Thought 007 could never be a woman or black? Well, she's both! James Bond will hand the number over - "Since Daniel Craig announced he was standing down as James Bond, debate has raged whether the next 007 should be a woman, or black. Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that she will be both – thanks to the intervention of feminist TV writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge. In what's been called a 'popcorn-dropping moment', British star Lashana Lynch, will be given Bond's licence to kill in the 25th movie in the franchise... the phrase 'Bond girls' is now forbidden, saying: 'We were all told that from now on they are to be addressed as 'Bond women'.'... 'Lashana is absolutely brilliant and Phoebe's script is as sharp and funny as you would expect. This Bond pays tribute to some of the earlier films with a lot of humour.'"
James Bond was ‘basically’ a rapist in early films, says No Time to Die director
No Time to Die Director Says Bond Needs Strong Female Characters
No Time To Die Director Cary Fukunaga Hit With #MeToo Accusation For Allegedly Firing Actress Raeden Greer After She Refused To Do Nude Scene
Male feminists strike again!
James Bond was a rapist, says new 007 director - "Dr Funnell told The Telegraph: “Affirmative consent is strikingly absent in the Connery-era James Bond films as well as their source novels. The confusion of director Cary Fukunaga might stem from the fact that sexual violence is prominently featured in both Goldfinger and Thunderball.” In Goldfinger’s Pussy Galore scene, Dr Funnell said the film “sends the message that with enough pressure, a woman, and in this case a lesbian (as noted in the source novel and suggested in the film) will change her mind and give in to the desires of a man. “While the early James Bond films and their source novels were products of their time, the ideas conveyed through them about sexual violence were never OK.” However, she added: “The assumption that the James Bond films have progressed (simply because time has passed) is incorrect”, pointing to Skyfall, in which Daniel Craig’s Bond seduces a woman who has been forced into sex work and remains a captive."
Now they're pushing affirmative consent into Bond. Most women don't find that sexy, but screw them - only feminist voices matter
The next James Bond should be a woman, says Sir Keir Starmer - "The remark sparked a backlash in some quarters, with Tory MPs seizing on the fact the Labour leader was calling for Bond to be played by a woman before the Labour party had been led by one... Halle Berry, who played the Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day, argued against changing the sex of the role on the basis that the film franchise, deriving from Ian Fleming’s novels, was “steeped in history”. In a bid to end chatter about the part being reimagined in future, last year the franchise’s producer Barbara Broccoli said: “James Bond can be of any colour, but he is male.” She told Variety: “I’m not particularly interested in taking a male character and having a woman play it. I think women are far more interesting than that.”"
Nolte: 'No Time to Die' Director Smears Sean Connery's Bond as Rapist - "Well, of course, it wouldn’t fly today, you goddamn simpleton. But the only reason it wouldn’t fly today is because we now live in a world where everything is rape. Look at a woman wrong; it’s rape. Some woman later regrets her life choices; it’s rape. Micro-aggressions are rape. Everything is rape except when Joe Biden is credibly accused of rape. The scene this goddamn simpleton is talking about is in Thunderball, where Connery’s Bond is recovering at some sort of rest spa and seduces a luscious therapist into a tryst. It’s not rape. It’s nothing close to rape. It’s doesn’t even graze rape. What it is is a complicated, adult, nuanced, and sexy seduction. And it is also a seduction that’s making a much larger social point. Bond and the therapist obviously want one another, and the only reason she’s all “No, no, no” is because having sex with the customers is just not done. So this scene is not about James Bond forcing a woman to have sex with him. It’s about what much of the sixties was about, and that’s overcoming your sexual inhibitions. Bond isn’t raping this woman. He’s not forcing himself on her. He’s sexually liberating her... And let’s not forget the payoff to this Thunderball subplot. Later in the movie, after Bond has liberated this woman from her sexual hang-ups and inhibitions, we see that Bond is servicing her. He’s giving her a massage with the mink glove. Right there at work, she’s allowing one of the customers to give her a massage. The message here is ridiculously clear. She’s happier now, less uptight, more of a free spirit, and yes, liberated."
Can any actor play James Bond? - "Brian Cox, star of Succession, has become the latest actor to express concerns over today’s casting process. He claims that so-called authentic casting, in which roles go to actors with the same lived experiences as the characters, ignores ‘the craft of acting’. Scarlett Johansson made a similar argument to Cox in 2019. She said that, ‘as an actor, I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job’. This sounds like a rational criticism of the woke politics of casting today. Acting, by definition, is pretending to be what you are not... The ‘Bond movie’ is a realist genre – James Bond is a character with a small, irreducible (and unpleasant) set of fixed qualities that have to be represented realistically. Unfortunately, these qualities, from a belief in the superiority of the British Empire to a patriarchal condescension to women, are now either irrelevant or taboo. The Daniel Craig era of James Bond solved this problem as well as it could by minimising these qualities. Craig’s Bond was a wounded beast, a bull in a china shop – Craig literally embodied and put on screen the absurd physical characteristics of a bull, with a massive chest, squat legs, bristly hair and a thousand-yard stare. It is an interesting thought experiment to imagine who could play James Bond if a Bond movie were not tied to the conventions of realism... Of course, any production team should be free to cast anyone it wants for a particular role. The woke casting diktats of representation should be rejected – they are an attack on artistic freedom. The big loser in the culture wars is culture itself. Those demanding realism and authenticity close down artistic possibilities. Ultimately, they restrict our capacity to express and communicate to one another the richness and contradictions of the world."
Leave James Bond Alone - "Whether 007 is pretentiously critiquing an “indifferently blended” cognac (to M’s obvious irritation), sneaking caviar into a health resort, or carping about the proper temperature of champagne, James Bond is a white Brit who is not only a snob but also one who intends to move up a social ladder that was designed and put in place sometime around the writing of the Magna Carta... Fans of casting a Black actor (or a woman) in the role talk about Bond changing with the times and how the series should experiment artistically with the character. These and other arguments boil down to gutting the character, keeping the name—James Bond® or 007™—and homogenizing the series into spy generica. This series already exists. It’s called Jason Bourne, and it’s terrible. With the possible exception of the first film, the Bourne series eviscerated Robert Ludlum’s books, cast Matt Damon as a superspy (sure, whatever), and then replaced plot and character with jiggly camera work and car chases. Why do this to Bond? The movies are an enjoyable action franchise with a flawed antihero. They have nothing to teach us, and there is nothing in them that requires updating for relevance or modernity. But perhaps even more to the point, why would we want to make a Black actor the target of taunting lines such as “James Bond, Her Majesty’s loyal terrier, defender of the so-called faith”? This would seem weird directed at Idris Elba. Would M slapping down Bond’s appraisal of the cognac come across as merely annoyed - or racist? Would a Black Bond laugh it up as he celebrates escaping a killer in India by shoveling money out of a cab while he yells “rupees!” and urchins clog the streets to scoop up the cash? (Watch the scene, I dare you.)... We already saw the effort to soften up and humanize Bond—while leaving aside some of Fleming’s bad stuff—in the Craig movies, which were the worst of all worlds: a moody, lovesick, sensitive Bond in need of a good therapist. Which makes perfect sense in a series where his worst enemy—Blofeld—was not a brilliant psychopath (as he was in the books) but an angry little boy who’s mad that his daddy liked James better. No, really. I am not making that up. That’s Blofeld’s beef with 007. This, in the words of writer Parul Sehgal, is the trauma plot, a thoroughly modern literary device that filmmakers “can’t resist” but that “flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority.” This reveal in Spectre was inane and made a laughable hash of both the Bond and Blofeld characters... why change famous characters just to engage in stunt casting? The urge to change Bond says something about the homogenizing and fragile nature of our culture now. If we’re not big boys and girls who can enjoy a flawed, ruthless hero saving the world, then maybe the Bond series has come to a natural end and we should all stick to Disney princess movies."
Paul Verhoeven Says Films Are Sexless Today, Slams Bond Movies - "“Sex is the essence of existence,” the filmmaker, whose 2021 “Benedetta” is now releasing in the U.K., told The Times. “Without it, there are no species anymore. So why is that a big secret? There is a new purity.”... Hollywood has shifted to big-budget, high-concept blockbusters that are about “crashing and blowing up. Sometimes these movies are fun, but the narrative tells you nothing about us now,” Verhoeven said. “I don’t see any other thought in Marvel or Bond movies.” And the lack of sensuality in modern Bond films is another cause for concern: “There was always sex in Bond!” Verhoeven concluded. “They did not show a breast, or whatever. But they had some sex.”"
Nolte: Woke James Bond Nosedives at Box Office - "It’s bad enough Craig’s Bond series took all the fun and sex and escapism out of the franchise. What makes Bond unique is that he’s a super-spy who knows he won’t live long and therefore lives his life to the fullest as a devil-may-care libertine. But Craig’s Bond is a moody brooder. And then, on top killjoying the very quality that makes James Bond James Bond, No Time to Die went woke. The director trashed Sean Connery’s Bond as a rapist (which only proved he knows nothing about his own franchise), the producers bragged about how No Time to Die would introduce a black woman as 007, and Q turned gay... Let me explain why you cannot blame the pandemic for this massive fail of this opening weekend. Just a couple of weeks ago, Venom 2 opened to $90 million on fewer screens (4,225). A few weeks before that, something called Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings opened to $75.3 million on fewer screens (4330). The suck-ups are also attempting to blame No Time to Die’s insane run time (2 hours and 43 minutes), which is just pure hogwash. First off, these same experts knew the run time when they predicted an opening somewhere between $60 and $80 million. Secondly, long runtimes only hurt the box office when fewer screenings force theaters to turn people away for lack of seats. Well, when you have a $56 million opening in 4,400 theaters, there are plenty of open seats. The bottom line is this… Woke is a violation of human nature, which makes it a lie, and no one wants to spend $12 to be lied to."
Daniel Craig has given us ‘woke’ James Bond, says Charlie Higson - "Craig, who moonlights as a producer on No Time to Die, has been vocal about his work to ensure the inclusion of strong women in the Bond franchise, and even revealed that he chose to wear his now famous blue swimming trunks in 2006’s Casino Royale as an antidote to bikini-clad “Bond Girls”... Higson highlighted the level of change since Ian Fleming devised the character of Bond in 1953. “Would the original Bond survive in our modern world, or would cancel culture succeed where Spectre has failed so often and finish him off for good,” he writes in the Radio Times... But he maintained that the writer also “kicked against the old-fashioned, 1950s view that women should be simpering housewives, put on a pedestal and wooed. Many in his books were athletic and independent just like the heroines in the new film.”"
Liam Neeson says Natasha Richardson told him not to play James Bond - "Darling, if you're offered James Bond, and you're going to play it, you're not going to marry me"
Daniel Craig doesn't believe a woman should ever play James Bond
Do we really need Bond films that say something? - "There was a time when Bond’s job was simply to entertain, solidly, like an air horn of male fantasy, exotic locations and dual-purpose nail clippers, blasted in the face for 90 solid minutes and then, with one last outrageous innuendo, off. These days, the films seem to want to say something, about stuff."
How James Bond became the prisoner of woke - "IT’S JAMES RUDDY BOND – we don’t go to see his films so we can fret about him falling over at a skating rink!... There was no turning back from taking a walk on the mild side, with even the great, tough Roger Ebert praising Dalton’s successor, Pierce Brosnan, as ‘sensitive… vulnerable’. Brosnan was in turn succeeded by Daniel Craig, a fine actor with an expression of permanent distaste which one is never sure stems from having to go around killing people or not having yet given us his Lear. Women were no longer totty, and a dressing down from Judi Dench was never far away... Over the years, Bond has mutated from an ice-cold killing machine to ‘a wounded animal’, according to the director of the new one; now even 007 wants a medal in the Victim Olympics."
'No Time to Die' to Lose Millions in Theatrical Run
The next James Bond will be more in touch with his feelings, producers say - "The next James Bond films will have bigger roles for women and a more sensitive 007, according to the producers, who said “Bond is evolving just as men are evolving”. Barbara Broccoli said that the next actor to take the role will continue the work of Daniel Craig, who “cracked Bond open emotionally”... Craig’s last film, No Time To Die, humanised Bond by making him a devoted family man. It also featured meatier roles for female characters, including Lashana Lynch as a fellow secret agent... Broccoli is director of the UK chapter of Time’s Up, which describes itself as “an independent, intersectional organisation focused on rooting out sexual harassment at its source: the power imbalance that leaves women unequal in every industry”. She and Michael G Wilson, her fellow producer and half-sibling, said it was “early days” in the search for the next actor to play Bond."
They didn't lose enough money
A Curmudgeon's Guide To The New James Bond - "This film revolves around Bond eventually ‘dying’ after being emotionally exposed as a very real and flawed human (yawn). All extremely typical and ridiculous ‘contemporary university screenwriting 101’ pseudo-intellectual tropes, tropes that are not only tired and trite but anathema to the entire point of a character like James Bond. Why do they bother holding the rights to him when they obviously despise this specific genre, spy pulp? Is it just in order to insult and frustrate the fans?... The reason this new incarnation of Bond does not work, fundamentally, is that they have rejected the heroic (at times quasi-comical) exaggerated invincible polymath format for just another flawed modern guy. The pulp heroes of Bond’s true era like Flash Gordon, The Shadow, and later Indiana Jones and Buckaroo Banzai, have one fundamental rule: take no shit from anyone. Not women, not bosses, not supernatural evil, nobody. It is for this reason that the introduction of ‘the PC Bond’, played first by Pierce Brosnan, was the instant death of the character"
Meme - "007
1997: *riding motorcycle with woman in lap*
2021: *riding pillion behind woman on scooter*"
If this mega Chinese blockbuster is propaganda, what are Bond and Captain Marvel? - "Bond has been beaten. Not by Blofeld, or Goldfinger, or Rami Malek’s megalomaniacal Lyutsifer Safin, but by The Battle at Lake Changjin. The Chinese blockbuster, a war epic set during the Korean War, has bested not only No Time to Die in the global box office rankings, but everything Hollywood’s had to offer in 2021 so far."
Because James Bond is commissioned by the propaganda department of the UK government and made with support from the government (tax credits given to all "British" films are not discretionary), and always makes the British government look good like when 006 and Raoul Silva were traitors, and American films always make their government/military look good
