Former 007 Pierce Brosnan has voiced his admiration for Callum Turner – just as the polls shift in the English actor’s favour to be the next agent with a license to kill.
“Callum Turner is someone I’ve worked with, and he’s so strong,” Brosnan told Variety.
Though Brosnan mentioned Turner by name, the previous Bond was full of praise for all the hopefuls in contention.
“All the men who are on the list now are actors I admire,” he said.
“They all have a voice and a physique, and a presence on film. They all have longevity as actors, all of these young men.”
The endorsement comes as the tide recently shifted in Turner’s favour where polls are concerned.
He knocked Jack Lowden from pole position, with Oddschecker putting Turner’s odds now at 4/7.
William Hill, the world’s largest bookmaker, cut Turner’s odds to 8/13, making him the new favourite according to The Guardian.
Brosnan went on to tell Variety he is as eager as any to hear who will be sipping those shaken martinis.
“Whoever plays the role, I wish him the very best of life and strength and courage,” he said earnestly.
He also praised the work of the film’s slated director, Dennis Villeneuve.
“[Villeneuve] is such an iconoclastic director. His work is visionary, and his stealth and imagination of camera work and storytelling is so visceral and sensuous,” Brosnan shared.
Brosnan’s pun-heavy, satirical Bond was much-loved and tonally very different from Daniel Craig’s gritty, take-no-prisoners iteration.
Dennis Villeneuve’s style is very much in that darker vein, as much is evident in the Dune franchise.
Context played a large role in how each Bond took form, with Brosnan’s version a product of the camp nineties blockbuster era, which had a heavy predilection for explosions and double entendres.
Public appetite changed after 911, which saw a shift to more raw, grey-toned realism, with rapid cuts and shaky cam filmmaking.
That stylistic change has been coined the Bourne effect by film historians like David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson.
Eon productions actually approached The Bourne Supremacy director, Paul Greengrass, to direct the Bond film Casino Royale, which he turned down.
“The Bourne Identity came out… the next James Bond to come out was Casino Royale, which totally copied the tone of Bourne,” The Bourne Identity director, Doug Liman, told Slashfilm.
“I really wanted to make Bond, and then Bond copied Bourne.”