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I probably won't swear off the Bond series because of this, but I most definitely would have preferred that 007 had remained male.
The entire premise of the 007 character created by Ian Fleming is a delicate balance between male machismo, class, and virility.
It's just weird that they're forcing the envelope so hard by making the character female. (A spin-off series would have been better.)
BTW it would have been totally cool to have a black male play 007/James Bond. There are plenty of black dudes who are very English in accent, style and demeanour.
Idris Elba would have been good, but I thought Colin Salmon (who had a secondary role in at least one Bond film) really had the look of Bond. Look him up.
If the new 007 definitely is a black female, I'm definitely not watching it. Ian Fleming is rolling around in his grave. James Bond needs to always be a white British male and I'm a person of color myself.
if white people shouldn't be cast in historically minority roles then blacks shouldn't be cast in historically white roles.
Why?
I get the male part - after all it is James Bond. But there aren't any Black men born in Britain?
It's about the number or designation. Isn't the lore that an agent with a double zero infront of their number can kill at will ie "Licsence to Kill'. So in spy world she's just another troop or spy in this case. It's something different I don't care. I'm so over Bond for a bunch of reasons including why celebrate a nasty alcoholic killer from another country.
This is also why I can't shed tears for Sean Connery passing-he was an abuser yet many of his followers or band wagon jumpers give faux condolences and compliments. He and the character were what they were.
In any event, who they get to be their lead is up to them as far as I am concerned..........for when I saw the reboot of the franchise with Casino Royale, it was over to me.
Bond is suppose to be an experienced intelligence agent who has achieved the 2nd highest rank (one up higher with the international level, a 4 digit number, as I recall from the book You Only Live Twice) in the Brit Secret Service......and in that movie, they show him at least 3 times (the embassy, the airplane, breaking into M's place) acting like a kid in the candy store.
To me, at that point, Bond was over.
So let them play it like Henry Kissinger, Steve Irwin, or Frankenstein (Deathrace 2000), about someone in so many places, so indestructable, that there must be a basement of thousands of them, of "A crisis? Send me up a Kissinger!" because that is what it is now.
If anything, keep in mind that they are now using the same philosophy that was in Casino Royale.....1967.
I think at one point Idris Elba was rumored to take over as Bond. They should have gone that direction. I don't really care what race 007 is, though I'm sure many Ian Fleming purists will disagree, but as someone pointed out above, there are certain qualities to "James Bond" that are uniquely male. Does that mean I wouldn't watch a "Jane Bond" series? Heck no, it's a fun and engaging journey, I'm all in! But that would be a different character, with her own qualities. Had the roles been reversed and "Jane Bond" been the character we've been watching since 1963, I would feel the same way about replacing her with a male actor.
Secret Agent women are called Femme Fatale not James Bond.
The Russians have always used them on old powerful men in the West.
Hmmmm, of the various ones I have played here and there, such as Aja (Ah-JAh) for Section One, Stuart for Star Fleet Intelligence, Aja Tamara Savannah for The Pool, "Bright Eyes" for renegade KGB, to say a few, there have been a number of qualities the same for all of them: incredibly gorgeous, incredibly deadly, incredibly intelligent, and for most of them, psychotic to the boot, totally without morals (ATS may be an exception to that).
They all get into the feminine fantasy, IMHO, of being a woman like that: immortally beautiful and playing something like a Vampirelle, such as like in "Full Eclipse" or "The Seduction" where as a woman, one is granted the gift we have always wanted....eternal youth. The catch with being an immortal or a God, however, that psychosis tends to work into it. What do you care for these puny humans, are they not toys for you?
Okay, my fantasies aside or at least, what I look for in a woman secret agent to enjoy that role, there is the basic point of.......lots of agencies, lots of different philosophies of those agencies. Take Section One, for example, of "We win because we are just, if not more, as ruthless as those people we are fighting.". Where if an agent ends up in Abeyance, they have a slightly better fate than MI-7's "Feeding Station" (Trevanian's The Loo Sanction) but still they are just meat awaiting that assignment where a body is needed.
A catch, however, is that no spy agency movie franchise is as successful as James Bond. Even the many such as The Eiger Sanction, Innocent Bystanders, La Femme Nikita, UNCLE, The Destroyer, etc.. that are of a different type than Harry Palmer and show something of the glamour life.....they are or were no where near as successful as James Bond. So it looks like they want to play the femme fatale card in the best franchise there is................
...........................but I don't think they realize the limit of their franchise. For one thing, what will a female agent do to all the 007s (ie, movies) before her? All the women agents before, from Miranda Frost to Anya, while extremely capable, they all must eventually fail to James Bond, he must win. By having her win, will it hurt the buying of the older movies?
Or will she lose......and then really dash any hopes for female agents in the lead? Will it be like, "Son, I remember the first female president......and what a disaster that was!".
When it comes to the all might dollar (or is that pound?), things might not always work out as we might hope they do. When it comes to movies, the woke, and the politically correct world, one might want to keep in mind the words of publisher (of trashy but popular Amos Kline novels) Finlay-Hogoson in The Saint: The Fiction Makers.......
"I don't want to educate people.......I just want to be a millionaire.".
There's always the incomparable Helen Mirren in 'Red".
There is a growing market for movies about kick-ass women. Furiosa comes to mind. 'Fury Road' was a blockbuster.
I don't find it surprising at all that a movie producer might try to work such a woman into the James Bond franchise. Why not?
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