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Yes, I guess it's why we keep getting the same photo of Adrian Turner in a dinner suit in an Agatha Christie play all the time ;)
Me too :) They'll be casting their net very wide; I don't think they should mess it up.
as much as I dont like him I prefer him over Henry Goulding or Idris Elba
Golding or Elba as Bond is like casting Hugh Grant as ‘The Black Panther’ or Daniel Craig as Axel Foley. Just silly IMO.
Eon can consider and cast who they like naturally. But the casting will influence if I watch the film or not. Saying that, they haven’t ‘messed up’ in the past.
Rare breed indeed.
Agreed and i hope they wont now
James Bond is a British secret intelligence service agent, code number 007, residing in London but active internationally, who in the world we live in, could be a black man or a man of any other race as long as the character remains British. Black Panther, on other hand, could not be played by a white man or any other race. His real name is T'Challa, and he is the king and protector of the fictional African nation of Wakanda.
Axel Foley actually could be played by someone of any another race. He was actually originally gonna be played by Sylvester Stallone - but the reason Hollywood wouldn't change his race in a reboot or sequel or whatever is because it defeats the purpose of casting a black man in the first place.
That's an incomplete characterisation, from which race, gender and overall physical characteristics were taken away. So I'd say that's only half of it, if that. James Bond is more than what you've depicted @Denbigh, my friend.
No, not really IMHO. As I already said, the point of Black Panther culturally is that he is black: it's actually in his name. There's nothing about James Bond that requires him to be white. Elba would have been pretty perfect I think, if he could posh it up well enough. Strong physical presence, very handsome, funny and charismatic, ladies get the hots over him, is a big enough star to lead a movie. Golding's decent and actually pretty charismatic but I haven't seen him in enough stuff to be sure- I have a little nagging doubt about how good an actor he is.
Indeed, so not that silly. He just has to come from Detroit (was it?) and be streetwise as they used to say. It would, as you say, be hugely tone deaf to change his race at this point though. Movies don't exist in a vacuum: they show their audiences what's good and bad in the real world to some extent. And if anyone who's not keen on that idea has missed the fact that 007 has been defeating the evil thieves and murderers for nearly 60 years! :)
If I was to explain James Bond to someone who didn't know who he was, I don't think I'd ever mention the fact that he's white, or consider it an important factor, whereas his gender for example probably would be - which is why to me, James Bond could be black or of another race, and not a woman.
I think Turner is a strong candidate.
Exactly: he was written as a fairly inconspicuous comfortably-off man who came from 50s London. It just so happens that a man like that at that time is more likely to be caucasian, but his race was never a key trait of his character or his cultural significance, unlike Black Panther as you say.
Now that he's in the 21st century his race is less likely to be just one thing and is even less likely to be an issue in the world Bond lives in, which we've seen is an idealised one without racism. He's got be handsome and ideally athletic, an alpha male. But beyond that he doesn't need a comma of black hair over his right eye, a scar down his face and on the back of his hand, blue-grey eyes or be a ringer for Hoagy Carmichael or drive around in a 90 year old Bentley. We've managed 58 years without all of those things so far so I think they've been shown to be pretty non-essential. He doesn't even need black hair.
Elba is 2 years north of 50 - the Bond role has well and truly passed him by. Remember when Sir Roger got the role at the grand age of 45 and was two years north of 60 before he finally retired? I’d rather a Bond around the age of mid thirties to early forties.
I’ve got nothing against Elba per se, I just think his age would be the dealbreaker.
Yes that's why I said 'would have been pretty perfect': past tense.
Roger was 57 when he stopped, not 62.
I thought he generally kept quiet on it? I know there was that funny photo of him and Craig, but I don't remember much else. I do think he generally comes across as a spanner and rather full of himself, but hey, so does Bond! :)
He did everything but keep quiet about it. He behaved exactly like that actor from Nip/Tuck: like the role was meant to be his by right. The thing, you don't inherit Bond, you are chosen to be Bond. And whether you're considered by Eon or you really, really want the role, the first thing you do is shut up about it.
Exactly. Race, physical appearance and gender do define the character of Bond and those rules have already been set.
Also, as a response to the Axel Foley comments. He’s a black character and should remain as such.
Axel Foley can talk his way into getting whatever he wants. If he wants a free room in a fancy hotel like the Beverly Palm Hotel, all he has to do is go up to the front desk and say they made a mistake with the reservation. When they contest this, he launches into a tirade about racism and makes a scene, after which they give him a room. The whole reason this is funny is because he’s black. The rules of this character (appearance, characteristics etc) have been set.
I'm looking through a few of the articles and I'm not really seeing any comments which come across to me like that. I'm looking at a Vanity Fair interview where they've asked him about it and he's said "Of course, if someone said to me "Do you want to play James Bond?", I'd be like, Yeah! That's fascinating to me.
'But it's not something I've expressed, like, Yeah, I wanna be the black James Bond."
I dunno, I'm not getting the vibes that he's acting like it's his by right from that.
And when does James Bond do something like this? His race doesn't define him, no, you're wrong. Gender and sexuality, yeah sure, all the way: those do define him. But with race we're just used to seeing him be white, that's not the same as being defined by it. Driving two Aston Martins across a few films doesn't mean he was defined as an Aston driver and couldn't drive a Lotus. Nobody in the modern Bonds is defined by their race.
You totally could change the Black Panther's race, it just depends on how many elements you want to say don't matter that much. Wakanda is a fantasy nation that supposedly has existed in secret, you could fill it with any race or mixture of races, or indeed place it anywhere around the globe. The film dealt with race but it didn't have to - the early Kirby written stories I read didn't revolve around it at all.
You wouldn't want to change his race, though, and that's because he's one of the only big fantasy wish-fulfilment characters that represent that particular demographic, and not only is it healthy and worthwhile for such a large (and largely disadvantaged) section of the world's population to have such an empowering hero, economically it also makes sense as that section of the population will continue to support the character and films even when there is a dip in quality in the main product. Changing T'Challa's race would screw all that up, and would be seen as taking something away from them, or even as a rejection of them as a demographic.
It's not a huge surprise to me that the most fanatical Bond fans I've encountered on the web are traditionalists coming from private school backgrounds like Bond himself, because he is their guy. Of course they're going to kind of pissed, he is a culture hero representing their specific culture. It affects them the most.
Anyway, I'm rambling on and on. The actual decision over the race of the actor next playing Bond is not going to be a purely artistic decision made by one person. There is too much money involved in the huge sponsor-driven money machine that is the Bond franchise. Barbra Broccoli will have her say, but then Eon will get involved, and they'll look to their moneymen and their investors and their sponsorship deals, and they'll run their algorithms to work out whether a black actor will give them Black Panther money, or whether the up-and-coming economic powerhouse that is China means that an Asian actor is the way to go (I think Sen Mitsuji is very charismatic, and has a good English accent for an Aussie), or whether to stick with the traditional Anglo-Saxon/Celt, or whether to switch the franchise to a computer-game which might make more money and where you can change the ethnicity of 007 to whatever the player wishes, thus sidestepping the race question altogether.
Really, all of our arguments are just thumb-twiddling whilst the corporate bean-counters plot out the franchise's future (or lack thereof) in our brave new post-viral apocalypse.
I stand corrected :D
Come to think of it, he’s about to do this; I can’t wait to see it, I’m a big fan.
His physical appearance. It’s right there in literature and on film.
Live and Let Die the novel and film make it blatantly obvious; “White face in Harlam, good thinking Bond.”
I know this, and I feel the same, but there it is. The word is in his name for a reason, and since the movie came out it has rather been recontextualised into something positive.
I mean blimey, do you remember the names of the black Gladiators on the telly show in the 90s? That'll get you cringing even more! :D
You've answered your own point for me there: you couldn't change his race for those reasons.
Yes and no: I honestly tend to think that although I'm sure it had to be run up a few flagpoles, the decision to cast Craig was Eon's own and they probably had a certain amount of pressure to resist doing so from studios etc. for the same reasons that certain parts of 'fandom' kicked back.
The Harlem scenes in LALD specifically make fun of Bond being a White man in Harlem?