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There’s a bunch of suggestions on who should/could be the next Bond. Should the next bond be Black, female or even transgender is the latest suggestion.
So, James Bond is a fictional character and the name of the character suggests that it is indeed a man. Black, White, Asian etc doesn’t matter, but it is written as a male character.
It would seem ludicrous to tout casting wonder woman, a fictional female character, as a man so does the same logic apply to Bond?
The whole Dr Who thing is a different kettle of fish (not that i’ve ever been a fan) but as far as i’m aware it doesn’t specify a male character. i.e. its not Dr Bob Who.
There’s no real point to my post (it’s not a rant) other than wondering what other people reckon to who should be bond next?
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I feel like bond in it’s current guise has probably run it’s course, compared to shows like 24, bourne, homeland, spooks etc. it’s terribly anachronistic and feels stayed. I’d rather they kept it where it belongs in the past instead of trying to shoehorn a mythical dinosaur into the 21st century. I could see a bleak and gloomy Le Carre esque bond set in the 60’s, the grim isolation of a state sponsered murderer. At least trying to be a little different instead of purging the same tired formula for a quick hit at the box office. There were plenty female spies, I see no reason why that wouldn’t work although perhaps not called James.
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I seem to recall when Stella Rimington was revealed as the first publicly identified head of MI5, a big deal was made about the fact she was a woman.
She explained that women make excellent spies, partly because they *aren’t* attention-grabbing James Bond types.
I’ve heard the same said about people who work as private investigators; the perfect person for that is a 50-something woman who looks like a housewife doing the weekly shop.
In reality, I’d guess there are probably as many women in frontline spying as there are men. They probably don’t drive Aston Martins armed with rocket launchers though
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As you say, James Bond is a fictional character who is a straight, white male – having him played in any other way is just plain daft because it doesn’t follow the narrative of the original books. There was a bit of an outcry not so long ago with the Dambusters movie, when they said they were going to be true to the facts and keep the dog’s name as “Nigger”, which was, IMO, the right decision, and that’s how it should stay with Bond, as such an iconic character.
Maybe the Bond franchise has run it’s course, maybe it hasn’t – Mission Impossible still seems to have life in it, so there’s probably no reason Bond doesn’t.
By all means start up a new, female/black/Asian/whatever, version, but don’t mess with changing James to Jemima and have her drinking gin and tonic instead of a dry martini.
That’s my tuppence worth, anyway.
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James Bond was believed to be based on a real character seen and known by Ian Fleming (and others) – who worked for the security services (MI5 or MI 6 or whatever)
Its a few years ago since I read about him and other agents but from memory the agent being watched by Fleming was a Czech ‘spy’ called Popov, who was financially well off, a playboy, flamboyant, extrovert, brave, and extremely confident.
Just the sort of character James Bond is….. But there were female agents who were just as skilled and brave……
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from what I remember there was a female cartoon character called Jane Bond a long time ago. No objections to that character at all but you can’t make James Bond anything but what he is or you have made black white, old young and hot cold, stupid clever etc etc. I should qualify that by saying I quite liked Timothy Dalton’s more sensitive portrayal of the character in less outrageous storylines than the Roger Moore extravaganzas.
I think the idea of replacing Dr Who with a female Time lord, eg a reinvented Romana, is fine but I feel similarly about the Dr himself being re-written. That’s apart from the stupid production and story values.
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James Bond is a specific character who has been played by different actors along the way.
He’s a white, male, psychopathyic, mysoginistic, deeply patriotic murderer and probably sex offender.
There perhaps isn’t much problem with changing his race as long as he remains British, but making him a woman would be rewriting the character. Fair enough, but why not just write a new story about a female spy, in that case.
Doctor Who is different, they regenerate into a partially-new person after they die. There’s no particular reason they have to come back as looking like a human of any particular race or sex. They aren’t even human in the first place, there’s no particular reason they even have to come back as humanoid, except that I think we’ve only ever seen time lords in humanoid form. (I may be wrong about this last part, I lost interest in Doctor Who some time ago.)
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