Robert Pattinson would be a magnificent James Bond, but for his sake — and ours — he shouldn’t do it

Well, that was a (martini with a) twist.

Among the years of speculation over who would be next to don James Bond’s crisp tuxedo, Robert Pattinson’s name was rarely mentioned — until this weekend.

Pattinson, according to The Hollywood Reporter, emerged as a contender for the iconic role and had screen tested for the part late last month along with the expected names of Callum Turner and Jack Lowden, the surprising addition of Josh O’Connor and the newly revealed Nicholas Hoult.

It had been largely expected that the next Bond wouldn’t be someone super high profile, and a bit younger. Daniel Craig was 38 years old when Casino Royale premiered, and best known for theatre and indie films.

At 40 years old (the others are all 36), Pattinson was perhaps a little too aged, too famous and too Batman-y.

Hoult, too, was surely more famed than Bond should be — because the thing about Bond is you want audiences to see Bond, not the actor, and Hoult has been turning in memorable performances since he was a kid.

Vanity Fair also alleged that Harry Styles and Theo James were both still in the frame. God bless Styles because he is very cool, but, if Don’t Worry Darling was any indication of his thespian talents, his screen ambitions should be left behind.

Among the known (as much as anyone can know these things), Pattinson would be the best pick. He’s supremely talented, can play comedy, drama and action, seemingly has little vanity when it comes to performances, and has, essentially already played Bond.

His character in Christopher Nolan’s 2020 film Tenet, Neil, was a suave British super spy that had the confidence, smarts and physical chops of Commander Bond.

And, oh boy, did he rock those textured suits and spread-collar shirts — it was enough to distract you from the fact that to this day, no one actually understands what happened in Tenet (including Pattinson, according to co-star Himesh Patel).

Pattinson has nothing to prove. We know he can play Bond, and he would be magnificent in that role. He even reads younger than his age, helped in part by, well, that face, but also a youthful and playful energy on press tours.

He’s also well-connected to the filmmaking team — he will be in Dune Part 3 whose director Denis Villeneuve is making the next Bond movie, and one of the producers, David Heyman, was a big part of the Harry Potter movies, in which Pattinson made his feature debut as Cedric Diggory.

It kind of feels like the role is Pattinson’s to lose.

But — and it’s a big but, exactly how Sir Mix-A-Lot likes them. Just because he can, doesn’t mean he should.

Out of everyone in contention, Pattinson would make the best Bond, but Bond wouldn’t make Pattinson. He doesn’t need it, especially when he’s been on a creative high for the past decade.

If Pattinson signs that contract, he would be locked into the franchise for 10 to 15 years, and it is all-consuming — not just the scheduling but the way he will be perceived. Does he really want to go back to those Twilight years when cries of “Edward!” followed him everywhere.

Wrapping up Twilight was freeing for Pattinson, who has carved out an impressive career across audacious indie cinema where he worked with outside-the-system auteurs such as David Cronenberg, Lynne Ramsey and Claire Denis, and played characters that couldn’t be further from a sparkly teen idol.

He made the outback western The Rover in Australia, and played a dictator in the making in Brady Corbet’s feature debut, the severe The Childhood of a Leader. He was a frantic small-time criminal in the Safdie brothers’ stressful caper Good Time, and a prisoner onboard a space mission in Denis’ unconventional sci-fi drama.

In The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers’ black-and-white two-hander set on a remote island in the 19th century, he and Willem Dafoe descended into distressing madness as they’re cut off from civilisation, an extreme cabin fever making both men do unspeakable things.

He had a memorable small role in The King as the wild-eyed Dauphin of France, and in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, he played multiple clone versions of himself as a lowly crash test dummy whose purpose in life is to die dangerously.

By the time you get to this year, an annum in which Pattinson has four movies in release, you can see the spread of his creative instincts.

He reunited with Nolan as the villainous and slithery Antinous in The Odyssey, worked with Zendaya on The Drama as one-half of a young couple who discovers uncomfortable secrets on the eve of their wedding, gave a gonzo performance as presenter Chris Hansen in Lance Oppenheim’s strange thriller Primetime, and is set to be in one of the year’s biggest films, Dune Part 3.

There are more roles in between the above but what’s evident is Pattinson isn’t afraid of taking on weird projects that other A-listers wouldn’t even consider. He doesn’t need to always play the hero or look good — in fact, he seems to relish being in the grey zone, to be the one who gets beaten up or screwed over, to be the loser.

Yes, he took on Batman, a massive studio property, but that’s a character with a long-established nuance of light-and-shade. If you inject that level of moral ambiguity into James Bond, even though he’s an assassin, you would call into question the legitimacy of the entire and ongoing British colonial project – and the Brits are really, really resistant to that kind of reckoning or accountability.

It also helped that the Batman movies have had such a long, unplanned delay between the first film in 2022 and the upcoming sequel due next year. The break has allowed Pattinson to continue his streak.

Will Bond allow the same downtime? Under Eon Productions, new Bond movies have dropped every two to four years since 1995 (No Time to Die was Covid-delayed), but there’s an expectation that Amazon, which now owns the franchise, could be more demanding.

The tech company paid $US8.5 billion to buy MGM in 2021, and Bond was the jewel of that acquisition. Amazon then spent years locked in battle with Eon, which still owned 50 per cent of the financial rights and 100 per cent of the creative control of Bond, over the direction of the brand.

The core conflict between the two parties was the dilution of the Bond brand — Amazon wanted to leverage its new toy it spent a lot of money on with extensions such as TV shows, and Eon was against it. Amazon eventually bought Eon off and took full stewardship.

What would that mean for Pattinson — or any actor — who signs up to the job. A never-ending assembly line in which he’s forever not-Bond while under contract.

Would he be able to go off in his downtime and make another Claire Denis movie featuring an extended sequence inside a masturbation box, as High Life did? Or would that be too risky for the brand?

Craig had no qualms about what it was like to be so linked to character, famously saying he would rather “slash my wrists” than do it again, although he was lured back for one final film by presumably a very large pay day.

While he was Bond, Craig had some opportunities to step outside of the character in the likes of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Logan Lucky, but 007 dogged him.

It was only after he returned his licence to kill was he able to take on more interesting work such as the Knives Out movies or the bold Queer. Audiences were finally able to see him as someone else.

Right now, Pattinson has the creative freedom to pursue whatever he wants — take chances on weird roles and strange projects. That’s great for the audience too, because he has the name recognition and profile to help get some of these more interesting films financed and greenlit.

But as soon as he’s locked into Bond, everything changes, and not necessarily for the better.