If the rumours are true and Callum Turner is really about to be handed 007’s trademark Walther PPK, then we could be seeing the end of the Bond franchise for good.
The suave secret agent is, by design, a fantasy of the ideal man – but the problem with ideals is that they age quickly and often badly, an inevitable product of their era.
James Bond has the burden of not simply existing in the culture, but mirroring it, exaggerating it, and eventually embarrassing it.
What once played as smouldering confidence in Sean Connery in 1964, now frequently reads as an HR violation at best and outright harassment at worst.
In Thunderball, Bond blackmails a woman into sex after a bad experience on a massage table. In Goldfinger, he forces himself on Pussy Galore (a lesbian) until she submits in a haystack. The implication being that women will eventually succumb to the charm of a true man.
And yet, Bond survived. Not because the character is timeless, but because the franchise learned – occasionally and reluctantly – how to shed its worst instincts and reinvent itself when needed.
But each new Bond has functioned as a controlled demolition: preserve the silhouette, blow up everything else.
This has meant that casting perhaps matters more in Bond than in almost any other major franchise, because the character resets the cultural temperature as much as he measures it.
That’s why I’m apprehensive about Callum Turner, the odds-on favourite.
Because, given how dramatically and importantly conversations around masculinity, power, race, and sex have accelerated since Daniel Craig first took the role 20 years ago, the new Bond needs to be the boldest reinvention yet.
Bond also faces a simpler problem: we’re bored more easily now. In a post-Marvel, post-prestige-TV world, audiences want to be challenged, they want as much originality as possible, even in legacy franchises.
They are no longer dazzled by expensive explosions and beautiful women being wooed by daring, striking men.
In Emma, Turner was decoratively rakish and handsome. In the Fantastic Beasts sequels, he specialised in standing and looking handsome while Eddie Redmayne acted.
In The Boys in the Boat, he finally shook things up by dyeing his hair while, once again, looking handsome but not offering much else.
This is not a résumé that screams ‘drag a 60-year-old franchise into the future.’
Ironically, Turner might have been a big hit had he been given the gig in the era of Brosnan or Dalton, when passable performances and good looks were all that the role really required.
But Bond in 2025 requires emotional heft, and real, provable, acting chops.
Daniel Craig brought that – even if many forget that Craig’s success in the role – and the subsequent revitalisation of the franchise – was the result of a considerable risk.
It was, with no exaggeration, a cultural crisis that enraged fans at the thought of a blue-eyed, 5’10, blonde Bond, who, unlike all his predecessors, couldn’t be mistaken for Sean Connery if you squinted and ignored the accent.
Then Casino Royale arrived in 2006, annihilating the criticism and raking in $616 million (£448m) worldwide.
Craig felt dangerous, brutal, bruised, furious, and emotionally feral, adding complexity to a character who could no longer survive as a caricature.
It also confirmed that producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, who took over from their legendary father, Albert, had inherited the right instincts for the job.
Craig was undoubtedly a huge gamble that paid off in billions and rescued 007 from his own cartoonish excesses and the damage Austin Powers had done to the series’ prestige.
Turner, with his magazine-cover presence and buzzy A-list romance with Dua Lipa, (herself rumoured to be writing the song for the next film in a painfully dull bit of marketing synergy) feels far safer.
It all feels like it could have been generated by an AI algorithm – especially bleak given Broccoli and Wilson were replaced by a tech behemoth.
In 2021, Amazon bought MGM for $8.5 billion and, with it, gained creative control of Bond. Fans, as a result, proclaimed that 007 could never survive the transition to corporate control.
Hope returned for me when Dune director Denis Villeneuve was announced to be steering the ship. Surely this meant something bold, creative, and maybe even a little freaky.
But with Turner rumoured to be filling out the tux with his 6’2 frame, that’s hard to picture.
Let’s be clear: The frustration isn’t that Turner would be terrible. He probably wouldn’t be – but he seems like harking back to a bygone era.
Because Bond can only survive the complexity of the modern era bydestabilising the norm once again. It’s difficult to imagine a choice as milquetoast as Turner possibly managing that feat.
If you ask me, it’s time for a Black, androgynous, or female Bond. I’d even accept a Skarsgård going full weirdo and operating at unsafe levels of eye contact. If Villeneuve is taking the helm, let him push it somewhere strange, surreal, and risky.
Instead, Callum Turner feels like a toothless, riskless version of a past Bond which the audience has outgrown.
His rumoured casting might not signal Bond’s death, but something worse: that the franchise is being very politely tucked into bed, drowsy off one of the most powerful and dangerous drugs in showbiz – nostalgia.
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