Steven Spielberg once applied for the job — and didn’t get it. Same with Christopher Nolan. And Quentin Tarantino. And Peter Jackson.
Over the decades, James Bond has left behind a smoldering trail of blown-up villain lairs and wrecked Aston Martins — but also a hefty pile of heartbroken A-list directors. Ever since Terence Young shot the first 007 feature, 1962’s Dr. No, the franchise has been one of cinema’s most coveted behind-the-camera gigs. Alfonso Cuarón, Joe Wright, Matthew Vaughn, Guy Ritchie — at one time or another, they all dreamed of directing a Bond movie. And they all, for one reason or another, never got the chance.
All of which is to say: congratulations, Denis Villeneuve! You’ve just landed the hardest-to-get directing job in Hollywood. The 58-year-old French-Canadian auteur will be helming the 26th Bond film — the first since longtime producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson sold the franchise earlier this year to Amazon for a reported $1 billion.
Now comes the fun part: deciding whether Villeneuve is the best man for the job.
On the plus side, he’s certainly saying all the right things. “I grew up watching James Bond films with my father,” he gushed in a statement after the news broke. “I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honor the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come.”
Also in his favor: Villeneuve has plenty of experience rebooting ancient IP, usually by stretching cult classics into sprawling, brooding epics. Before he turned Dune into a two-part sand opera filled with billowing cloaks and endless beige vistas, he brought Blade Runner back with a 2017 sequel that unspooled like a hypnotic tone poem with flying cars. Some movie-goers love that sort of lugubrious, meditative filmmaking, some not so much, but either way — and to paraphrase Carly Simon — nobody does it better.
Whatever sort of high-art Bond movie Villeneuve ends up making, it’s a safe bet it will look magnificent, even if its moody silences outnumber its explosions. And visuals matter in this franchise: the best Bond films have always been cinematic feasts filled with exotic locales, gorgeous femme fatales, and panoramic action sequences. Just picture it: a Bond car chase reimagined as a slow, sulky glide through fog and existential dread. Exciting!
However, there are potential downsides to hiring Villeneuve. Chief among them: he has no sense of humor. Like, none. There’s barely a single frame in his entire filmography — going back to 2013’s Prisoners and 2015’s Sicario — that could be described as even remotely whimsical. Yes, there’s that scene in Arrival where global nuclear war is narrowly averted by a linguistics lecture, which is kind of funny — but probably not intentionally.
That absence of levity could prove fatal. The franchise’s DNA was coiled around a double helix of action and comedy from the start. Before he started making Bond movies, Barbara Broccoli’s father, Cubby, cut his teeth on heroic B-grade war flicks, while his producing partner at the time, Harry Saltzman, began his career by cranking out circus pictures and goofy comedies. That accidental chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo is what gave early Bond films their distinctive, self-aware charm.
When the formula strays too far in one direction, things get weird. Daniel Craig’s Bond was so gloomy that you half-expected him to turn his Walther PPK on himself. Roger Moore, on the other hand, literally turned Bond into a clown — full makeup, red nose, oversized shoes — in 1983’s Octopussy. Shocking, positively shocking.
The point here is this: A certain amount of wit and winking is critical to the character. Without it — and there’s not much evidence that Villeneuve can muster even a smidge of it — Bond loses his soul. He becomes Jason Bourne with a British accent.
Another potential red flag: Villeneuve is used to getting the final cut, something no director has ever been granted in a Bond movie. Back when the Broccolis were running the show, they lorded over every element of the process, from casting to script development to marketing — and there’s no reason to believe that Amy Pascal and David Heyman, the producers Amazon has hired to replace them, will be any more hands off.
That kind of Blofeld-level micromanagement is exactly what drove so many top-tier directors away from Bond in the past (and, in Danny Boyle’s case, drove him off the actual set of No Time to Die). Yes, Sam Mendes managed to survive Skyfall and Spectre, but most Bond films aren’t made by auteurs. They’re filmed by reliable craftsmen like John Glen, Guy Hamilton, and Martin Campbell — workhorse directors who know how to shoot a fight scene, hit a deadline, and not throw a tantrum in the edit bay.
It remains to be seen if Villeneuve can handle that sort of collaboration. But he’d be very foolish to fight it. While he may have been handed the coveted keys to the Aston Martin, the ejector seat still works.