When the new James Bond movie, Skyfall arrives in theaters in 2012, it will feature a brand new gadget making Q.
It’s been confirmed that Ben Whishaw (The Tempest, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), will be taking over the role made famous by Desmond Llewelyn who made the role his in 1963’s From Russia with Love. Whishaw is certainly younger than Llewelyn and John Cleese, and while I’m sure there will be plenty of hipster in the character, I hope they keep him smart and don’t devolve to slapstick comedy with the character.
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No Cleese? Boo.
Ben Whishaw’s a good choice. With luck we won’t have to worry about an excess of hipsterism either. His character in recent-ish BBC series The Hour was a cosy image of a crusading BBC journalist in the fifties. He had a tetchy, old-before-his-time fussiness to him and some slightly twitchy mannerisms which reminded me of Matt Smith’s Doctor (well, that and the bad suit). I could easily hear him uttering a frustrated “Do pay attention 007!” without resorting to a big knowing wink to the audience or simply aping Desmond Llewelyn’s delivery.
I have to wonder if they decided to go back to sci-fi gadgets. The new Bonds have been avoiding that kind of stuff. I watched the marathon SyFy was doing last week and Die Another Day went way too far into Sci-Fi. Much like Moonraker.
I was going to say Simon Pegg. Then I realized, he’s like the English Bruce Campbell… geeks want him for everything Brit!
BTW, Bruce Campbell would make a great Jack Wade.
It might not be that gadgety, he could very well just be the civil servant overseeing the intelligence service’s armoury. Could be a very mundane armoury.
So I guess out of a run of ~24 Bond movies they’ll have three or four that stuck to the spirit of the Bond books (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Casino Royal, Quantum of Solace). Q was a character that the books specifically excluded because of the low budget of the British Secret Service. Q has mainly been used in the movies to allow Bond to be inept but still survive. When Roger Moore needed a Q gadget to break into a house, he was inadequately trained as a spy.
Disclosure: I’ve read the Fleming books but not the ones written after. So it’s possible the Secret Service develops a larger budget later. Bond should still be trained as an excellent thief/spy.
there is also the fact that the is also a 6-50 year difference in the era that the books and the films are set in. I’m pretty sure that whilst there may not have been a Q character, department Q is mentioned in the books however it is a much more mundane set up as it is essentially the armoury of the intelligence services