MovieChat Forums > No Time to Die (2021) Discussion > Female Bond would be good... IF

Female Bond would be good... IF

posted 3 years ago by avortac4 (3565)
8 replies | jump to latest

I don't know why many people seem to be against a female Bond.

The Bond franchise has already gone through so much, nothing would be 'shocking' anymore. The very first Bond-movie was already so silly, multiple parodies have been made of it, and they're funny. Just look at Austin Powers - very funny movies, that couldn't exist without 'wackiness' of the original Bond-movies.

When I think if 'female Bond', I am not thinking about some dull, short-haired, lesbian-looking, ball-busting, man-hating misandric Mary Sue-type matriarch that can do no wrong, and does everything better than male Bonds ever could, and in high heels to boot (no pun intended).

I am thinking of someone like Cynthia Khan, Michelle Yeoh or Moon Lee of the 1980s and early 1990s. Nice face, nice body, actual athletic and Kung Fu-skills, charismatic screen presence, feminine beauty, long hair and can pull off the 'cutesy' scenes if necessary. A female Bond would be able to have a different set of tools than a male one.

She could do the Charlie's Angels (and I mean the old TV show)-style 'using their female viles' stuff that a male bond obviously couldn't pull off. Females have social and sexual power over men, a sexy/pretty woman is men's Akilles' heel, and movies have forgotten how to utilize this fact (in -some- movies, a woman shows man her boobs, and this confuses and distracts the man long enough for the man to be defeated, but so much more could be done, and even THIS particular trope is relatively rare for some reason).

I mean, why fight, if you can get through a difficult situation much easier and without trouble? Only females have this kind of 'multiple-choice' luxury, men have no choice. A man can't just whip out a part of their anatomy and have the enemy temporarily dazed or confused (especially since most movie villains and henchmen are, misandristically, men).

A female Bond would, if used correctly, afford a plethora of new possibilities to all kinds of situations that could easily bring new, fresh air to the stuffy, old, formulaic franchise.

I don't hold my breath waiting for the decisionmakers to realize this, or to throw away the man-hating agenda in favor of a really good and interesting movie, but one can always hope.

[–] avortac4 (3565) 3 years ago

It's kind of a waste to narrow female protagonists to just 'fighting', because male protagonists can already do that.

They should be able to, like they can in life, find shortcuts to their goals that men don't have. Men have to work, women can just marry a rich guy (as one example of how females have more and easier options in life).

More examples:

- Men have to study for the test, women can 'sleep' their way to good grades
- Men have to change their own tires, women can 'seduce' a man to do it for them
- Men have to buy their own drinks
- Men have to work hard or pay a lot to gain access to sex with the opposite gender, women have over-abundance (surplus) without effort (world's oldest profession, after all)
- Women have a glass floor and victim status, men don't
- Men go murder each other in wars, women most affected

So a more interesting female Bond could utilize and use all the 'female' options that a male Bond can't have - a female Bond could be a subtle 'social hacker', whereas a male Bond has to bruteforce their way in through physical activities, like fighting and shooting.

A movie would never have to go the route of 'just like men', and have a thin, petite, tiny woman easily beat up 5 strong, huge male fighters, like it's nothing. The woman could defeat the men exactly the way women always defeat men in real life - with their social-sexual power and 'feminine viles'.

We have already had 'boob confusion spell' in movies, now movies could continue on that path, but be more subtle, more realistic, more complex and more deep about it.

[–] hyperjet (641) 3 years ago

We see the women you describe in several 007 movies. Bond sleeps with a woman and she ends up being a spy. Would be interesting having a film from her point of view. Should be a different 00 than 7 though.

[–] Kowalski (60714) 3 years ago

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?🙄

[–] Ripkens25 (1917) 3 years ago

We've seen that type of movie 1,000 times already. Anything from Erin Brockovich....to the several Charlie's Angels movies.....Salt......Red Sparrow, etc, etc.

It's one of the oldest tropes in movie stories: women using their sexuality, seductive powers and smarts to gain advantage over men and situations.

Bond films are the antithesis to all of that. The audience that loves Bond films (and it is an enormous audience)...doesn't WANT to see a watered-down action flick in which most of the potentially big (and exciting) conflicts get avoided in favor of much smaller, more practical solutions...based on a woman batting her eyes or showing some leg.

That just needs to be its own movie altogether, as far away from a Bond movie as possible. However, as mentioned, it's already been done many, many times. The closest you may see this (within the Bond realm) is...what was already mentioned in a different post: female adversaries (or colleagues) using seduction as part of their cover and tactics (as Bond himself sometimes does, in between awesome gunfights and car chases).

Sorry, but Bond fans WANT to see big violence, messy fights, gun battles, crazy gadgets and over-the-top chases. They don't want to see a wild plane flight (complete with people diving out with no chutes and battling in mid-air)....completely avoided because the female protagonist was able to show some cleavage to the pilot, and divert his attention long enough to sneak away with the secret briefcase....(thus, avoiding the flight altogether), LOL.

[–] FootOfDavros (6910) 3 years ago

Slightly dated views being put forward here.

Why can't a new female Bond be the old male Bond? Why would it have to specifically be some new privileged cis woman taking over the role?

Why couldn't we see Bond himself struggling not just with some megalomaniac hell bent on world domination but with his own sexuality during the course of a movie before successfully transitioning to Ms Jane Bond by the end?

I think that's the kind of uplifting Bond adventure today's audiences demand.

[–] ProgsReturn (1803) 3 years ago

Why not start an entirely new franchise around those ideas? Hollywood seems to be a creativity black hole at the moment.

[–] Ace_Spade (9411) 3 years ago

Because the character is male and that's a non-negotiable characteristic. You can't make Bond a coward, or uncultured, or passive, or a woman, or an American. At a certain point, the character stops being the character. It's a masculine character written to be masculine and to be male. Full stop. Anything else is Bond in name only.

Dr. No was not that silly, really. There were fantastic elements (like the claw-handed eponymous character), but it was a mostly-serious spy-thriller. Okay, it had a sense of irony and some one-liners, but it doesn't seem silly to me.

I believe in female butt-kicker movies, like Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to use one of your actor choices, but not pirating a character, changing the gender, and with no reason other than people want it.

Bond uses seduction plenty of times, if that's what you mean. If you mean the indirect femme fatale approach, well that's just not Bond again. He's not a "feminine wiles" character, and that changes the character and makes the whole point irrelevant, since it might as well not be Bond at all. Why not make him MI:5 instead of 6? Well, only and simply because it's not who he is.

The trick with Bond is to keep it feeling fresh and fun without breaking the mold, because part of the point of the franchise are those very tropes you're lamenting. Bond fans like those things and we look forward to them. I like new plots, new villains, new stakes, and new missions for Bond. Sometimes they mix it up (like with OHMSS) and other times, it's more same-old. Sometimes it's jokey (Moonraker) and sometimes its pretty serious (Licence to Kill), but all the time, it's James Bond and it works the way it works because that's how it goes.

Why not make Lord of the Rings, but this time, no magic? Well, you're looking for a whole other thing. You're not looking for Lord of the Rings.

If you don't like Bond, go find some toys to play with that you do like, and stop trying to take away other people's toys.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago