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Comments
A giraffe? Wouldn t the love scenes be ...awkward? Unless all the Bond girls women females were also giraffes? Or maybe I am being insensitive here.
Well, to be honest, I haven't checked some of those caustic discussions in a while, so perhaps the big "THIS ISN'T BOND!" outrage has settled down. ;-)
Yeah I’m not sure as I haven’t really gone into the NTTD discussions much either recently; I’ve seen it now :)
This, I think, is most people’s attitude. The backlash to changing his race would be bigger than NTTD’s surprises, because as well as pissing off certain fans, it’d also attract attention from people who don’t really care but just want to fight the next battle of the culture war. But once the film had actually come out, the debates around it would be confined to places on the internet like this, and those of us who come to places like this are a really small minority of viewers. I think most people just want to watch a good film, and they usually move on pretty quickly afterwards.
Not that Eon don't believe in bad publicity (Mr Wilson mentioned as much when talking about the Craig backlash in the Being.. doc) but I suspect that it would raise more interest than it would turn away.
Not all fan reactions are subject to objective analysis or political profiling, and I regret that accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, ... come so quickly sometimes whenever people say they just "don't see it" or "don't want it". Fans can't always explain why something doesn't feel right. It's usually when they try to do so that unfortunate words are explicitly spoken and some accusing responses feel logical in turn. I wish we could just agree that the looks of characters matter to most of us in varying degrees, that skin colour can be a part of that (but not by necessity) and that objections to colour or other characteristics can be purely aesthetical without coming from questionable politics. But, to be fair, one may at least try to give something a chance before dismissing it entirely when it's still in a purely hypothetical stage.
That's just me practising the art of Internet forum pacification. Honk if you like my diplomacy. ;-)
And remember Bond asking Silva how he would know "that this was the first time."
I assumed it was because he was trying to keep the tone of the conversation relatively "light" (rather than turn it into a "heavy" social political discussion that would be likely to inflame passions and tempers)
But no, "you just wouldn't let it lie"
Surely you understood what he meant?
He doesn't have to conform to your personal idea of what is the appropriate terminology to use in order to avoid being harassed does he?
Is that what we've come to?
Give it a rest...
Also, I thought we ended that discussion fairly amicably, so I'd say you're the one "not giving it a rest".
He's quoting The Big Lebowski. Watch it, it's a good film.
I live on the other side of the globe, so I often arrive in conversations late
Does that mean I'm not allowed to express my opinion?
Sorry for intruding...
Writers are the same. Can you imagine Jackie Brown played by Bridget Fonda instead of Pam Grier? I don't. It wouldn't look and be as cool a movie if they swapped the actresses and in fact the film would simply not work.
Now Bond is white, that's the shade Fleming went with, and it allows a lot of things. Like for example, Bond blends better as a spy in most countries he goes to. Making him black would put him in impossible situations and not allow him to do his work. That would be a totally different kind of series of films, that wouldn't be Ian Flemings 007, period.
They made James West black you know what happened to that proposed film series. It literally completely ruined a proposed film franchise in the egg.
Now, other characters around them, you can play with the shades. Remember, when NSNA made Felix black, (they got there first), we all thought it was incredibly cool and progressive, and a new slant that didn't endanger the big picture.
It was still Fleming's Bond, only sightly updated to current times.
But changing the shade of the main character, would kill the series just like WWW was killed, period.
Great film, irrelevant quote
Damn that Tarantino for giving into the whole crowd 20 years before they were a thing!
But... but... they said Chinaman!
But.. but... I'm not in America and none of the people of Chinese, or ethnic Chinese decent, where I come from want to be called "Asian-Americans"
Thanks for playing.
It was just the new Tarantino film and he made it better by going a different shade.
And as I said, it wouldn't have been as good with the casting of the women reversed.
Now, let's say you make a sequel, and you go back to the novel choice.
The film would be dead in the water and shot all over the internet.
@DarthDimi it hasn’t. Just been through a series of exchanges with Bond fans about it (some just recently seeing it). It may always be this way.
I wish both sides could get over it at some point.
Haha! Wonderful stuff :D
Actually I didn't, because it's been quite a while since I last saw the movie
I only comprehended the connection when it was spelled out in a subsequent post
I'm not that up on pop culture these days I'm afraid
Exactly. Not when there's hundreds of millions at stake.
Money talks and.....
So, for example, I detest the Dean Martin version of Matt Helm for that reason. I doubt the public perception of that character has ever recovered from those dreadful parody movie portrayals and probably never will.
But putting that to one side, as regards whether James Bond can be of another race or gender, the question becomes not one of mere physical appearance, but also one of how that cultural (or sexual) background informs the Bond character.
The sum of life experiences, that will have been markedly different to a white male James Bond, and accumulated history of the cultural group to which they belong, and have learnt about from childhood, must now form part of the Bond character in order for them to be credible.
Can someone combine that with also being a James Bond that is true to the original essence of the character as written by Fleming?
We will each have our own opinion on that, based on our own life experiences and cultural history.
Those perceptions may also change over time, some things are more mainstream now than they were in the 50s or 60s.
That being said, it's a much more difficult concept to stomach when such a casting choice never feels 100% sincere and is often perceived as pandering and picking someone for their race to score points with a demographic, rather than casting based on how well the actor fits the role.
Again, I'm not against the idea, but it's difficult to not be at least a little bit cynical about it, so I can also empathize with the people who are against a black Bond.
I don’t know, was there much accumulated history in the character being shown when he drove a gondola hovercraft around St Mark’s Square? :) Maybe it’s actually fine.
Or maybe you've just chosen one scene out of one movie apropos of nothing