Diamonds Are Forever - I love it!
Welcome to the club sir. 99% of people don’t understand us, but if at first you don’t succeed Mr. Kidd…
The Mankiewicz trilogy has never been fully appreciated and I don’t know if it ever will sadly.
For example, The internet decided long ago Moonraker was terrible (despite many bloggers never seeing it before hammering away at it) and Craig was a godsend (despite the films being rubbish and the character being fully bastardized) so what do they know?
In terms of the debate that rages here and other places: no. To change the character in such a dramatic fashion loses that character and their traits. Do another story that is your own and make your own decisions. Fleming created Bond for specific reasons and the films created their own version to suit cinema with varying degrees over time. But the character is the same. What they do now is off he deep end in terms of losing thre character so they might honestly give in to all this off base furor that has been raised.
And I get so tired of the psychoanalysis people do. 007 was created in the 50’s and has frequent sexual adventures yes. It was a combination of wish fulfillment and adventure writing yes. The idea goes all the way back to St. George and the dragon and winning the affections of the damsel in distress. But it does not make him a sexist or misogynist or a dinosaur despite what M said in Goldeneye which itself was too full of swipes at Bond to placate those in the 90’s who thought he couldn’t come back in the post Cold War landscape.
What people are actually criticizing is how the films frequently utilized cinematic shorthand or made Bond a ladykiller in ways reminiscent of classical adventure heroes onscreen. Fleming’s creation is far more human and his characterizations of women are truly grand. This is where I think the films failed: in that not making the female characters as strong as they were in the books it makes them seem more like appendages and rather useless and also serves to make Bond seem like what the analysts have claimed.