Isn't it time we had an ugly James Bond? You know, for diversity

How good are those James Bond odds? 

Just about every day, a new contender enters the ring. At last count, Callum Turner was the frontrunner after beating out bridesmaid Jack Lowden. 

However, a new contender has apparently emerged: Robert Pattinson.

What I like about this race is that it can go on for months without anyone having to run. Everyone's a winner, baby.

Then come the complaints about how white the field is. Where’s the diversity? Why does Bond have to be a white middle-aged man? Has anyone asked Idris Elba lately, or are we giving him the afternoon off?

I mean, God forbid a film stay true to the author's original vision. 

After all, Ian Fleming gave Bond a Scottish father, a Swiss mother. For me, the pleasure of an adaptation is seeing what a new actor finds in that same man. A reinvention that starts by discarding his history strikes me as a peculiar way of showing faith in the character.

Anyway, back to that diversity conundrum.

Oddly enough, despite armchair producers decrying every missed diversity box, one specific group seems to have been missed: the aesthetically challenged. You know, ugly people.

Which brings me to Steve Buscemi.

Justice for Marty Feldman

Listen, I use ugly in the peculiar Hollywood sense. A face can be interesting enough to hold the camera for two hours and still be deemed suitable chiefly for the man who lives inside a volcano.

And so, with that knowledge, why not roll out Buscemi? Just imagine him at a roulette table, betting everything on red before deciding existence is futile. 

Or just envision Willem Dafoe ordering a martini and, for a moment, making the barman wonder whether he will drink it, make love to it, or wear it as a hat. 

What about Stephen Root? His almost malevolent, Appalachian-local vibe may just be the diversity hire people are (apparently) crying out for. Heck, just imagine the folksy-themed tune spliced with just the right amount of Deliverance creep.

Then, of course, there's Marty Feldman… although I suspect his availability may be an issue.

The trouble with calling her James

The more adventurous casting proposals tend to lean on the theory that James Bond is an alias handed down with the keys to the Aston Martin. It’s a convenient theory for anyone who wants to start again while keeping the lettering on the poster, or who is taking inspiration from Johnny Depp's infamous Winona Forever tattoo, which now reads Wino Forever. 

No Time to Die managed a perfectly sensible handover. Daniel Craig’s Bond retired to Jamaica. Lashana Lynch’s Nomi took over as 007 and carried on being Nomi. MI6, for all its apparent faults as an employer, saw no need to change her name.

Personally, I’m attached to the particular bastard Fleming invented. And, so, can we just let him be that?

Let him be a bastard

For all the talk of widening the field, why is everyone on the shortlist still so attractive? Where are the character actors, the ones who can make you wonder what a man’s thinking while he does nothing more strenuous than light a cigarette?

Oh, that’s right. Bond is supposed to be suave. He’s supposed to be handsome. He’s also supposed to be British, with a Scottish father and a Swiss mother. That last detail tends to come up when we’re debating which parts of Fleming’s invention are up for revision. Curiously, the handsome bit seems to have made it through without a vote.

Every adaptation chooses what matters in the original. I’d keep the history Fleming gave Bond. It helps explain how he carries himself, why he expects to be obeyed and why that expectation is so rarely disappointed. The cheekbones strike me as a rather less consequential inheritance.

So which parts of Bond do we keep, and which do we discard? If we’re prepared to reconsider the man’s ancestry, surely we can bear to reconsider his jawline.