Well, it's not like it's without precedent. Roger Moore did it for longer than anyone, and can only play Roger Moore. Connery had lots of presence, but not much range. Lazenby was a fashion model, not an actor.
And it's not like the character in the books has any depth or complexity. When Bond is played that way (e.g. Dalton) it's getting a long way from the source material.
Precedent doesn't mean something works today.
Audiences today are surprisingly sensitive to bad or mediocre acting, especially in ongoing series, and shows/movies which aren't Netflix pap. Honestly, if you look at the general state of the society you wouldn't imagine it, but better actors do generally get better responses from audiences (not that there's some hard causation or whatever).
Roger Moore wouldn't fly today. Young Pierce Brosnan wouldn't even (current Brosnan is a significantly better actor though).
Range isn't very important here. Being able to act is! The only range you need is the full spectrum of "James Bond", which is not tiny, but not huge either.
If we look at this GQ article's myriad suggestions, imho only the following stand out as actually able to act, able to do this kind of role and under 40:
Daniel Kaluuya (I don't think for a heartbeat he'd accept the many-movie commitment though)
Nicholas Hoult (Talking of range!)
Aaron Pierre (at least in this role, I haven't seen enough of his work to say if in all roles - he'd be the most Dalton-esque I think)
Jack Lowden (almost too "on the nose")
Will Poulter
Robert Pattinson (Another guy with range)
Over 40 and could do it:
Matt Smith
Cillian Murphy (one of the few guys who I think could pull of a bisexual Bond and still feel like Bond)
Dev Patel (I kind of love this idea)
Idris Elba (Obviously but he's 52 which is pushing it)
Tom Hiddleston (maaaaaybe)
(I rule out Riz Ahmed because he's just too much of a masterful straight-man in the comedic sense, and Bond is a wise-cracker - you can't be both at once - people have tried, it's always a disaster. I've never seen Ahmed do wise-cracking effectively, even though he can be very funny as a straight-man.)
There are forty (40) suggestions in the article! Most of them are godawful. Like, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. Sorry, but what the hell? Why even suggest wankers like that? James Norton I don't think could do Bond, ever, the man is good-looking but completely rizz-less. With Henry Cavill the only possible supporting evidence that he could actually play this role is that he once did an astonishingly good Napoleon Solo impersonation in Guy Ritchie's Man from UNCLE movie. He nailed that. But that shows he'd be great for Napoleon Solo, who is a rather different character (no matter how charming!).
Of course I may be biased, because Dalton is my favourite Bond and he only really plays Bond-Bond in one of those two movies even!
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