James Bond fans are eagerly awaiting the announcement of who will play the iconic British spy in the upcoming reboot film, directed by Denis Villeneuve. It has been five years since the previous iteration of the series ended with No Time to Die, which marked star Daniel Craig‘s fifth time playing Bond in a feature film. Never before has the gap between two Bond films been this long. Recent reports suggest that the hunt for the new actor has reached its final stages, and with Villeneuve presumably wrapping up work on Dune: Part Three, it’s only a matter of time before the announcement is made. However, not nearly enough attention is paid to two significant parts of the puzzle — the Bond villain and the Bond girl.
While the latter sounds decidedly outdated as a concept, you could safely bet that the new movie will feature a young actress opposite Bond. The role of the villain has traditionally gone to a certain kind of performer; Umberto Eco, the Italian writer, once proposed a set of rules that Bond movies follow while crafting adversaries. Now, an entirely unexpected star has thrown her hat in the ring for the villain role. Were she to be cast, it would make for a huge deviation from the norm, because she isn’t a middle-aged man, but a 32-year-old Irish woman with four Oscar nominations under her belt. What’s more is that her husband, Jack Lowden, is among the many actors reportedly being considered for the main role, alongside Jacob Elordi, Callum Turner, and more.
There Is Precedent for a Female Bond Villain
You guessed it, Saoirse Ronan recently said that she’s “dead serious” about wanting to play the villain in the upcoming reboot. While this may be an indication that there’s Bond chatter going on in the Lowden-Ronan household, it’s also an interesting idea to contemplate. “I want to go dark,” Ronan told Empire, adding, “I said that I wanted to be a Bond villain, and I’m dead serious. I think it would be really interesting having a young female villain. Especially for girls and women, to see someone who can just take all that pent-up anger and direct it somewhere, there’s something interesting in that dramatically. So I would love to do more of that.” There is precedent for a female Bond villain, of course, with Rosamund Pike having played one in Die Another Day. And who can forget Rosa Klebb, from the very first Bond film, Dr. No?
via Collider