(response to “Would everyone be okay if the next james bond was played by a non-white man in the next movie? If not why?”)
No, I wouldn't be okay with it. Not racist, I just don't like how black people tend to look. Not a fan of the color brown, or big lips and nose. Nothing personal just not my personal taste (and we all have them, for example in dating). Wouldn't wanna look at that on a screen for 2 hours.
20 comments
Two things:
1- People had no problem with Najica Hiiragi...:
image
...a woman as a secret agent
2- Nor a black* man voicing a character played - in the first three of a set of a certain saga of nine films - by the late great Dave Prowse**
3- ?????
4- So you tell me.
*- Finn. Before then - and in the last trilogy part of said nine films - Lando Calrissian. Problem?
**- A white man from Southern England with a West Country accent. So why no complaints about a role not played by an American ...?!
C-3P0. Wicket. Finn. Rey.
And as Daniel Craig's Bond's CIA counterpart Felix Leiter was played by a black man, there's your entire 'argument' crashing & burning just as hard as Blofeld's helicopter onto Westminster Bridge at the end of "SPECTRE".
Who plays Guardian of Bifrost Heimdall in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Who is now Captain America.
Shall I continue, or have I sufficiently obliterated what's left of said 'argument' of yours, CourtingDisaster...?!
I’m not a fan of race-swapping established characters for no reason other than brownie points, not least because it feels patronizing to me, but thinking we’re so ugly you can’t stand looking at us on the big screen for two hours IS racist, plain and simple.
I heard that Idris Elba was going to be the next James Bond, then Idris Elba was going to have a prominent role in the next Bond film but not as the title character, and now the official word is basically a vague tease, “Maybe the next one will be a black man, maybe he won’t”. Personally I haven’t seen very many Bond films because it’s not my thing, so I have little reason to care, but fans are generally fine with the idea that “James Bond” is a pseudonym which comes with the 007 designation. Otherwise, he’d be about 90 years old by now.
@Zinnia #66963
The character in the Ian Fleming novels was born in 1920, though Fleming said he should always be portrayed as 35 years old.
I have nothing against the Bond films but I do think it’s time they got knocked on the head. They should do one last one where he gets killed in the end. I even volunteer to write the book of that one myself.
If you expect the spy to be white doesn't it serve his cover not to be?
And seriously? "I'm not racist I just judge people and their fitness to act in a role based on my personal aesthetic preference which is offended by darker skin tones to such a degree I will boycott events if I cannot sweep any such person from my sight?" That's not just racist, that's the kind of idiotic straw racist a more nuanced dirtbag would invent as an unrealistic parodic standard to be judged against as a distraction from their own racism. And the way you downplay it just gets even dumber somehow boiling down to: "Well I wouldn't have sex with him, so I am offended by his very existence."
Ah, yes, “I’m not racist, BUT black people disgust me.” How can you genuinely not see what you’re saying there?
You know what might be interesting? Having a spy movie with one Bond-esque obvious attention grabber who does a bunch of dramatic high risk infiltrations with ridiculous gadgets and attempts to seduce beautiful women tangentially related to the antagonist only to reveal that the entire time his obvious and thus far fruitless methods as well as the easily detected and traced gadgetry were all a decoy, revealing the true secret agent to be someone in the background the audience was intended to mistake for an extra that got used more than once if they even noticed them in the first place gathering trash, fishing for gossip among other staff, and discretely palming or "returning" items that would have data on them as an easily dismissed menial worker finding weaknesses in security and grudges to exploit in an organization's internal power structures through loose lips and the information one learns in the daily grind of a henchman drawing minimal suspicion compared to the playboy trying to crack a mainframe or putting their hopes on getting somebody to spill information or change allegiances through pillow talk treated like a visible game of cat and mouse by the antagonist who thinks they're genre savvy and wants to mislead and humiliate the decoy thinking the real operation is secure and whatever agency sent them would be disgraced weakening future endeavours and casting doubt on evidence gathered.
It's a lot for one quick twist, but really I enjoy the idea of rubbing in how stupid and ineffective these tropes would actually be to a real world spy. You can still have a high octane gratuitous shootout at the end, of course.
Has anyone else seen the 2008 movie "Doomsday"?
After watching that movie for a bit I suddenly realized that Rhona Mitra's character was, essentially a rule 63 James Bond.
Eh, I'm fine with James Bond staying as a caucasian male. If you want to have a black, Asian, female, Middle-Eastern, or whatever sort of spy set in the same universe... we have more numbers, 000-009. Rogue One. The Mandalorian, Machete, the MCU all show you can have a universe and draw from it and not be limited to a single character/group of characters. It can only help the universe grow.
Doing that helps to build up the movie's world, and allows people to diversify without changing characters. Like someone else said, just randomly changing ethnicities can come across as pandering or offensive. Heck, one version of it is certainly seen as such, whitewashing.
While Bond changing his skin color is a little weird, I think the “Movie-Bond” Continuity should be separate from the “Book-Bond” Continuity. “James Bond” should be retconned as a code-name in the movies because if all those very-different-looking men are the same guy, he’s one heck of a shape-shifter. Thus; I’ll still welcome a non-White Bond.
Confused?
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