Why David Corenswet should be the next James Bond
But can the Man of Steel do a British accent?
IT’S A WELCOME DISCOVERY to learn that an actor is also a hardcore cinephile – who sees film as an art form beyond a paycheck. David Corenswet, I was not familiar with your game.
In a recent appearance on Brittany Broski’s Royal Court YouTube series, the 32-year-old actor dropped what can only be described as James Bond canon heresy: that Daniel Craig’s 2006 Casino Royale is one of the greatest films of all time. Black and white. Bleak, and Craig, all sandpaper charm and predator stillness, earning his licence to kill by way of a brutal bathroom brawl and a bullet to the head of a crooked MI6 chief.
But Corenswet thinks we’ve been reading that sequence all wrong:
“Everybody thinks that the second kill is when Bond kills the main bad guy, in the office later, and he’s like ‘Yes, considerably.’ But what actually happened is, experientially, Bond already had his second kill because he drowned the guy and then had to shoot him. So, in his experience, he had to go through drowning the guy, thought he was dead, thought that he had had his first kill, and then the guy woke up, and he just shot him. So that’s actually the second kill in his mind, and that was super easy.”
In other words: the kill count doesn’t go sink, then office. It goes sink, surprise reanimation, then office. The “yes, considerably” line, a long a mic-drop moment of cold-blooded cool, becomes an internal wink shared with the audience.
Bond isn’t hardening into a killer. He’s already there.
@royalcourt BEHOLD! By hest of Lord David Corenswet, we scoured the archives for his majesty's most contentious moving picture theory… Feast thy eyes on the official episode on YouTube. @Brittany @secret brittany @Superman ♬ original sound – Brittany Broski’s Royal Court
It’s an absolute genius analysis. And a little frightening – a bit like that joke test on how to identify a psychopath. But still, a film nerd’s sleight-of-mind that reconfigures the entire tonal journey of Craig’s first outing as 007.
Corenswet’s interpretation adds layers to what many already consider the best Bond film ever made. It also says something about the psychology of violence, the numbing repetition, the way brutality settles into muscle memory long before it earns a job title.
It also raises the question: Does Corenswet want to be Bond?
He doesn’t outright say it but the seed seems planted. And if Amazon MGM is looking to pivot post-Craig, to recast not just the face but the philosophical underpinnings of the franchise, then the current Man of Steel just made one hell of an audition.
He’s got the theory. He’s got the brawn. And now, with this take? He’s got the Bond brain.
Now can he do a British accent?
Related:
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