Apparently Idris Elba is being considered for the next James Bond when Craig leaves.

I have a couple of observations on this.

Firstly currently Hollywood seems obsessed with no 'cultural appropriation' and only having people with the right ethnicity playing, what they deem the appropriate roles......Well, seeing as James Bond was written as a white bloke with Sottish and Swiss parents that files in the face of this.

However, I regard the people who push that politics as t***s and I think this should be about meritocracy and purely about the acting ability and charisma. So on that score this guy is definitely someone who can do Bond.

However, as we speak Idris Elba is 45 years old. This is already too old to be starting an actor on this road. Especially if Craig is doing the next movie.

So personally, I think they should start him now for one or two movies at most......Craig is already too old himself and shouldn't be doing anymore.

This whole thing though might just be a cheap publicity play by the producers to keep the Bond name out there.

Edited by Stirlingsays (10 Aug 2018 1.41pm)

I think that no actor can currently fill the boots of Craig such has been his success.
The best thing would be to rest the character for a decade and reboot him for a new generation. Otherwise,we might have another Dalton/Brosnan type decline in interest.

I think we enter into a sense of the ridiculous when real people in history are played by people of different ethnicity. What is the point unless you simply don't have actors of the correct ethnicity?
In the old days, 'foreign' characters were played by British actors because there just weren't any foreign actor available. Nowadays that is no longer a problem.
Obviously, large parts of European history have not featured too many Black people for obvious reasons. It is a problem when casting Black characters in historical drama since you often have to invent Black characters. History has happened and attempts to rewrite it are unwise, I would suggest, even for drama.

With fictional characters, they never existed, so it comes down to the credibility, authenticity and sometimes the expectation of an established character as written and intended.

It is double standards when we have such an over the top reaction to White people playing non White characters when the reverse is somehow seen as progress.

You heard of the musical Hamilton?

Bond would have been white when the books were written as I doubt MI6 had any black agents back then but if you are setting the films in the 21st century I don't see a problem with him being black if the most appropriate actor is black.

It would be odd to have a black Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes if they are set in the 15th/19th century but if you are producing a 21st century version of either of these then the skin colour becomes irrelevant. We are talking about fiction after all.