Michael Fassbender's New Spy Movie Is The Closest He'll Ever Come To Playing James Bond 20 Years After Failed Audition
Michael Fassbender’s latest movie Black Bag, directed by Steven Soderbergh, has been an overwhelming success with audiences and critics alike. The spy thriller sees Fassbender playing an intelligence agent for the British secret service, which is likely the closest the actor will ever come to playing legendary MI6 agent James Bond. Fassbender did previously audition to play Bond 20 years ago, but, unfortunately for him, Eon Productions decided to go with someone else for the role. Nevertheless, the actor should be proud of his work as a spy in Black Bag, portraying enigmatic NCSC official George Woodhouse.
Alongside Cate Blanchett, Fassbender looks suitably suave as Woodhouse, while hinting at the mysteries that might lurk beneath the character’s deadpan poker face. In the tradition of the best James Bond actors, he dons both a suit and a polar neck with the requisite poise, and commands a room quite speaking calmly and quietly. Naturally, as a big-screen secret agent should, George Woodhouse also mixes business with pleasure, no matter how personally perilous the situation appears to be.
Black Bag Is Michael Fassbender's Chance To Be A British Spy
Fassbender Plans George Woodhouse, A Spy Who Works For Britain’s NCSC Agency
Image via Focus Features
Michael Fassbender has demonstrated his suitability for spy roles before in his career, and British spy roles, at that. For instance, Fassbender played MI6 agent Paul in 2011’s Haywire, which also happens to be a Steven Soderbergh movie. Nevertheless, before playing Woodhouse in Black Bag, none of Fassbender’s espionage characters had been the central hero in a movie about a British spy agency.
In his latest movie, Fassbender’s character receives a brief from his superior, just as James Bond would, before he begins work on rooting out a leak within his agency. There’s a whodunit element to Black Bag, which doubles up as a dinner-table relationship drama, too. Ultimately though, George Woodhouse’s job is about protecting the interests of the British state from a surveillance point of view, by any means necessary.
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Black Bag’s ending gives us an idea of the lengths to which George Woodhouse and his wife Kathryn St. Jean will go to do their jobs, while somehow managing to protect each other in the process. Both of them have a license to kill, to use 007’s terminology, and they aren’t afraid to use it.
Michael Fassbender Auditioned To Be James Bond In Casino Royale
The Actor Lost Out To Daniel Craig After A Strange Move In His Audition
Strangely, Michael Fassbender got pretty close to being 007 himself back in 2005. While appearing on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast this year, Fassbender told his interviewer that he’d met with Eon Productions head Barbara Broccoli, who encouraged him to audition for the role of James Bond. Fassbender went on to claim self-deprecatingly that he doesn’t believe he was ever “in the mix” for the role.
Even if he was, however, the actor apparently felt the part should go to someone else, as he went into the audition and began bigging up Daniel Craig as the next James Bond. Eon’s producers obviously thought he had a point, as they went on to hire Craig for five Bond movies beginning with 2006’s Casino Royale.
“I don’t know why I was promoting him,” Fassbender told Horowitz. “I should have been promoting myself.” It’s undeniably a strange move to big up your competition in an audition, but perhaps this mistake can be put down to nerves, as James Bond would have been the young Fassbender’s very first movie role.
In any case, most of us, including Fassbender can agree that Daniel Craig is up there as possibly the best James Bond actor of all time, given his innovative and iconic take on the role between 2006 and 2021. The next James Bond following Craig has a lot to live up to. Whoever they are, though, they won’t be Michael Fassbender, even though the actor could have made a great Bond, as Black Bag demonstrates.
Black Bag Proves Michael Fassbender Could Have Been A Fascinating James Bond
Fassbender’s Bond Would Have Kept His Cards Close To His Chest
If Daniel Craig showed us darker and more human sides to James Bond, then Michael Fassbender would have taken things a step further still. As his portrayal of George Woodhouse in Black Bag illustrates, Fassbender is one smooth operator in his British spy roles, with all the charm it takes to be Bond. However, Fassbender would probably show more reserve and restraint than any James Bond in history while playing 007, leaving it up to us to imagine what he’s thinking most of the time.
Fassbender's 007 would arguably be the closest thing to the James Bond we see in some of Ian Fleming’s novels, who’s far more guarded and less campy than the character appears in most of the Bond franchise movies.
The actor plays Black Bag’s Woodhouse as a slippery character engaged in all manner of subterfuge, even if it’s for the right reasons. He’d arguably be the closest thing to the James Bond we see in some of Ian Fleming’s novels, who’s far more guarded and less campy than the character appears in most of the Bond franchise movies. Craig’s version of 007 was intended to correspond more to the character on the page than previous iterations, but Fassbender’s Bond would be more mysterious and morally ambivalent still, while beholden to the personal calculations synonymous with Fleming’s character.
Michael Fassbender Is Probably Too Old To Play James Bond Now
Fassbender Is One Year Older Than Roger Moore Was In His First 007 Movie
Alas, since Michael Fassbender failed his audition 20 years ago he’s been consigned to the “nearly” pile of 007 franchise history. At 47 years of age, Fassbender is probably too old to be a contender for the next James Bond actor. It’s true that Roger Moore was only one year younger than Fassbender is now when he starred in the 1973 Bond movie Moonraker, but Amazon-MGM are going to be looking for a Bond actor who’s in it for the long haul as Craig was, ready to play the character repeatedly over a 10 to 15-year period.
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By the time that period is over, Fassbender will be in his sixties, and older than any James Bond actor in history. He’ll have to make do with playing the spy protagonist in arguably one of the best James Bond movies that doesn’t actually feature James Bond.
Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag is a masterclass in suspenseful espionage. It might not involve MI6 or 007, but it has all the makings of a classic Bond flick under a different name. Michael Fassbender’s characterization of George Woodhouse, an ingenious and deadly surveillance specialist who keeps his cards impossibly close to his chest, is the most important factor in the movie’s success. Fassbender would have made a fascinating Bond, but he’s already made a brilliant Woodhouse.
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