10 Women Who Should Be The Next James Bond
1. Emily Blunt
I must apologise. If I was going for a streamlined and efficient reading experience this article would have consisted of nothing more than this entry. Frankly if the issue of a female Bond does ever come up for realsies then the only question any of us need to be asking - not about its merits, or the politics, or the reaction, or any of that rubbish - is simply "is Emily Blunt available?".
If the answer is yes, go for a female Bond on the spot.
Emily Blunt is awesome. Emily Blunt is perhaps the best female British actress working today. Emily Blunt waltzed into Hollywood with a role in The Devil Wears Prada and then somehow didn't get typecast by it. Emily Blunt got shredded for Into The Woods, and learned to sing for My Summer Of Love. Emily Blunt used to have a stutter - a stutter, literally the last thing you'd want if you're going to speak lines for a living - and decided to be an actress anyway. You cannot even comprehend of Emily Blunt's brilliance. It is like the sun. Look directly at it and you'll blind yourself. Merely acknowledge it's there, bask in it occasionally, and then move on with your life. Also cast her as Bond.
"What about her action credentials?", you foolishly bark. Well, she's the best thing by about 100 million miles in Sicario, Looper, and Edge of Tomorrow (do not @ me on this) and the latter of which was as much an audition for this sort of role as Daniel Craig sneaking about with a pistol in Layer Cake was pre-Casino Royale.
Most importantly of all though, in a straight shoot of acting talent, Blunt can genuinely stake a claim for being better qualified than messers Elba and Hiddlestone.
Cast Emily Blunt as James Bond. Give her an Austin Martin, and Walther, and a dossier on a man with a non-specific foreign name. Choreograph a fist fight in the bar of some picturesque European hotel, and have her seduce a man called Loadsa Schlong into a orchestrally-soundtracked fade-to-black shag in a train carriage. Cast Emily Blunt as James Bond and give us all a reason to live.