It’s enough to make you sigh, pinch the bridge of your nose between forefinger and thumb, and then just say to hell with it and end the franchise altogether. Seriously, why in the world does 007 need to be a woman now? Can’t there be a new spy coming up in the agency, who is a woman, that is there to take over for Bond? Can’t the 007 tag just be retired and put up in a place of honor like sports teams do? Well if you ask Jon Fuge of MovieWeb you’ll see that Pierce Brosnan, a former 007, is all for a woman taking over the position of the famed spy, but also taking over the designation. When it comes to the word of the people versus the word of the director and creator it’s kind of obvious who’s going to win, but regardless if that many people want to see a female 007 it would almost seem that it might change the game so much that it would no longer be feasible to think of it as even being related to Bond any longer.
It’s not wrong to state that some characters need to remain as they have been for so long, as a good example is that you don’t see horror monsters like Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger being gender-swapped. You don’t see anyone in the MCU being gender-swapped, and in fact there are only a few movies where the gender-swap seems to even work. Amanda Mannen of Cracked makes several good points as to why gender-swapping in movies just doesn’t work as well, but one of the best is that instead of proving that a woman’s story can be equally as entertaining as a man’s, show business is taking what was a story based on men and is handing it over to women almost as a secondhand item, almost like the scraps that someone is done with and therefore can let go of. That might seem like a poor analogy since it seems to state that women can’t handle their own stories, but so far there have been a few flops that back this up, such as Ghostbusters and Ocean’s 8. Remember how poorly those seemed to do with the fans? It’d be a shame if Bond was to fall down that particular pot hole and have to dig its way back up again.
Women can play strong roles, they can star in action movies, and they can do just about anything a man can when it comes to acting save for a few biological processes, but we won’t get into that since it might spark an argument that would run off on its own accord and never come back. In the movies, women are about as equal as it gets with the material they’ve been given to work with apart from men. Captain Marvel is a good example, Atomic Blonde was another one, and there many others if one cares to look around to see just how many there really are when it comes to movies featuring women in strong leading roles. Making 007 into a woman is something that a lot of people are railing against and it’s hard to know which side of the line to stand on, but it is advisable to leave the designation aside and simply let a woman step into the role that Bond has held for so long, with her own designation.
Holly Thomas of CNN has her own take on this as well since she seems to think that it would be better for a woman to come in and take over the role in her own way rather than be handed the title, which would thereby make the next hero in this franchise someone that is entirely original as Bond was back in the day. It’s an argument that makes sense one moment and then seems to derail the next as counterarguments are made again and again for keeping Bond as the same individual he’s always been. One main reason for this argument has to be the resistance to change since otherwise it wouldn’t make any real sense. Women have already proven that they can be every bit as great in the hero role as men and have been slowly taking their place, not having it handed to them, as the movies have continued to roll out. A female Bond isn’t exactly what we need, but a female spy, which has been done before, could possibly take people by surprise and, if she’s good enough at the job, could perhaps even gain their support. In any case this argument is usually made pointless by the time the movie hits the screen anyway since like it or not, we can jaw and we can chew at each other all day and night, but the director is going to do what they feel is right and whether we like it or not their word is bound to be final.
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