I would be butthurt if they made Bond a woman. I wouldn’t see it and I would refuse to watch another one until they returned to “James Bond”.
Fair enough. I think it’d be silly not to watch it on principle alone but I get wanting to stick with tradition.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with a black Bond; I actually think Idris Elba would do a great job with the role, although I think any new Bond should start at an earlier age.
In complete agreement.
The argument is just against the changing of a character for no reason other than identity politics.
This is needlessly dismissive. It’s not just identity politics for the sake of the buzz phrase. The Bond films have always been subtextually talking about masculinity and making a woman the center of that would shift that aspect in some potentially very interesting ways.
EDIT: I would definitely say that’s it’s not for the better to take Bond away from the ultimate male fantasy status that he has. There’s nothing wrong with masculinity.
Bond can never be taken away from the ultimate male fantasy status. That’s who he is (which is why keeping that status and making him a woman would be so interesting!). And I’d say there’s nothing inherently wrong with masculinity but there definitely can be things very wrong with it (things often unfortunately exemplified in Bond films).
However, I think specifically in the case of James Bond, because 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.
I get where you’re coming from here, but my argument is that when you alter one of a character’s most defining traits, you automatically create a new character. So by the very act of switching Bond’s sex, you end up with a character that’s Bond-in-name-only. Kinda like Godzilla '98.
Sort of what I just said, but what’s so interesting about it is not altering his most defining (masculine) traits while changing the thing that most commonly associate with those traits (the male gender). I’m not advocating for a female Bond in name only. I’m advocating for more or less the same character who happens to be female (with of course the little bits and changes that come with that).
Besides, like you said, we can just look at Ghostbusters and know what the reaction would be, and they even have the benefit of being all-new characters. A larger franchise with the main focus on one character and his archetype would probably utterly self-destruct in a very ugly way with a change that polarizing.
I’m sure other established franchises (like Bond) are watching what’s going on with Ghostbusters right now and taking notes.
I look at this as simply an unfortunate truth of modern cinema. I’m not suggesting the next Bond film should have a female Bond. There’s no way that’d happen. I’m just thinking out loud about how cool that might actually be.
If they made a movie about Tombraider with a male Laura Croft I would imagine that that franchise’s fans would have an equally WTF reaction.
This is pretty much my point exactly. And they basically did make a male Lara Croft game, they just made it a new character and named him Nathan Drake. Just like Lara was kinda a female Indiana Jones (and with her reboot, the parallels are even moreso). Which is perfectly alright with me, nothing wrong with basing a character on an established character, but we can do better than just a gender swap.
Not arguing against this just saying that in the case of Bond specifically his gender and what that entails is central to the character so keeping those defining aspects while flipping the obvious crux of it on its head would be a very interesting thing (again, in this particular case - for example I see no reason for a female Indiana Jones).