I’ve always quite liked James Bond. The whole thing is a silly romp. However, I’ve watched my last one.
Lashana Lynch, the first female 007: ‘I never had a plan B’
If they wanted to make a film about a black, female secret agent, then that’s fine. Create a character and plot and off you go. I might even have watched it. However, as with Dr Who, they are hijacking an existing character and fictional world and twisting it to suit their political purposes. I will not enable this behavior by watching the outcome, just as I refused to watch the black Anne Boleyn drivel. I very much doubt I’m alone.
“They’re actually giving the audience what they want to give the audience. With Bond, it could be a man or woman. They could be white, black, Asian, mixed race. They could be young or old. At the end of the day, even if a two-year-old was playing Bond, everyone would flock to the cinema to see what this two-year-old’s gonna do, no?”
Bollocks, frankly. James Bond was created as a white man by Ian Fleming. As I said, by all means create a new character with new settings and see if it flies but leave existing ones alone.
Are we taking bets on this bombing at the box office?
Couldn’t they have called her double-o-sex or something?
I’d like to see someone take them to court under the sale of goods act.
My own block is the rumoured remake of The Dambusters, renaming Guy Gibson’s Labrador Digger instead of his real name – Nigger.
I am, though, looking forward to a white Othello . . .
surely we should have Nelson Mandela played by a white man? Oh no sorry that’s historical and recent. let’s try Shaka Zulu played by a white man. too near the bone? what about the crusades with a black female Richard the lion heart and a white homosexual (or transexual?) portrayal of saladin? that would be stunning and brave.
Dear The Jannie
Before (scroll down):
http://www.aircrewremembered.com/gibson-guy-dog.html
After:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-53446494
If ‘nigger’ is a racial slur then ‘whitey’ is too, though it doesn’t bother me, doubtless exposing my white privilege, patriarchy, supremacy or fragility (delete as applicable). Our beloved BBC (PBUI) in a programme celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing gave much prominence to a poem Whitey on the moon.
https://genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-moon-annotated
There is an interesting comment at the bottom.
DP
That comment got downvoted. Clearly they don’t like being reminded of some inconvenient facts. Not least that the “poem” is a racist dirge. Tripe. Utter, utter tripe.
“They’re actually giving the audience what they want to give the audience.”
That’s the problem right there, no consideration of what the paying punters might want. Films cost a lot to make so when it bombs, and I’m sure it will, someone is going to be out of pocket.
Fleming wrote Bond and Felix Leiter as white men. I believe it’s in Live and Let Die that Fleming states explicitly that Bond and Leiter are both white.
The thing is, “Columbiana” was actually a really good film in it’s own right. You don’t need to piggyback (shurley “white appropriation”??) someone else’s work if you actually take the trouble to bother at it
You’ll not be wanting to watch the next Indiana Jones film, either:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9981093/Phoebe-Waller-Bridge-REPLACE-Harrison-Ford-Indiana-Jones.html
They might as well go the whole hog and call it Indiana Jones and the Shop of the Shoes, a bold quest to add another pair of shoes to the collection and the matching handbag.
I wonder who they are going to pick for the downtrodden sidekick, holding the shopping while our intrepid archaeologist tries to make up her mind? Rick Moranis might be a shoo in for that role.
Another franchise vandalised. They don’t learn. Did Ghostbusters teach them nothing? Rhetorical question.
The march through the institutions.
Will the morons in Hollywood never learn? They tried such a story line some years ago with a film called “Foxy Brown”, a black, kick-ass, female, and it bombed. After a brief part in a Bond film, Halle Berry was cast in a similar type of film as someone called Jinx. It bombed. Mind you, I’d pay good money to see Alan Carr as Atilla the Hun. Are you reading this, Paramount?
Meh. Eon has always played fast-and-loose with its adaptations. Disney’s Winnie the Pooh is closer to the source material than a lot of the Bond movies. I thought that might be about to change with Casino Royale (which, for the most part, simply updated the setting to the modern day) but then they gave us Quantum of Solace.
That said, I used to be a big fan. Bond movies were the only ones I ever made the effort to watch in the week of release. But I haven’t seen one since Skyfall. Spectre‘s been on my PVR since it came on the telly a couple of years ago, and I still can’t be arsed to watch it.
If I had my way, I’d have taken gaining the rights to Casino Royale as the opportunity to start from scratch and remake all the novels in sequence, dead straight, as period pieces. It would have ridden on that jet-age fad that the likes of Catch Me if You Can and Mad Men had going at the time, while harking back to the glory days of Connery’s Dr. No. and Goldfinger (they could even have given him a cameo to generate a bit of media excitement). But it wasn’t to be.
I thought the romps with Angela joely were the female version. Don’t they realise women go to the cinema and they go to see a bit of eye candy, we want the blokes.
I’ve loved the Bond films, to varying degrees, all my life. I will not, though, stand to see the character made the enemy in his own franchise. There used to be a cast iron law about making sure you pleased your core customers in order to retain their business. This will be the first Bond film that I do not go to the cinema to see since The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977. Talk about sitting on the branch whilst sawing it off at the trunk…