Well, Josh already warned us about trusting crazy casting rumors on this, the trickiest of all days, but Dark Horizons swears up and down this one is true: Sean Connery himself may be the next Bond villain. My, how little time it takes to go from being a secret agent to an evil mastermind these days.
The transition won’t be as easy as saying go though, and there are no deals in place yet. All we’re going on is a quote from Connery saying "I wouldn't mind coming back as a Bond villain. But I don't think they would pay me enough. They don't pay the money for other parts, only for the Bond character, although that wasn't the case when I was doing it." Zing! That’s pretty much the equivalent of the “Up hill both ways in the snow” old-timers complaint. Is Daniel Craig not the same generous Bond that Connery was? Is Connery just a cranky old man? And after saying that will the producers of the Bond movies even attempt to bring Connery back into the fold?
Honestly, it doesn’t really seem like the MO of the newly revamped Bond series to do something as jokey as casting Connery as a villain. Maybe in the Pierce Brosnan years, the time of jokes like “I thought Christmas only came once a year,” it would have flown, but Bond is leaner and meaner than ever now. A Connery cameo would put the whole thing only a few steps from Austin Powers territory.
I recently watched The Last Crusade, and loved Connery in it, but that kind of blustering comedy wouldn’t really work for this Bond. So as much I would love to hear Sean Connery say “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die,” now probably isn’t the time. So maybe this rumor really is a big April Fool’s hoax, since it seems just as unlikely to exist as, say, There Will Be Farts.
