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Well maybe (and this is my vision) Bond could be a role model and a positive influence for young adults while still being the adventurous spy.
Wasn't he caught up in all that Sienna Miller/Jude Law soap opera around the time/before he was cast as Bond? Which I don't think painted anyone in a good light (I didn't follow it at all but I think the papers were full of it).
I just don't think anyone cares about this stuff: Mescal is hardly going to get erased from Gladiator 2 for it. They wouldn't want Bond to do it, but he's not Bond right now, and if he were I'm sure he'd be being told to be very careful. It's kind of funny that some folks want the character of Bond to effectively encourage young people to smoke, but the actor should be pure in all ways when he's not being watched on massive movie screens.
Not a Mescal advocate (undoubtedly a good actor, but having met him more than once I am yet to be convinced that he'll manage a long haul career) but him snorting something at a music festival isn't the reason why I wouldn't want him as Bond.
Please don't make comments like that unless you're willing to back them up.
There's nothing to back-up, it's a personal opinion on character. It can be taken on board or disregarded as such at your own choosing.
My comment was stating the bloody obvious that in contemporary society that is uber sensitive and where brands are even more sensitive, there is no way in hell that EON would not consider an actor’s character when selecting the next Bond. Whoever plays Bond will be one of the most high profile brand ambassadors in the world and EON’s commercial partners are key to the movies’ production. If anyone thinks someone who has any potential to cause any kind of reputational damage to any commercial partner would be snapped up by EON, I think that is an incredibly naive perspective. This is not 2005 nor 1967 and I assume now more than ever, that will be a consideration when casting the next Bond. Lazenby, Ollie Reed, Richard Harris etc in their prime would have zero chance of getting the gig in today’s society.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jul/05/james-bond-has-an-andrew-tate-problem-007-the-answer-is-to-set-it-in-the-1960s
It was a pretty ugly article, written by a man who obviously despises the character. That was just putrid reading.
There are writers out there who actually understand Bond and have a lot to say about the film franchise's future. It's a shame this sort of rubbish is given such a large platform.
I often wonder what a 60s period piece could look like but there is no way in hell the character could not conform to contemporary social behaviour. In my view, contemporary audiences would not accept it - that’s what makes me appreciate the old movies for what they are.
I think a problem with setting a Bond film in the past is that it requires an element of self-referentiality. That can be through pretty superficial things like emphasising certain events from the time, some sort of irony through a character's opinions being wrong with hindsight or whatever.
What this writer seems to prefer is a sort of Mad Men approach. And to be fair, Don Draper is a pretty complex, flawed, and even quite cool character, albeit one who has little moments where the viewer is meant to be abruptly 'taken out' of the show through some of his timely and unsavoury opinions/behaviour (not so much through his drinking, cheating, or smoking by the way - more stuff like him bitterly firing a gay character and using the term 'you people', making the occasional derogatory comments about Jews in series 1 etc). But then again Mad Men is explicitly a show about how we view that era of history and its change, whereas Bond is... well, Bond. It's good vs evil, escapist fare, albeit a brand of it with some very subtle/interesting ideas at its heart. It's never been a series which looks at the past as such, even in Fleming's novels, but instead draws upon contemporary fears about the world (and indeed how these evils can be defeated).
It's why I find the writer's comments about Craig's Bond so weird. He basically acknowledges Bond isn't an Andrew Tate-esque, alt-right figure (despite the title of the article), and by all accounts if you look a bit deeper into what he says you can come to the conclusion that Bond, while certainly not always a completely virtuous figure, and often a b*stard (which he even seems to suggest the films can acknowledge) does have his virtues which put him at odds with those sorts... It's almost as if he can't quite justify his gripes with the character through the modern version of Bond, which leads to a weird, confused argument.
Not only all this, but to suggest setting a film(s) in the past will make everything “right,” so to speak, regarding Bond’s character is preposterous. Slapping a “1962” or whatever year label on the synopses, posters, film itself etc. will do next to nothing to make people react differently if Bond’s character acts questionably. I’m not opposed to period piece Bond films in an overall sense, but everyone’s going to have the same complaints and the same debates will rage on no matter when the movies are set.
I get so tired and frustrated with the lack of nuance regarding anything political, and certainly when it extends to something like James Bond. It’s the reason I fear the crew is going to go out of their way to make Bond a one-woman man only and no lady killer, so they can stay as far from the “misogynistic” accusations as possible, rather than depict Bond with multiple women in a movie while still being respectful and not say or do some of the unacceptable things he did in the 60s. It CAN be done, and it really shouldn’t be that hard, but like with seemingly everything else now, I have no faith in people with influence to be nuanced.
It’s an obvious statement to make but I always wondered what Hamm would have been like as Bond in a period piece (as I would have done with Jeremy Brett years before).
But then he doesn't go and slam the Fleming novels at all and calls them "magic." There is no reason provided as to why they can't exist in present time (where Casino Royale thrived, and two adaptations of YOLT certainly didn't feel dated). Certainly a bizarre article.
I think it’d still be signed off today, but it would be a slightly different show (I can imagine a bit more focus being put on minority characters in earlier seasons, for instance). But I don’t think it would get any less criticism than it did when it was released (it wasn’t to do with what it showed necessarily but how it did it - some critics thought that by showing the 60s with its outdated views, it gave viewers the impression that the present day didn’t have any level of corporate sexism, racism, misogyny etc. Others thought it was a bit too white/middle class focused and there weren’t any significant minority characters earlier on, that it inadvertently glamourised Draper etc). People still love it though.
I like Hamm, but he is a bit too American for Bond, haha.
I haven’t caught up with this guy’s work yet, but some of you, especially @talos7 (who has a savvy eye), have touted him.
Nice to see how he transformed into his character.
Leo Suter deserves a screentest. Now I’m not naive, ultimately he may get one and bomb horribly, but there is enough potential in him for EoN to take a look.
I do think the producers will be aware of him and his career
Yeah, I guess daddy won't let him handle real guns. But no need for a water pistol: toy guns often look very close to real ones. We just need a bit of paint and that's it.