Opening YouTube tonight (because what else would a dad do on a Saturday night), I spied among my suggested watches, a video titled ‘Uncovering Timothy Dalton’s Lost 3rd Bond Film‘.
I’m no Bond obsessive, but the franchise is compelling enough, so I clicked through. Some 40 seconds in – just moments after learning that Josh Brolin’s dad James was among potential options – I’m made to realise I had no idea that Sam Neill had tested for the role before it was given to Dalton.
(I’m glad that didn’t pan out, as we likely would’ve missed out on his excellent supporting role in The Hunt for Red October (with a retired Bond!) and his starring turn in Jurassic Park.)
Deciding to return to this Dalton video later, I charged through the crowd to reach the search box and enter the query, “Every James Bond screen test”.
Now, that Dalton video had been posted way back in 2023, but apparently it was just four months ago that Ron South – some cheeky cog in the Hollywood machine and definitely not a perfectly forgettable alias for a porn director – had uploaded previously unseen Bond 21 (Casino Royale) tests for Henry Cavill, along with Anthony Starr (Homelander in The Boys), Sam Worthington (an exceedingly Aussie ‘actor’ best known internationally for James Cameron’s Avatar films), and Rupert Friend (the perfect kind of ‘nobody’ for a Bond casting).
It’s Cavill that I’ll come back to here, because my fellow Aussie Pentex (a “YouTube penguin who makes video essays”) has put together an outstanding cut that really perfects Cavill’s otherwise cringe-worth video, opposite the brilliant Famke Jansenn.
The cringle wasn’t his fault, by the way.
You can check it out below, but, note! Pentex goes into quite a bit of background in the first 10 minutes of the video, so if you want to see his excellent cut of Cavill in the Brosnan flick Goldeneye (omg hello N64), jump to 10:30.
Very recently, the Bond franchise came under the direct control of Amazon – which already owns Bond-making studio MGM but hadn’t until June managed to get the rights to Bond specifically.
Moments after that was announced, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos asked followers on shitbrick website X who they’d like to see as Bond.
Overwhelmingly, Cavill was the pick. (Loads of racism and sexism in the replies, too, so click the above link with caution.)
As an aside, and back to good vibes, the fantastic Michael Fassbender spoke recently in an interview for Black Bag (which also stars former 007 Pierce Brosnan ffs) about his brush with Bond. Great video, below.
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