Currently, we are in the age of cinema where people who once were not getting portrayed in the mainstream media are now having movies made about their experiences.
I am a female, and I am all for females getting roles that used to be traditionally male, but I don’t know how I feel about all roles being refigured from male to female.
This opinion has less to do with the gender of the character and more so with my opinion that a lot of production companies are basically rehashing the exact same story lines over and over again and making a profit off of it. Like the live-action Disney remakes, of course I love them, and we all know that Disney makes bank off of them, but it really is the easy way out.
It is much easier to change a character around and still have the same branding and get people to come watch a show then it is to really delve into the creative process and create something new that has not been seen before. Which is also why there are 13 different movies all set around The Fast and the Furious.
The James Bond movies, which have been made with six different male actors, have become very predictable in the way that they are completed.
I get it, companies want to make a profit and spy movies sell because of the action sequences and whatever else people love to watch explosions and hot people saving the day, as my mom would say “James Bond is a movie you can watch on mute”.
It is much easier to change a character around and still have the same branding and get people to come watch a show then it is to really delve into the creative process and create something new that has not been seen before.
If we get a female version of James Bond, we should not just add a woman to the six actors who already donned the role, but maybe make a movie for her in the same universe (She could be 008 or something).
The executive producer for the Bond movies, Barbara Broccoli, has also stated that she does not want to have a female Bond as she would prefer the creation of new female characters.
Which I am all for! Get women to play parts that were designed for them!
In a RadioTimes.com article where 2000 people were polled it was also shown that 77 per cent of people in the survey did not want a female James Bond.
While the statistics and the demographics surrounding this survey were not given, my first thought was that many of the people who voted ‘no’ to a female James Bond voted just because they did not want to see a female take over a traditionally male role, which makes me sad.
But then I realized I am apart of that statistic simply because I don’t think the world needs a seventh portrayal of the character. It’s getting pretty boring.
I think it’s time we move on and start looking into the lives of a different character.
All in all, James Bond is a movie role that has been around since 1962, let’s start finding some more creative ways to give females roles.
