So is the new plan to only hire recent Oscar nominees to play Bond villains? Because if so, I'm cool with that.
I'm trying not to think about the next James Bond movie too much because I will get unreasonably excited about it when it's actually coming out. While I think “Skyfall” is one of those films that you shouldn't try to dig into too deeply on a plot level because of how much coincidence is built into it, it is one of those movies that is just plain pleasurable to watch, start to finish. There is a confidence about it that more than makes up for the things that make no sense, and Javier Bardem is having so much fun playing a terrible, terrible person that I wish he could come back for another film.
If Chiwetel Ejiofor is the guy this time around, that is genuinely exciting. Ejiofor is coming off of the best role of his career, and this should be a mammoth payday for him. It's also a chance to play something big and fun and broad. He makes a good bad guy, as fans of “Serenity” can tell you, and he seems like he'd be a great match for Daniel Craig. Director Sam Mendes and screenwriter John Logan are both back for this one, and I'm excited to see what they come up with. Logan's been dropping hints about his master plan for the next two films, and they left “Skyfall” in a great place for whatever happens next.
I'm also crossing my fingers that the news about SPECTRE and Blofeld will tie into what we're going to see in the next film. I'm hoping that we'll see that the events of all of the Craig films have been orchestrated by someone behind-the-scenes. Could Ejiofor be the person they're looking at for Blofeld? That would be amazing, and it would also distinguish this new version of the character from the version of the character that has been pretty much ruined by Mike Meyers and Dr. Evil.
Whatever they end up doing, we'll get to see it in the US on November 16, 2015.