The one role John Travolta has always wanted to play: “That would be great”
When one thinks of John Travolta, it’s easy to think of him as the good guy, and while neither Danny Zuko in Grease nor Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction can be described as the nicest guy ever, they are at least the heroes of their own stories.
Regardless, the man himself isn’t immune to being bad, especially if you zero in on the very specific era of the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, when he seemed to play a villain in every other movie. From a rogue Air Force Major in Broken Arrow to a sadistic hacker in Swordfish to whatever the hell was going on in Battlefield Earth, he was making enemies of people left, right, and centre, and not just in the audience.
In an interview with The Telegraph, he said that he was ready to “close the chapter on playing villains”, with one notable exception. According to the former T-Bird, the only franchise that could coax him back to the dark side would be James Bond.
“I would love that,” he continued, “They’re going a different way with their villain in this next film, but I’ve spoken to Barbara Broccoli about it, and she loves the idea, so that would be great”.
This interview was conducted in 2014, and one year later saw the release of Spectre, the 24th instalment in the Bond franchise and Daniel Craig’s penultimate outing as 007. When you look at the direction in which Sam Mendes and the rest of the Bond team went with the villains here, you can understand why Travolta was rejected, as this is the film that revived Bond’s greatest ever adversary, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
Given he’s meant to be a megalomaniacal super-genius with roots in Eastern Europe, it’s probably for the best that they went with Christoph Waltz instead, and it’s also hard to imagine Travolta as either the sly MI double agent Max Denbigh, played by Andrew Scott, or the musclebound henchman, Dave Bautista’s Mr Hinx.
So, what about No Time to Die, where the primary antagonist was Lyufister Safin, a bioterrorist with a scarred face and apparent immortality. Well, the part was played by Rami Malek, who took the role under very strict circumstances, and one wonders if Travolta would have fit this character.
It’s hard to tell, because there’s very little to say about Safin, the blankest of blank canvases, and a villain who is evil for the sake of evil, skirting a little too close to the ‘disfigured foreigner’ mould of Bond’s past. Malek doesn’t do a bad job, sure, but it’s just hard to picture any actor getting much out of this bland baddie, no matter if it was taken up by someone with extensive training in villainy.
In all honesty, it’s hard to picture Travolta ever fulfilling this dream, where James Bond is one of the biggest franchises in movie history, still going strong, and the actor’s name just doesn’t carry the gravitas that it used to. Perhaps this could have been pulled off 20 or so years ago, but as it stands, he’ll have to stick to playing with his Bond action figures or firing up GoldenEye 007 on the N64.
