But if you’re making a film where you’ve skewed the main character to the point where it’s no longer a “true James Bond film” what’s the point of making the character James Bond?
A character is a character because they have certain traits and motivations (and this includes things like gender and nationality and down to taste in breakfast foods), the same as I am my own person and you are yours. But once you start tweaking big tentpole character traits, the character ceases to be what they were, and you end up with a new character entirely. Ergo making James Bond a female means that the character is not James Bond anymore, and so you cheapen what could be a decent female-driven action spy film by trying to piggyback it onto the established Bond name. It’s like clickbait or some other questionable practise to drive traffic to your product.
This is a fair point and in most cases I’d agree there’s usually not much motivation behind changes like this (I will say though I am someone with very little regard for source material - when I look at a movie and its characters it’s all about THAT movie and THOSE characters, I don’t think what came before is all that relevant).
However, I think specifically in the case of James Bond, because he is such an icon and total embodiment of society’s ideas of masculinity that I think it would be very interesting to see this character in particular made into a woman. It would be so counter to what Bond is that it would be a truly interesting thing to see and have a conversation about. The reaction to the most male-oriented franchise being suddenly headlined by a woman would be a truly fascinating thing. It’s not about cheap gimmicks or anything like that. In this case, I genuinely think it’d make for a very interesting take on the Bond material (and something that would not be done quite as potently with a new female spy character divorced from the Bond ethos - although we should definitely have more original female super spies!).
Plus you lose the chance at cool crossovers in the future.
Honestly I’m getting kind of tired of crossovers. I’d rather Bond not be the nth franchise to try to be the MCU.
(for the record the new Ghostbusters movie is going to suck because it looks like a terrible film, and it would be just as bad if they kept the same movie and swapped the original cast in)
This is a 100% fair point and the obvious rebuttal to nu-Ghostbusters anti-criticism. I really don’t care about it that much but I will say let’s hold final judgements until it comes out.