Love and Bondage

Spectre, the 24th James Bond film, hits theaters Friday, kicking up a storm of Internet speculation about who should play Britain's favorite alcoholic, STD-riddled sociopath next.

Never mind the fact that the next Bond will be played by the current Bond, Daniel Craig—unless he's killed by Hugh Jackman, who has long lobbied for the role. Idris Elba is the current front-runner, despite comments by Ian Fleming heir Anthony Horowitz that Elba is "too street" to play a man who drowns people in toilets. Meanwhile, nobody's favorite Bond—Sir Roger Moore—said that the London native isn't "English-English" enough. Obviously, none of that's racially motivated.

007 could really be anybody, especially if you subscribe to a fan theory that "James Bond" is a code name rather than a real moniker. We're joining in the fray with these picks for who should play the next Bond.

Tom Hardy

Tom Hardy is in everything right now, and he's fantastic. He could make Craig's rough edges even more abrasive and balance that with the suave charm he showed in Inception and (ugh) This Is War. He probably wouldn't do it, but no talk about movies these days is complete without Tom Hardy.

Tom Hiddleston

Each time a new actor inhabits the Bond role, the character shifts. Sean Connery's suave-but-tough 007 gave way to Roger Moore's ultra-campy Double-0-Grandpa. Timothy Dalton's dark version morphed into Pierce Brosnan's walking smirk. So it makes sense for Craig's bruiser to transform into a svelter, wittier take. Who better, or more British, than Hiddleston? He looks great in black tie, proved physically imposing without veins exploding from his body as Marvel's Loki and nailed the Bond tradition of subdued sexual perversion in Crimson Peak. Plus, the fan fiction!

Taron Egerton

Casino Royale was partly a Bond origin story. And since it's been almost 10 years, that means it's Hollywood reboot time. So consider the kid from Kingsman, who nailed the four tenets of Bondage in that send-up: He can drink like a fish, murders remorselessly, has bulletproof confidence and is always DTF.

David Oyelowo

If we can't have Elba, the next candidate for a black Bond is probably David Oyelowo. He has yet to take on a true action role but nails the whole "British charm" thing. Oh wait, we just got a memo from casually racist British people everywhere: Oyelowo played Martin Luther King. That's way too street.

Tilda Swinton

There's long been talk about a female Bond, but the closest we got was Gina Carano in Haywire. If it ever happens, Swinton's the clear choice since (a) she's crazy British and (b) she's more androgynous than Bowie, so she could slip by the folks who thought Fury Road was an assault on masculinity because they'll be too hopped up on Red Bull to notice.

Ian McKellen

A psychic once told me that McKellen would one day be a part of every movie franchise. So expect an indie producer (maybe the director of Mr. Holmes) to make an action-free meditation on Bond that includes McKellen living at the dilapidated Skyfall mansion, meticulously tending to an ant farm and regaling a precocious young boy with stories of his MI6 days. But not stories about cool shit like volcanic dens of villainy or golden guns. The stories will mostly focus on the catered lunches M used to host. Those biscuits were to die for.

Andy Serkis

This is really the most logical solution to everybody's eternal bitching about recasting Bond. Pick Andy Serkis. Not in his normal form—nobody wants a Bond that looks like Tim Curry's stocky brother—but in his trademark motion-capture suit. Just digitally transform him into 1960s Sean Connery. Boom. Crisis and controversy averted. Torch passed.

See IT: Spectre is rated PG-13. It opens Friday at most Portland-area theaters.

Willamette Week