Can you guess who the actor is? pic.twitter.com/7PEOBeJs7N

— Naomi (@TheNaomiWolf) December 19, 2024

The Daily Mail‘s rewrite of the Wall Street Journal‘s “fucking idiots” story notes that the James Bond scripts overseen by Barbara Broccoli “follow the franchise’s cardinal rules, such as Bond rarely shooting his weapon first, to the letter.”

Excuse me, but one of the absolute best Bond shootings happens in Dr. No (’62), and it’s not in the heat of battle.

Anthony Dawson‘s Professor R. J. Dent shoots six bullets into what he presumes is a sleeping Sean Connery in the bedroom of Zena Marshall‘s Miss Taro…”thunk thunk thunk…thunk thunk thunk.” But Connery, waiting for Dent or some other Dr. No flunky assassin, is way ahead of Dent, and after a brief conversation and following Dent’s second attempt to fulfill his mission, Connery says “you’ve had your six” and calmly plugs him two or three times.

Yes, Connery shoots Dent after several shots have been fired, but not in his immediate direction. Dent’s ammo is spent and Connery doesn’t really need to waste him. But he does anyway because (a) he’s mildly pissed by Dent’s attempt, (b) he’s having a Johnny Cash moment and simply wants to watch Dent die, or (c) he simply likes plugging bad guys.

Has there been another cold-blood killing of a villain in any other Bond film? I’m asking.

An “ideological split” between longtime James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson and Amazon — particularly Amazon Studios honcho Jennifer Salke — which two years ago acquired MGM and with it rights to the Bond franchise…wait, let me start again.

A feminist wokey vs. semi-traditionalist Mexican standoff (sounds better) is holding up the next 007 film, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Erich Schwartzel and Jessica Toonkel.

The WSJ reports that during a meeting about the next, vaguely conceived 007 film, an “employee” — possibly Salke or perhaps a feminist underling — stopped the conversation in its tracks by saying “I don’t think James Bond is a hero.”

Daily Mail: “Broccoli, 64, who has more fully taken the reins of the franchise as the 82-year-old Wilson nears retirement, has told friends that the people at Amazon are ‘fucking idiots.'”

Salke is “reportedly demanding ideas for new Bond movies, although Broccoli has seemingly no interest in making them with the studio.”

Since the November 2022 acquisition Salke has been charged with managing Amazon’s dealings with Broccoli.

Alas, Salke and Broccoli have an oil-and-water relationship, it is reported, with Broccoli telling colleagues she doesn’t trust “temporary people to make permanent decisions”, according to Schartzel and Toonkel.

Seasoned, non–woke director–writer who’s been around: “Two years ago Salke squashed a Conan the Barbarian remake from Game of Throne producers, calling the project ‘toxic masculinity’. The Bond impasse is all on her. She’s an inexperienced idiot with limited experience and unlimited resources.”

I’ve acknowledged from the get-go that the lively and engaging Wicked has been very efficiently produced, shot, performed, and choreographed. It is also a vessel of assertive feminist propaganda (i.e., social image enhancement)

There’s a massive, alternate-universe disconnect, of course, between Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West and Cynthia Erivo’s misunderstood Elphaba, but that’s part and parcel of the new (21st Century) feminist mythology.

Throughout the 20th Century American culture had the WWotW all wrong, Wicked is saying. This has been especially true since the redefining of female perspective and identity by the #MeToo revolution of 2017.

The demonic cliche of wicked witches goes way back, of course. It probably originated with the Brothers Grimm and had certainly been intensified by the Salem witch hysteria of the 17th Century. It was then furthered by Frank L. Baum’s fabled, written-for-children fantasies and then by the MGM dream factory of 1938 and ‘39 and the resultant impression of the mean, shrewish, Victorian-minded Almira Gulch.

Either you’ve been fed this crudely condemning concept (boomers and GenXers grew up with it) or you haven’t been.

21st Century mythology has reversed this, of course. Spirited notions of feminine self-empowerment in response to entrenched and oppressive male sexism is the only allowable narrative these days — obviously a much more positive and socially constructive thing than the old Almira Gulch model.