Tom Hardy may play the next James Bond, but if he does get the role he will need a new Q. Daniel Craig is officially set to step down from the iconic role of super-spy James Bond with the release of the long-delayed No Time To Die, and Hardy is strongly linked as his replacement. The actor has been rumored to be attached to the role and would certainly fit the suave, charismatic classic image of Bond cultivated throughout the twenty five-film series.
Hardy has impressed in roles both villainous and heroic over the last decade and a half, starring in everything from The Dark Knight Rises to Venom. But if there’s truth to the rumor that Hardy will be the next Bond, he needs a new R&D man. The character of Q is a longstanding staple of the Bond films, and like Miss Moneypenny and M, he’s been played by a variety of actors over the years.
The James Bond franchise has been through four different iterations of gadget creator Q now, with John Cleese only lasting one film before he was replaced by Ben Whishaw. While Whishaw has put a typically likable, whimsical spin on the character and he melded well with Craig’s older, less outwardly fun version of Bond, it’s time for a new actor to take on the character for several important reasons. A new Q could help satisfy fans’ reasonable calls for more diversity in the cast as well as providing some narrative momentum for Hardy’s debut outing as the debonair super spy.
Hardy and Whishaw Are Too Similar
There’s a recurring criticism that the new Bond movies should make more diverse and daring creative decisions when it comes to casting rather than simply hiring another white man to play the title role. It’s a fair argument given how homogenous the character’s casting has been over the decades, and it’s one that has seen Idris Elba attached to the role so many times that the actor believes it has cost him a chance at actually playing Bond.
The upcoming No Time To Die may be offering a nod to this demand by casting a black female 007 (but not, crucially, a black female James Bond), but if Hardy is indeed the new Bond, he’ll be the latest white male Bond added to a long string of similar faces. Not only that but as far as a diverse extended cast list goes, Hardy’s Bond would be working under Ralph Fiennes’ white male M and assisted by Ben Whishaw’s white male Q. Since the death of Judi Dench’s M, Miss Moneypenny is the lone recurring character who isn’t a white man, and since she’s the (admittedly pretty tough and proactive) secretary this could look a little antiquated for fans who hoped to see more diversity in the franchise’s casting.
Beyond that reasonable criticism though, Whishaw and Hardy are also similar enough in their character choices to negate each other’s onscreen impact somewhat. Both quirky English actors who made a name for themselves with esoteric career choices throughout the noughties and, while the pair are far from interchangeable, their screen personae aren’t different enough to create a meaningful contrast. From his dark 007 origin film Casino Royale onwards, Daniel Craig had an icy cool self-seriousness that let Whishaw’s quirkiness shine, whereas Hardy has established a more slyly humorous, playful onscreen image that would render Whishaw’s similarly playful version of his character irrelevant.
To be fair to Hardy, there's an argument to be made that the actor's range proves he could well play the character as seriously as his predecessor Craig. The heavier likes of Locke and The Revenant have proven that Hardy is more than able to portray very different damaged, brooding characters without relying on charm or humor to provide levity. But while Hardy would be more than up to the challenge of playing a serious, realistic Bond, it could be hard for him to step out of Craig's shadow if he takes the character down the same route that the franchise has tread so recently. Meanwhile, his unexpectedly funny, fantastic Bane in The Dark Knight Rises proves the actor can turn a potentially serious character into great hammy, campy delight... If he has a suitably deadpan supporting cast to work with.
Q Has Played The Straight Man Before
It’s important to remember that Q wasn’t always a quirky young colleague of a beleaguered, nearing-retirement Bond, though. During the Roger Moore years in particular, but also Pierce Brosnan’s tenure as Bond, the character of Q was written and played as an exhausted, comparatively serious co-worker to Bond’s charismatic charmer. Typically Q’s gadgets would be far-fetched but the character himself would be relatively self-serious, scowling as Bond accidentally activated pen guns and offered only a caddish grin by way of apology. When rebooting the franchise as a darker, more realistic post-Bourne spy series, Craig’s Bond diverged from this image hard (too hard, in the case of the grim, excessively self-serious Quantum of Solace). The actor won critical acclaim for playing Bond as a stone-faced PSTD-stricken spy, meaning Q wasn’t even around for his first few outings and when he did arrive, the character was forced to become more light-hearted to balance Craig’s glowering.
But if Hardy plays the character as a more classic devil-may-care Bond, then Q could return to the role of his beleaguered co-worker and their chemistry could be more akin to the Moore-era James Bond pairing. Recasting the character as a stern angel on Bond’s shoulder also opens up some exciting opportunities for casting the role, as a less quirky and whimsical Q could be perfectly played by the likes of Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya, Whishaw’s The Personal History of David Copperfield co-star Dev Patel, or any number of less comedic, more deadpan replacements (although if the series insists on keeping the quirky Q, the least they can do is give Richard Ayoade the role he was born to play).
Killing Off Whishaw’s Q Could Bridge The Gap
Despite the series switching stars roughly once a decade for the last half-century (save for the one-film wonder George Lazenby, that is), it’s still never easy for the Bond franchise to transition into a new iteration of the title character. The wildly different tones of Brosnan’s debut Goldeneye and Craig’s debut Casino Royale prove just how much two versions of the same old Bond can contrast with each other, and those two outings were even helmed by the same director, Martin Campbell. As a result of the tricky tonal switching, the series will often keep some of the existing supporting cast members around to make the change easier on viewers. But in recent years Bond movies have become much more confident about addressing the character’s backstory and mythology where previous incarnations left things murkier.
As such, much like Skyfall shocked audiences by killing off Judi Dench’s M and reinvigorated the franchise in the process, killing off Whishaw’s Q could give the first post-Craig Bond both a reason to replace his actor and an immediately involving drama for fans to get invested in. This tragic loss could give Hardy’s Bond a personal vendetta to avenge and would illustrate that the new films would have high stakes even if they did include a more light-hearted version of the title character than Craig's unprecedentedly serious version. The death would be a dramatic gambit to bring the audience on board with this new version of the super-spy, thus bridging the transition from Craig into Hardy (or whoever else may play them. But the next James Bond really should be Tom Hardy).
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