What Would The Reaction To A Female Bond (007, that is) Be?

[killbabykill]

I joined the Escapist just so I could say the following: she already exists, and her name is Modesty Blaise. The movie, made right around the time Jimmy B. got his start is NOT a good representation of her. Look for the book from '65, by Peter O'Donnell. Or any of her collected comics. She's extremely awesome.

I think genderswapping is pandering. It never really brings anything to a character that you can't write for the character to begin with. There are no hard and fast rules for 'how women act' or 'how men act'.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Terrible idea, and the main reason why has been said a bajillion times in the thread already.

If it's a carbon-copy genderswap, then why bother to swap it in the first place. If you make it something diffrent, don't use the name of the franchise to fake credibility/fame etc.
Would a female spy be cool, who is similar to James Bond but something unique? A own franchise? Hell yeah, give me that. But please stop manglin' all the old franchises for money/sjw/moodswings/internethissyfit reasons.

The current butchering of old cartoon franchises is tragic enough.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

I just don't see the need for their to be a gender swap in the first place.

Just this year saw the release of Kingsman: The Secret Service and The Man From U.N.C.L.E, both of which proved without a doubt that spy genre flicks do not need the James Bond brand to be either good or successful. I would even argue that those last two movies were far more entertaining then the stylised realism of movies featuring Daniel Craig's James Bond.

 

[DeepReaver]

It would not be 007. This is my issue with re-vamps, why do they need to do a re-vamp of an old character? Why can't they just make a new one in the same world? Why does this new character have to just ride of the coat tails of the old one and not be their own person? I have had this same issue with comic books for a long time, if you wanna make a gay black trans-gendered or what ever other controversial or buzz word worthy character why do they need to replace the old ones? Are people so unsure of their writing these days that they cannot simply trust a new character to do well?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Swapping out the same character for different shit you want to make is just a terrible practice. Do that shit legit and create a character that fits the story if you even have any, don't just put more mud in the water until everything is the same old crap.

 

[K12]

I'd quite like to see this but I don't think you could just do a straight gender-swap without it having a fairly big impact on the way the formula works. I think the character of Bond is fairly essentially male as he's generally supposed to be the perfect Englishman with all the traits that entails. Rakishness and Bond's variety of confident charm is a very masculine power-fantasy/ ideal.

I'd definitely like to a see a spy film where a female character being sexually-manipulative, flirty and promiscuous (like Bond) isn't an automatic "she's evil" flag.

The reaction would be... poor. For fuck's sake people complained when they cast Daniel Craig because he's blonde (apparently). A lot of load claims of "But WHY???" without saying the full question of "But WHY... would you try to do something new and mould-breaking with a 50 year old film franchise". Personally I'd just like to see something more interesting done with Bond girls other than the standard "manipulative villain", "naive kill who dies" and "hot girl who has no real impact on the plot".

Judy Dench as M worked really well, a spin-off series of her earlier career would be great!

 

[happyninja42]

I'd quite like to see this but I don't think you could just do a straight gender-swap without it having a fairly big impact on the way the formula works. I think the character of Bond is fairly essentially male as he's generally supposed to be the perfect Englishman with all the traits that entails. Rakishness and Bond's variety of confident charm is a very masculine power-fantasy/ ideal.

I'd definitely like to a see a spy film where a female character being sexually-manipulative, flirty and promiscuous (like Bond) isn't an automatic "she's evil" flag.

The reaction would be... poor. For fuck's sake people complained when they cast Daniel Craig because he's blonde (apparently). A lot of load claims of "But WHY???" without saying the full question of "But WHY... would you try to do something new and mould-breaking with a 50 year old film franchise". Personally I'd just like to see something more interesting done with Bond girls other than the standard "manipulative villain", "naive kill who dies" and "hot girl who has no real impact on the plot".

Judy Dench as M worked really well, a spin-off series of her earlier career would be great!

Interesting that you mention Bond girls and how they're portrayed. Because I always think of the one from Goldeneye, and how she was actually useful. She had vital information to the plot, the technical know-how to implement it when needed. She frequently got herself out of danger, and was anything but a helpless wallflower or only a sex object. I really wish they had more like her in the series, as I might actually like them more. I still laugh at the first time she meets Bond, and she's kicking the back of his chair in the copter to wake him up, howling like a banshee, in a totally not sexy way. Most amusing. xD

I think an easy way to allow a female Bond would be to do what the Kingsmen did, and have their names be handles. I mean come on, Bond no longer has any continuity with all the films. It's too long of a timeline for one person to actually do it all. So every time they recycle the series, they have to redo the background to make it make sense for the new era. So it's not like making Bond female would disqualify all the other movies continuity, the movies do that every time they make a new one.

I personally don't care if they make Bond female or not. As I said previously in this thread, I have no personal investment in the movies, as they are mediocre action flicks at best to me. So having a mediocre action flick with a female lead in it doesn't shake the very pillars of heaven as far as I'm concerned.

I dunno. Maybe I just read to many What If comics when I was a kid to really give a shit when someone tries a new take on an established character. Or maybe it's just that at this point in my life, I don't fucking care who the character is, as long as they tell a good story. Keeping Bond male, and telling me shit stories one after the other, is not as good as maybe changing up his gender, and giving me a fresh and interesting story from a new perspective. I'll take that over the same Dead Horse bullshit that is the franchise so far.

 

[JustAnotherAardvark]

Judy Dench as M worked really well, a spin-off series of her earlier career would be great!

Best M ever, imo.

I didn't care for how much screen time she had in Skyfall (then again, I didn't really care for Skyfall), but she brought an edge to M we hadn't seen before.


"What is he doing!?!?!?"
"His job."

 

[Thaluikhain]

Judy Dench as M worked really well, a spin-off series of her earlier career would be great!

Best M ever, imo.

I didn't care for how much screen time she had in Skyfall (then again, I didn't really care for Skyfall), but she brought an edge to M we hadn't seen before.


"What is he doing!?!?!?"
"His job."

For me, that bit is memorable because the Admiral is played by Geoffrey Palmer, and the two of them starred in "As Time Goes By".

 

[Loonyyy]

Judy Dench as M worked really well, a spin-off series of her earlier career would be great!

Best M ever, imo.

I didn't care for how much screen time she had in Skyfall (then again, I didn't really care for Skyfall), but she brought an edge to M we hadn't seen before.


"What is he doing!?!?!?"
"His job."

For me, that bit is memorable because the Admiral is played by Geoffrey Palmer, and the two of them starred in "As Time Goes By".

Internet Hi Five!

I also remember that, I never watched "As Time Goes By" but I always remembered the opening credits after my ABC stuff, and switching to another channel, and that was what I recalled when I saw them in Tomorrow Never Dies (Every time, since we taped it on VHS, and I even went to the effort of staying awake for it, to record without ads).

 

[LauriAJ]

I would actually watch a Jamie Bond movie out of sheer curiosity...

 

[Tilly]

Yeah pretty much all of this, there would definitely be the usual b'awwwing about how SJW's are looking to get their evil hands on anything that is rightly straight white and male. I mean, remember when people suggested Idris Elba for Bond?

What reason do you have for thinking those 2 reactions would be coming from the same people?
I'd be against gender swapping Bond, cos I find it so tacky when they do that. But I see no problem with having a black Bond at all. His skin colour has very little part to play in his character. His sex DOES.

 

[Phasmal]

Yeah pretty much all of this, there would definitely be the usual b'awwwing about how SJW's are looking to get their evil hands on anything that is rightly straight white and male. I mean, remember when people suggested Idris Elba for Bond?

What reason do you have for thinking those 2 reactions would be coming from the same people?
I'd be against gender swapping Bond, cos I find it so tacky when they do that. But I see no problem with having a black Bond at all. His skin colour has very little part to play in his character. His sex DOES.

In YOUR opinion, his sex does. In others, his race does. I find the two equally unimportant when it comes to Bond.
They may not all come from the exact same people, but I'd be willing to bet that the groups overlap. I'm not particularly invested though, and as always am happy to agree to disagree.

 

[senordesol]

I wouldn't be for a gender swapped Bond at all.

007 exists as his own microcosm of the quintessential male power fantasy. Bond is not a 'character' so much as he is an idea; a globe-trotting, morally ambiguous, enigmatic, sexual tyrannosaur --who just happens to be the only man for the job of saving the world. He's the embodiment of masculinity, which is why he's worked so well.

Swapping him 'just for giggles' would feel incredibly artificial. It's like...why? Why not make your own badass super-spy who happens to be female? Why nip at 007's heels? (It's not like the 007 universe is that deep and intricate at any rate) Also, I thought "Miss Male" characters weren't in vogue anyway.

I just don't get who a female Bond would be *for*. If she just acted like regular old James -just with tits- then why make her female in the first place? If her femininity is actually central to her character, then she's going to be mercilessly compared to the Bonds that came before her.

A spinoff (Like Double-Oh M) or a completely separate entity would be of more service to either character than a cheap gender swap.

 

[Lightknight]

I joined the Escapist just so I could say the following: she already exists, and her name is Modesty Blaise. The movie, made right around the time Jimmy B. got his start is NOT a good representation of her. Look for the book from '65, by Peter O'Donnell. Or any of her collected comics. She's extremely awesome.

I think genderswapping is pandering. It never really brings anything to a character that you can't write for the character to begin with. There are no hard and fast rules for 'how women act' or 'how men act'.

They don't want a female spy. What they want is to bastardize an already iconic character to make some sort of sociopolitical statement.

So yeah, like you said, pandering.

Though I will point out that while genderswapping in and of itself never brings anything to the character, the other gender being a stronger actor could. But that's also true of other male actors donning the role.

Still, Bond is cemented as a womanizer. Gender swapping him would be like taking whomever the most famous female character would be and gender swapping her. People would have a field day.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Others have said it: we had enough grief about Bond going Blond that a gender flip would be full meltdown.

I'm not really much of a Bond fan, but my own take: for all the cries to "innovate and do something different" I've found pulling a rule 63 to be the least effective way to do so. It's the easy thing to change rather than story structure, plot, pacing, setup, etc. and just leads to a bad knock off feel. Sorry, I just never grasped why people think a purely aesthetic change is the height of doing something different.

And culturally, I am on the side that these kind of changes hinder creativity more because it's a sign we're no longer trying to create something new, or make heavy alterations to make something similar buy unique, or even adapt something more niche but fits a similar bill. Jane Bond? For Female lead james Bond style action I'd rather see this adapted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Girl

Though they could stand to tone down the fanservice of the original mini series.

 

[Tilly]

In YOUR opinion, his sex does. In others, his race does. I find the two equally unimportant when it comes to Bond.
They may not all come from the exact same people, but I'd be willing to bet that the groups overlap. I'm not particularly invested though, and as always am happy to agree to disagree.

You agreed with my point! You were making it sound like this was just the general kneejerk response to any kind of progressive agenda of this kind. I was making the point that it wasn't. There are completely different groups who object to these various different agendas for completely different reasons. You just generalized them into one incorrectly. The fact that I said I'd be in favour of a black Bond (or at least wouldn't care either way) shows that it's not just a desire to protect whatever's white male.

 

[Damian Porter]

Well, I would hope they would remake something like Charlie's Angels with men as the angels instead, then. Then we can make it so all the bad guys are females and get their asses kicked by the men. How's that for gender swapping?

 

[wAriot]

I don't care much about Bond, they are not my kind of movies/books, so I wouldn't particularly mind.

As for the general reaction to it, I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't give a shit, a few others (like some in this thread) would say "what's the point", and then some journalists/bloggers would blow those posts out of proportion with generalizing headlines like "Men are angry about female Bond movie". Then people would accuse each other of making death threats and writing harassing tweets, a certain movement would be somehow brought in the argument, and the circle of life would go on.

Thanks, Internet.

 

[deadish]

The name's Bond...Jane Bond.

A question that popped up into my mind while at work today (I do criminal background searches for hiring purposes) as I came across a lady who had the last name of Bond was "Hmmm...I wonder what the reaction would be if Bond was gender-swapped."

Now I have no doubt they could have a female Bond pulling off all the sneaky-sneaky infiltration/espionage/sabotage stuff...but what about that other aspect of Bond? The fact that he ends up fucking pretty much every woman he meets? How well would that be received if Bond was gender-flipped? What would the reaction be to a female agent jet-setting around the world and bumpin' uglies with every handsome man she comes across?

The same reaction you would get when you fuck with any established franchise/IP for the sake of political correctness.