The James Bond franchise was one that had sort of lost its way. It wasn’t a dead franchise, but Bond had lost his relevance in many ways to various new breads of action heroes. For decades when you thought of “Super Spy Movies” the name Bond would instantly jump into your head… but it seems like more and more other names had taken his place (Bourne for example). And more and more the image of Bond was being used for nothing but satirical material (Austin Powers, Johnny English ect.)
But with Casino Royale, Bond announced he was back with a vengeance. In my opinion it was the best Bond movie ever made and it firmly put Bond back in the throne. With Bond 22 set to go into production, it seems we now have our bad guy. ComingSoon gives us this:
Fox News’ Roger Friedman is reporting that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly star Mathieu Amalric will play James Bond’s villain in Bond 22 and that Leona Lewis may sing the new theme for the film.
Ok, now I’ve got to admit here that I know next to nothing about Mathieu Amalric other than the fact that he’s the one who is going to be trying to cut off Bond’s balls. If you feel a little nervous about them putting in a guy like this who many people have never heard of… keep in mind that a lot of people said “Daniel who?!?!” when Craig was announced as the new James Bond, and that worked out quite well I’d say.
I’ll go ahead and second what Anderton said…
Mathieu Amalric is an amazing actor. Just go and watch “Munich” and all your fears about this guy will instantly be put away. I couldn’t be happier about him being cast as the Bond 22 villain.
With a better haircut, he would make a fine Hank Scorpio.
I second both what Phil and Mozzerino said. The casting choices that they made for Casino Royale were superb. But we need a villain who can physically battle with Bond on the silver screen. And last, WE WANT TO KNOW WHO THE GIRLS ARE!
Mathieu Amalric is a great actor (and I don’t say that because I’m French). He played in “Munich” (he was the French contact to Eric Bana and son of the French “godfather” played by Michael Lonsdale… another James Bond villain, small world, huh ?). I’m sure he’ll be great as ze frrench arrogant and sophisticated villain zat you love to ‘ate. By the way, I luuv your blog.
I’ll second what Phil said above.
I love the fact that they go for fairly unknown european actors as villains for Bond instead of chasing big Hollywood stars.
Mads Mikensen was no star before CASINO ROYALE, but he was bloody fantastic in that movie.
But anyway, who cares about the villains?
We want to know the girls!
With Casino Royale’s casting of Madds Mikelsen as Le Chiffre and this, it seems that the Bond movies are reviving the tradition of a lot of the earlier films by casting European actors, largely unknown to western audiences, as the bad guy.
I know nothing about this guy either but he looks kinda creepy. I hope he’s a bit tougher than Le Chiffre and can have a proper fight with Craig.
Well, hopefully this new Bond movie will be as good as Casino Royale.