Mark Gatiss believes the James Bond franchise faces a challenge creating believable villains in a world where real-life billionaires and trillionaires are pursuing ideas once considered the stuff of the spy films.
The James Bond series could suffer from a lack of new baddies because we now live in a world where people like Elon Musk have the same ideas as the villains from the films, 007 super-fan Mark Gatiss has claimed.
The Bookish star is a lifelong Bond obsessive and would love the chance to play a baddie in the next film – the first to be made under Amazon MGM Studios’ creative control.
But Gatiss is unsure what direction director Denis Villeneuve can go with the villain in Bond 26 because we have technology billionaires like Musk coming up with far-fetched plans for humanity such as leaving Earth to live on Mars, an idea that could have been lifted from the plot of a Bond film from the 1970s.
Appearing on the Pottering with Tom Allen podcast, Gatiss said: “Of course, I’d like to be in a Bond film, but it’s not the same as insisting on being in a Bond film.
“I’m a bit of a Bond geek. Sometimes, almost to the extent where my husband can’t quite believe I’m homosexual, because I like snooker and darts and James Bond. That’s because I’m from the gutter!
“I love James Bond, always have, I know a lot about it. I do think there is a problem with whatever happens next. Because first of all, I think they should find a Roger Moore de jour, because the world is in such a state we could all do with a bit of fun. Doesn’t have to be silly, but it could be a lot more like eyebrowing.
“Secondly, who are the villains now when we live with the real thing? Elon Musk, particularly, who wants us to live on Mars, which is basically the plot of a Bond film. It’s like Kurt Jurgens in The Spy Who Loved Me wanting us to live underwater. It’s mad, but he’s obsessed with it. Whereas, wouldn’t it be incredible if any of these people thought, ‘Well, we could maybe solve the problems here,’ because they are solvable. We just have to convince half the world that it’s not a hoax. We could do this. We could do it now.”
Gatiss – who was responsible for co-creating BBC hit Sherlock with Steven Moffat – says the most frightening thing about Tesla CEO Musk is that he has the most terrible dress sense for a trillionaire.
The 60-year-old actor-and-writer said: “We have these terrifying man children, which is what they all are, who were clearly bullied. Like [Donald] Trump, they are arrested development to the point of they stopped at the age of 18 months when they had their first tantrum. And Musk particularly is an extraordinary kind of figure, I think. When you see that he was just this sort of nerdy incel, getting a hair transplant and like all of them, the most terrible clothes. He’s got so much money and he looks like he’s been dressed by his mum in a charity shop. Extraordinary. It’s a great plot for a Bond film – the man who dressed me!”
Daniel Craig’s successor as James Bond is yet to be confirmed.
The names strongly in the frame for currently for 007 are Slow Horses star Jack Lowden, Callum Turner and Jacob Elordi.
‘Who are the villains now when we live with the real thing?’ People like Elon Musk make it harder to create James Bond baddies
