If there’s one thing I want from the next James Bond film, it’s an instructional narrative about how #MeToo and #Timesup have re-shaped our culture and forced sexist dinosaur types like Daniel Craig‘s British agent to man up and face the music.
I want a Bond film in which 007 is told to shape up or ship out, baby! The old sexist behaviors don’t fly any more, Mr. Bond, so sit your ass down, stuff your junk into your pants and get with the program.
Yes, I’m kidding. Well, partly.
No, I don’t want to revisit the old classic Bond cliches, the studly old-school seducer from the ’50s and early ’60s, slinking around and dipping his wick with aplomb. The Bond character has been an openly acknowledged sexist joke for decades.
Nor do I want to meet any more Bond girls or female MI6 colleagues in the vein of Honey Rider (Ursula Andress‘s child-like character in Dr. No) or Pussy Galore (i.e., Honor Blackman‘s tough lesbian who was converted to heterosexuality by a single roll in the jay with Sir James). But at the same time I’m not all that interested in Bond being bitchslapped into #MeToo submission.
According to an 11.6 Hollywood Reporter piece by Rebecca Ford, the forthcoming No Time To Die (MGM/UA, 4.8.20) is “about bringing James Bond into the #MeToo age” and coming to terms with “an evolution” in the basic thinking behind the character and the franchise.
The fact that Bond #25 director Cary Fukanaga has hired screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Crashing) to co-write No Time To Die is being touted as a cultural sea-change thing. Injections of wit and fresh cultural pizazz. Okay, fine. But at the same time you don’t want James Bond to be overly obedient…right? He’s nothing without a certain lone-wolf irreverence. Too many progressive agendas will sap the spirit of the poor fellow, not to mention the franchise as a whole.
Lashana Lynch is going to stride on-screen as the new 007 after Bond briefly retires to Jamaica. Cool. But I’ve also read a rumor that Lynch may possibly become Bond’s love interest.
If Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson want to launch a new 007 franchise starring a feisty and fearless woman agent who has the strength and agility to fight Oddjob and other baddies, great. But if you’re going to make a James Bond film, it should be a James Bond film. Forget the Bond babe aspect, fine. But don’t cut the guy’s balls off.
“When it’s released April 10, the $250 million No Time to Die will be the first entry in the series to land in a #MeToo and Time’s Up world. And while the $7 billion franchise may forever be best known for its womanizing namesake agent, Fukunaga (True Detective, Beasts of No Nation) and producer Barbara Broccoli have worked hard with both Lynch and de Armas to create a new type of female Bond character who is much more fully realized than the ‘Bond girls’ of films past.
“‘It’s pretty obvious that there is an evolution in the fact that Lashana is one of the main characters in the film and wears the pants — literally. I wear the gown. She wears the pants,” says costar Ana de Armas. ‘[Bond] women have been sexualized before, a stereotype, a kind of woman who will always be in danger and waiting to be rescued by Bond,’ says de Armas.”
