It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
What a sad, ignorant comment. Much as there are films about women directed by men that work, there are films about men directed by women that work. Someone's gender doesn't determine their ability to successfully direct a movie in any genre or about any character.
Historically, in the movie business (like any industry), women were kept out of positions of power. As rules barring them from power were lifted, they still weren't getting access to these positions due to prevailing sentiment lingering in all areas of the industry. Bond, a high-profile movie business with one of movie's most prominent women executives involved, would be a great sign of how things can change if/when they hire a woman director in the future. Not everyone can be a Barbara Broccoli and inherit something, or be a Kathleen Kennedy and get a job by virtue of friendship.
Really disappointed to see the words "Name a female director and honestly I won't bother" written, verbatim, by a moderator of these forums. What kind of atmosphere does this set here?
After DarthDimi said he'd be fine with a woman director but doesn't want the director chosen based on identity and you immediately offended him, I followed up about the identity thing and you dismissed it as an 'overreaction to the prospect of a woman directing', which was not the point and a conflation of two different issues.
When you go on to dismiss a couple pages of comments from people who say they would welcome a female director as 'huffing and puffing' that is harmful to women, this is a smokescreen.
--
But when it comes to future directors, beyond having the apparently harmful view that a person of any gender identity can do it, I don't even think I care if the person is much of a Bond fan.
Cary hadn't seen OHMSS and I think he did a good job. Campbell does not appear to have ever read Casino Royale, and people liked his film. Have many of these people been honest to God Bond fans at all, really?
Per capita, a much larger percentage of male directors are bad, compared to female directors. ;)
Well, I'm not sure that's totally true, but it certainly doesn't go the other way! What's the saying, 90% of everything is garbage? :))
No it wasn't, you missed the point of my statement. I'll spell it out for you: this whole conversation is based around someone saying it would be nice for a woman to direct, which isn't really all that contentious a statement in itself. But it had at that stage reached a point where you posted a sarcastic rant about 'virtue signalling' etc. - so the discussion had reached the point of a massive overreaction to the original innocuous statement.
You've decided that I was saying you hated the idea of a woman directing a film, but you misunderstood.
It feels like you're actually trying to intentionally misinterpret now. Again, I was very careful to word it that the people were reacting to Mendes' statement, which you missed.
Again, let's spell it out. Imagine someone saying that it would be good if a British person directed the next one; if the casting net for directors was engineered to stay restricted to just that one social group. Do you imagine this much huffing and puffing and to-ing and fro-ing if they'd said that? Would anyone be ranting about 'virtue signalling'? I very much suspect not, you're welcome to disagree (but I'd say the first 55 years or so of the Bond films seemed to pass largely without accusation of this), which is why I pointed out that it shows women still face issues like these. That's all. I clearly wasn't accusing anyone of hating women or saying that they couldn't direct Bond films, but it turns out that a few people have said that since anyway so I'm not sure why you're bothering to stand up for the idea that no-one thinks that way.
I think a director who "gets Bond" is subjective. The may understand what tropes and traditions work in a Bond, but still do their own thing. Take Fukunaga for instance: in one interview he mentioned how important the opening gunbarrel is, but still did it differently in his film.
TBH the directors whom I feel got Bond the most were Peter Hunt, and John Glen as they had worked on previous films prior to directing. Martin Campbell, as well.
Whereas in contrast I'd say QoS was a more typical Bond movie (opening pre-title chase, big ending at the baddie's lair etc.) and yet felt less like one to me. There's something in the texture of it.
How about Terence Young?
What happened with The Rhythm Section (I'm assuming you are referring to its box-office failure) had zero to do with Morano, though.
Yeah, its box-office and negative reviews.
Well, you were inarticulate, and that's what I have to work with. You characterized my comment as an overreaction to the prospect of a woman director, and it wasn't any kind of reaction at all to that prospect. Between Sam's comment and where we were, you had moved the conversation to an argument that it is good to 'engineer' the choice of director, which is what people were then talking about.
I didn't miss it. DarthDimi was reacting to your comment, not Sam's. I was reacting to DarthDimi's, not Sam's. You're conflating.
That almost seems like a deliberately dumb example, as you're now talking about maintaining the status quo. No, I don't think there would be much huffing and puffing about maintaining the status quo. If someone said the next director needs to be Canadian, I'm sure the conversation would be 'Well, Canadians are fine, but I don't see why they need to get a Canadian specifically' and then maybe some more elderly people would be a bit more anti-Canadian or something. :)) It'd be just like this.
Him, too!
Bond's personal struggles were valid but set in a world with cartoony, underdeveloped villains.
It would be nice if the films have a consistent tone, and go knee deep instead of tiptoeing around but never really jumping in.
Oh man, I'm so tired of you twisting my words, intentionally misinterpreting things and being pointlessly argumentative. If you can't understand what I'm saying, don't make up your own version (although I suspect you actually understand what I'm saying very well). I'm not going to reply to each of these points because they're not worth replying to and it would just play into your hands of wanting an argument. Just stop it.
The box office outcome lies squarely at the feet of the piss-poor marketing campaign. Nobody went to see the film, for sure; not because it was bad, or because it had a female director, but because they hadn't a clue it was even in theatres. If there's any lessons to be learned, it's in that department. I don't think Babs is going to look at it and say "that film wasn't a success because of Reed Morano".
For what it's worth, I found the reviews to be quite harsh. It was a perfectly serviceable film. Neither bad nor exceptional. It certainly didn't deserve to flop the way it was pre-destined to by the marketing team.
Yes I didn't hear about it much apart from on here, and to be honest it didn't sound hugely interesting even then. There are loads of these little B-movie thrillers which pop out never to be seen again.
:-bd It's a motte and bailey argument. You advance one position and retreat to a more innocuous one when people argue with you. Mendes said something, you take it somewhere else, and when people argue with you you pretend they're taking issue with Sam.
This
Similar to how before NTTD, they said the next Bond will be a man but he could be of any race from the commonwealth. They're not going to publicly state that James Bond won't be black while promoting a film.
We just need to trust they're judgement
Yeah, valid points. The marketing wasn't great. I'm not entirely against a female director, though. But if they must pick one, let it be one who understands Bond. That's why I suggested Susanne Bier, if they want to go the female route.
To be honest, the point is kind of moot in the sense that Bond is pretty much critic-proof and almost guaranteed to be successful unless there's a very dramatic shift.
I think a woman directing a black Bond would end up being more similar to the classics that anything Danny Boyle directing Craig would have been like.
Good point
Yeah, more like Bond's success is set in stone.
As long as the new film captures the old feeling, something fresh isn't something bad. And a female director should be encouraged to achieve it.
And still you go on. No, I'm not saying they take issue with Mendes himself... I gave you the benefit of the doubt of thinking you were pretending to not understand, but I think you genuinely don't. You're really not worth talking to, you're determined to get some sort of 'gotcha' moment on me for some reason, it's like having a yapping dog following you around. Please go and argue with a mirror or something. Time to fully ignore you.
Have a little more faith in women. Yes, even female directors.