The perfect actor to play Denis Villeneuve’s James Bond, according to science
Every British actor of a certain age will be linked with James Bond at one stage or another when the part is either available or heading toward its next recasting, whether they’d even be interested or not.
It’s hard to even keep track of who’s the current favourite, which is based entirely on rumour and speculation, since 007’s new corporate overlords at Amazon have only recently confirmed that the casting search is underway, so we can only expect the scuttlebutt to intensify until an announcement is made.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson was the front-runner for a while, but that tapered off. He was briefly replaced by Josh O’Connor, but did that have any substance to it, or was it simply because he was a rising 30-something star who appeared in four acclaimed movies in quick succession?
All we know is that incoming director Denis Villeneuve will be skewing younger, with anyone hovering around the 40 mark and above ruled out of the race before it’s even started. That still leaves an awful lot of candidates, though, and while everyone has their personal favourite, what does science think?
Using an obvious yet strict set of criteria: they need to be male, British, in their 30s, and not a complete unknown without a body of work behind them, the boffins then factored in a different set of circumstances to help narrow the field, based on how the candidates’ careers have been progressing so far.
The first metric was prestige; the acclaim generated by their cumulative filmographies, based on average user-generated scores. The second was how often they’ve been accused of being miscast, the third was how frequently they’ve been labelled as charismatic by audiences, with those two using a sample size of 1,000 audience reviews, and the last was where they fall in terms of being famous, which was determined by how often they’ve been searched for online.
After pushing that data through the science machine, the one and only actor who placed in the top five in all four categories for prestige, a lack of miscasting, high levels of charisma, and fame was Josh O’Connor. By the decree of science, then, he’s the perfect person to inherit the mantle from Daniel Craig.
Obviously, blockbuster franchises and iconic movie characters aren’t dictated by such methods, but since he’s one of the favourites anyway, it doesn’t make it any less interesting that when measuring the four fields intrinsic to making a suitable 007, O’Connor scored the best average out of almost 500 names who were put through the analytical meat grinder.
Will he get the nod and headline Villeneuve’s fresh spin on one of cinema’s most storied sagas? No idea, to be honest, but if he does, then it can’t be ruled out that science may have played a part. If the filmmaker wants to go with his head or his heart, it could be anyone, but if he wants to go with cold, hard date, then O’Connor is yer man.
