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Alasdair Stuart assesses possible futures for 007…

For some reason, a story has circulated this week that the producers of James Bond, a character who has been played by (at least) seven actors across six decades, are having trouble working out how to bring him back. Cards on the table, I don’t believe this for a second and I think the story is either clickbait, some weird political move we’ll never see the end of or an excuse to be mean about HOW EVERYTHING IS COMIC BOOK MOVIES NOW or something.

But like all stories like this, it’s got barbs. And they stuck. And it’s got me thinking. Possibly more than the writers have if this is to be believed. So! Here are four ways to continue James Bond movies. None of them ‘This never happened to the other fella’ either.

1. Lashana Lynch

In No Time To Die, the exact movie that Bond writer Anthony Horowitz says had a mistake in the story, there is a new 007. Not a new James Bond, to be clear, but a new 007. Nomi was great, competent, focused and every inch a 00 section agent. One of the few problems I had with No Time to Die was her symbolically handing Bond his number back but that’s a Me thing. As it stands, if you wanted to continue in the continuity of the Craig Bonds, this is the first way you do it.

2. Legends

007 is an identity. So is James Bond. There are a dozen ways you could do this but my favourite is that Bond is an established cover identity at the secret service that is passed from person to person. Royal Naval Commander. Familial tragedy. Gifted outsider able to move at will through the shadowy currents of the world. It’s a logical call. Hell, it’s one of the toys on the absolute top of the espionage fiction toybox and it stretches plausibility to breaking point that this hasn’t even occurred to anyone in that room.

3. Just Reboot It

Again. It’s been done multiple times before. Connery’s Bond is all 1960s spy-fi. Moore’s is cheerfully sociopathic ’80s spectacle. Dalton and Brosnan both navigate the weird pre- and post-millennial waters and Craig’s entire run is a multi-movie arc about what a (heavily implied to be working class) soldier can do when trained and broken down into being a spy. This is very, very easy to do. There are literal decades of production experience doing exactly this. This is by far the most likely option.

4. Legacy

This is honestly a combination of all three other options. Have Nomi still active as a 00 assigned to train the new agent being given 007. Choose someone who suits the time and yes that absolutely means someone who isn’t necessarily a mid-40s white guy who does crossfit. But dive into that, make it a feature that this is a new Bond, entering an identity with decades of expectation attached to it and whose previous occupant died in action. Explore what it means to be an agent in those circumstances and make that the lens we meet Bond through again. Charming, confident, vicious when called upon to be and working under the strain of their identity, their legacy and themselves,

All of this works. All of this is very easy to do. Some of it is undoubtedly being discussed. Here’s hoping it’s the most interesting choices.

Oh and why not check out own editor’s thoughts on Bond’s legacy!