It was Bond... James Bond.
The next James Bond films will have bigger roles for women and a more sensitive 007, according to the producers, who said "Bond is evolving just as men are evolving".
Barbara Broccoli said that the next actor to take the role will continue the work of Daniel Craig, who "cracked Bond open emotionally".
Look, Daniel Craig epitomized Bond. The weird sci-fi plot of Craig's last film No Time To Die aside, turning Bond into a man who fiercely protects his family did not take away from his character (something Skyfall also showed profoundly well).
On the contrary, it was the culmination of the character, even if it strayed from the books (one of the only time in movie adaptations such a thing has happened). In Ian Fleming's debut Bond novel Casino Royale, Bond fell in love with the character Vesper only to find out she was a double agent who was being blackmailed against her will. Scorned, he cut himself off from trust and love and buried himself in business and pleasure.
In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond finally learned to love again, marrying Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo before big baddie Ernst Blofeld assassinated her, shattering Bond's heart all over. Fleming showed a deeply emotional Bond in his novel that George Lazenby did a superb job of emulating in the film.
At the core, Bond is a symbol of shattered manhood – one that men deeply understand.
He is suave, bold, dangerous, and mission-focused. And yet he is vain, isolated, and easily led astray by beautiful women into traps.
He is also in pain.
Men want the first set of the above characteristics, but they know that they have vices and shortcomings just like Bond that cause them pain as well. It is this haunting mix of duty and beauty and torment that makes Bond such a relatable character despite his high-class, extravagant lifestyle. Flawed heroes let us see ourselves in them.
In No Time To Die, Craig explored both extremes of Bond. In the beginning, he is at his lowest point, abandoning new love Madeleine Swann at the first hint that she might betray him without even letting her tell him that she's carrying his child. It takes the British government years to find him after presuming him dead.
When the time comes to choose his legacy, however, Bond risks everything to save Swann and his daughter (and the planet) from an insane villain who wants to unleash a horrid new technology that could kill billions. He sacrifices himself in a blaze of glory that any man would consider a fitting end.
It stuck the landing, but even that version of Bond flirted with wokeness.
Director Cary Fukunaga said that Sean Connery's version of Bond was "basically a rapist" in a 2021 comment.
Before Craig, Dame Judy Dench's character "M" opined to Pierce Brosnan's Bond that he was "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur."
Suffice to say, the film producers in the Broccoli family that have overseen the Bond films have struggled for a long time with how to handle the character. It is difficult to figure out how to take Bond from the flawed hero he is and give him masculine character development when you reject the very premise of "masculine" and "feminine" themselves, or even the notion of objective right and wrong, for that matter.
Asked by Variety magazine if those qualities would continue in the next film, Broccoli agreed. "It's an evolution. Bond is evolving just as men are evolving. I don't know who's evolving at a faster pace," she said.
Broccoli is director of the UK chapter of Time's Up, which describes itself as "an independent, intersectional organisation focused on rooting out sexual harassment at its source: the power imbalance that leaves women unequal in every industry".
Men are not "evolving," nor are women. We are human. Our nature is fixed. We are not becoming more "civilized" or "tolerant" any more than we have in ages past.
Humanity's sins won't be solved by rejecting true masculinity in favor of a softened, effeminate superspy. It won't be solved through intersectional Marxist hierarchy, either (isn't it interesting that Bond used to fight communist ideology and now he is coming to embody it?).
It is not a matter of evolving into a new nature, but redeeming our nature as we were meant to be. In Christian teaching, this comes only by being regenerated into a new man by Jesus Christ. When we see male characters learn what it means to be real men as God intended – not this shallow, toxic child's play that masquerades as masculine toughness – we see a glimpse of that and begin to conduct ourselves thusly.
The same is not true when we see a man simply give up his masculinity because he considers manhood to be evil. Watching a man go effeminate is the surest way to have every man abandon all interest in your character.
She and Michael G Wilson, her fellow producer and half-sibling, said it was "early days" in the search for the next actor to play Bond.
I'm sure they'll find a nice woman with a deep voice to play the next Bond.
Rest in peace, Commander Bond. You died young, but at a fitting time. Since Fleming's first novel in 1953, Bond has only ever served one Queen, and now that she has passed, it seems the true Bond will pass into history with her.
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