gives a fuck? No one wants to read the Haynes manual while they’re driving.

So I am tentatively encouraged by all of this, and hope that with new hands on the tiller, we may get something refreshing going forward, especially with one of the hands belonging to a highly skilled and very competent director who also happens to be a Bond fan, though I do worry that this means Hans Zimmer may come with him, and I really didn’t like his No Time to Die score, what with it being mostly borrowed, and sadly ill-fitting.

OR, we may just get the same old thing, which going by how much money Skyfall made, is probably more likely, sadly.

Whatever happens, the fact that Bond will be back, and not in an ash tray, is an exciting one, so let’s watch the wires and see what the next announcement will bring.

Hopefully it has a scene as good as this one: