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I've always thought the biggest travesty of the Bond series is that Dalton never got to make more movies.
He didn't even look like Flemings Bond! He was white and (for his first few films anyway) the same age and that's where the similarities end. He was a completely different character.
So a white man that looked and acted nothing like Flemings Bond would be close enough to the source material than you but a black actor who really bought Flemings Bond to life wouldn't? I can't agree with that at all.
Maybe I've read this wrong (and sorry if I have) but it seems like you don't really care about actors being close to Fleming, as long as they have the same skin colour as his Bond.
There's much more to Fleming's Bond than his race. A black actor playing a Flemingesque Bond would be much closer to the source material than Moore or Brosnan and that's a fact.
Always find this argument bizarre, if a character that has always been played by a black actor was replaced by a white actor the uproar would be thunderous.
Why does this alway come up with Bond and not Sherlock Holmes, Batman, Superman, Indiana Jones, Rambo etc etc?
Depends how controversial you intend to be.
No thats an opinion.
You are right to say theres more to Fleming's Bond than his race but the fact is that Flemings Bond was a product of the culture of the times. They were somewhat racist times thats true but if you are going to trace things back to being pure Fleming by being faithful to the old boy network, clubman, ex-Eton world that Fleming creates then theres no way that you cast a black man into that universe. Flemings M would be aghast for a start - or do you turn him black as well?
But then I suppose you are going to say that you dont mean completely faithful to Fleming by doing a period piece but a modern Bond film which if Flemingesque in tone would be closer than an MR or a DAD with a white man?
But that is not an argument about race, thats an argument about tone and script. A Flemingesque script with a black Bond would potentially be closer to Fleming than a DAD. But that same Flemingesque script would be even more faithful with a white Bond because Bond is white.
Having a black man walk into Blades in the 50's would be as out of place as a white man playing Shaka Zulu.
But this is a pretty tedious argument which never goes away and its been voiced so often it can hardly be classed as controversial anymore just boring.
As for controversy - I've never been that big a fan of the DB5. Nice enough looking car and I can enjoy it for what it is in GF but that should have been it. For it to appear in TB was just about excusable but its resurrection in the modern era was just a pathetic comfort blanket for certain fans who love all the cliches to be ticked off.
I bought into the nostalgia of if in SF and it is a great moment when he shoots the goons outside SF even if it makes zero narrative or timeline sense.
Please God let it finally be gone now that Silva has blown it to shit.
Lord Justice Wizard has delivered his sterling judgement. Lord Justice Dragonpol is in complete agreement with his learned friend on the black Bond and the Aston Martin DB5. Appeal dismissed with costs.
Really? I thought I would be really cop it for the DB5!
Well, I especially liked your very elegantly put last sentence:
"Please God let it finally be gone now that Silva has blown it to shit."
That is BECAUSE Dalton played Bond the closest to Flemings creation. Problem is that this Bond was a quite boring and slow wited fellow. Faults the great Richard Maibaum thankfully corrected from the beginning.
Dalton was closest to the Fleming Bond in TLD, but not in LTK. Licence to Kill's Dalton-Bond lack Bond's professionalism by refusing to go to Turkey.
Then at the end of the movie he was let back in to the 00 service.
We are almost getting to a point where this is "legal" site rather than a Bond site. The two situations are not really that similar. Clearly Bond exercised professional discretion in TLD as opposed to alright dereliction of duty.
You are a 100% correct on this one.
B-)
You are being legalistic instead of analyzing it in the proper context. Actually, if you want to be technical, he disobeyed the order PRIOR to resigning.
No it is a poor copy with shadows of better moments from much better done pieces in the 007 series, and the Bourne franchise seems to be the Craigs muse when it comes to his movies especially QoB which borrows everything from the competition including some key personal. In the hands of a seasoned director the movie might have been a more original vehicle Forster however prefered visual flair and vision over the content of an actionmovie.
The Bourne movies have all been pretty good in all aspects, they even top the use of foreign locations which used to be something nobody did better than the 007 movies. The action in the Bourne series is excellent, and the fightscenes are really believable brutal. And the characterbuilding was very well done.
In saying that QoB is better than the Bourne movies you seem to let your frustration about the lack of quality of this Bondmovie cloud your judgement.
Because you are a black fellow, you can see a certain logic in a black Bond. I get that. But in that same line of thought, an Asian or Indian born in the UK could say exactly the same thing regarding their ethnicity. Are you advocating for that too? Sorry, I call BS on that. Please read on.
I can see why you'd laugh out loud at that, and it was said to garner exactly that sort of reaction, but I assure you I find nothing about prejudice or enslaving another human being, which is what we all are here regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, etc, remotely amusing or tolerable. I will get to my ultimate point next, which should make it clear why I find your view here one that while you are entitled to, equally humorous and outrageous in conception.
The key point in this is that indeed, Fleming wrote Bond as a white man, which is his ethnicity. For some Fleming, or even purists for the general appearance of Bonds before Craig regarding hair and eye color, this is something they get a hard on about. Which is goofy in my view because if that were the case, if someone is truly true to this ideal, then their fandom should have long ago ended when one Sir Roger Moore with his blue eyes and dirty blond hair showed up on the silver screen as Bond in 1973. And yet some people out there proudly display Moore along with all the other Bonds on their website but omit Craig out of a purely hypocritical stance. White people can naturally have hair color ranging from platinum blond to jet black. Eyes can range from blue, green, brown, and black. That does not change the fact that ethnically, they are white, or technically what is referred to as the Caucasian race. The rest for some people is the "devil in the details", and it's their problem if they choose to limit their fandom based on said details. For me, it's much more about having a great British, meaning from the UK not including Northern Ireland actor of white ethnicity who can make me believe he is Bond based on his portrayal and acting abilities. And at the end of the day, that works for me and for most people in general for a starting point. How good said actor is past that is, of course, up for debate.
I assume I needn't explain myself any further :)
;)
You see,the main Problem is,that Flemings Bond is deeply grounded in the british Establishment. Being black,this simply couldn't happen just because he would always had been subjected to whatever level of racism (even if his Family had had the financial means to send him to Eaton), which in Return would prevent him from moving with the casualness we expect from our Man. Also, at least in Europe you simply stand out too much if you aren't a white fellow (note, this also would apply to turks, asians, italians and whatever descendence strikes your fancy. Of course in a lesser way,since there are simply more of them running around here. Well,save the asians that is.)
I said no such thing. But if you cannot see the obvious, namely that there are general cultural forms and patterns of behavior that cohere around race and ethnicity, then you are willfully blind.
That's a better way to phrase it. Of course there are forms of behavior and even stereotypes that we all adhere to but we must be careful to say that because a person is of a certain race he will act exactly like this as if it's a mathematical equation. That is how I perceived your statement.
I didn't dislike Dalton. I liked Dalton, but MG Wilson promised us a Fleming Bond and did not deliver:
"As a secret agent who held the rare Double-O prefix—the license to kill in the Secret Service—it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional—worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul." (Goldfinger - Ian Fleming)
He's a stiff-a*s Brit. Just leave him as is, thanks.
One more thing, we're all friends of sorts here, no need for animosity in any discussions; one should never simply assume malice is intended in comments. Just my two cents.
I don't think anyone would assume that. I think it's just that there are clearly non-Caucasians who would consider themselves culturally very similar, almost identical, to their Caucasian counterparts. The only distinct difference being their skin colour. That's why this is a difficult subject. Bond's always been a white guy but it doesn't mean a black actor couldn't portray him. The racial stereotyping that is still prevalent in the media and within society in general makes it very difficult. I don't see anything about Idris Elba's Luther character that suggests he couldn't be played by a white man. The same way I don't particularly see anything about the modern Bond that suggests he couldn't be played by a black man.
However if the whole thing becomes about tokenism it's pointless. There will probably be a day when it's not considered a 'PC move' as so many people insist on calling it, but a simple casting decision. Not for a while though, I surmise.