Bond Won’t Bond With Bros in BOND 24

Did you know that playwright/screenwriter/director Jez Butterworth did uncredited work on Skyfall? I didn’t, and now I do, and now you do, if you once didn’t. I mention it because Butterworth was recently telling the New Yorker that he’s pulling the same duties on Bond 24, so I guess literally every writer who had a hand in Skyfall is now throwing their two cents into this one.

That’s cool, I guess. But one statement of Butterworth’s is gnawing at me. In the middle of his interview, my man drops this nugget on the floor: “You know, like Bond doesn’t have scenes with other men. Bond shoots other men—he doesn’t sit around chatting to them. So you put a line through that.”

Well, no, Jez. That’s just not true. In your last Bond movie, in fact, Daniel Craig had memorable exchanges with Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Ben Wishaw, Rory Kinnear and Javier Bardem. In fact, I’d argue that far more than his interplay with female characters (which more and more often are becoming minefields of increasingly troubling sexual politics), Bond’s bro-time shapes the character in unexpected and interesting ways, and provides the most fertile ground for light character exploration. 52 years into these movies, I’d argue the character needs all the help he can get in that department.

Maybe Butterworth was taken out of context or something. We’ll see. But I'm just saying, if Jeffrey Wright doesn’t come back as Felix Leiter in Bond 24, we know who to blame.

In other random double-oh news, people are claiming Sam Smith is singing the theme (too early to know, if you ask me, so I ain't linking it), and Bond girl Léa Seydoux will reportedly be wearing Prada in the film. Fierce!