I said elsewhere that I didn't understand the fuss about Cavill, but then I saw him play Sherlock (in a minor role) in Enola Holmes on Netflix and it clicked for me.
Agree - the Bathroom fight alone in MI5 showed he could convincingly kick ass. And in (the underrated imo) U.N.C.L.E. he conveyed range and the wry humor that could easily translate into a credible and dynamic 007. Cavill has not been well served by the scripts or direction of his Superman in the JLA universe. He's much better than that.
Personally would be interested in seeing Clive Owen take a crack at Bond versus Cavill. Cavill is definitely a modern Bond pick, but I've just had Owen in mind for years. Though Owen would likely have to keep from falling into Timothy Dalton's Shakesphearean feel. Anyone agree/disagree about Clive?
Why don’t they reboot Miss Marple or Nancy Drew for the big screen with a big budget? Because nobody cares… nobody would go see that. So what does the WOKE agenda do? They force popular male characters to be de-masculated into female characters and then two movies into the franchise when it loses money everyone says those characters are dated… it’s just dumb. If the Woke crowds want a strong female character, either make a movie with a new character or rebrand an old one. Don’t just ruin a franchise. Look at Star Wars. Destroy everyone’s favorite characters and replace them with females nobody cares about and 2 movies in people start to drift and not care about the franchise. Did they make money.. sure, on the laurels of previous movies, but as soon as your two movies in people are checking out. It’s just so jacked up. Bond is a dude. He likes women.. change that and it’s not Bond. You can destroy the character by putting it in a skirt with whatever skin color you like… but a movie or two in, everyone is gonna wonder who this character is… and why do we care? Don’t ruin Bond too.
You answered your own question there. The same people that say "stop inserting women into our manly movies" also don't go to see films with women in the lead unless they're half-dressed. Are those people also the majority? God, I hope not.
Or they don't go to see movies that aren't good. Just because a film has a female lead doesn't mean it's automatically worth my time.
Let’s stay friendly but look at the facts. A Long Kiss Goodnight was a great movie with a tough female spy. I love that movie and I’d go see something like that again. She wasn’t half dressed. She was just tough. It was cool. Build a franchise on that, reboot it. It’s rare though that I think of women being physically tough. I see them as equal people but “usually” strong in other ways. Men by nature usually have bigger, thicker bones. They are usually stronger. It’s not chauvinist or being jerky, it’s just how we are. There are exceptions of course. When I think tough action movie, it’s not often I think of a female lead… Being male, tough action is cool to me. I gravitate to that and like hero’s I can relate to. It’s not my fault the majority of women out there are not as interested in action movies as I am. Funny I don’t see WOKE agenda executives going after all the chicflix’s trying to put action in them with explosions and car chases… why? The audience wants the feel good story that they can relate to. They DO NOT gravitate toward action. But men are wrong because they do? If Wokies are so bent about the popularity of male action characters.. how come they aren’t demanding, forcing and manipulating all the chick flic movie characters to be tougher and hold a gun? Fried Green Grenades, Legally Blonde Spy, Terms of Endearment Force, Traveling Pants of Death… Just doesn’t work.
I think Angelina and Charlize have been credible as female action leads. Remember, Halle Berry almost got a Jinx spin-off from Die Another Day. I think the Broccolis always wanted to do it, but MGM backed off. A Bond spin-off makes sense. The series has been around a long time to have never had a spin-off. Halle Berry’s Bond Spinoff Was Killed Over Budget Fears, Enraging 007 Producer
But the real life M was a woman at the time Judi Dench was cast. Meet the real life 'M': Life after MI5 | ITV News Dame Stella's views on Bond: BBC Four - Al Murray's Great British Spy Movies, The 007 Legacy
Nope, looks like she retired in '96, long before Dench was cast, to become a novelist, according to your own link. And if she was working in MI5 when I visited London and nearly got blown up by the IRA at a bandstand on July 20, 1982, I wish she did a better job!
Dame Judi was cast in 1995 while Dame Stella was still in post. Stella Rimington was in post 1992 - 1996 (at least to public knowledge). Goldeneye was the first Bond movie to be made while she was head of MI6, and so the first opportunity to portray a female M. Of course Stella Rimington's name is a fairly neat inverse of Remington Steel - the spy that Pierce Brosnan played on TV from 1982 to 1987. Such a neat inverse I could almost believe she made it up! (Conspiracy theorists can chime in if they wish). Next time your coming to London, please notify the security services in advance so that they can arrange a more appropriate experience for you.
Also M is not the same person from movie to movie, it's a job title - there is a succsession of M's (the M in Octopussy had previously appeared as an Admiral in The Spy Who Loved Me - becoming M is a natural career progression for him). The handover was made even more explicit in Skyfall. So changing gender or race for M works with the changing times, the changing attitude of M can reflect modern foreign policy. But Bond is meant to be the same person from movie to movie, changing by increments, but staying broadly the same as the world changes from decade to decade.
Yeah, understood. But if we want a more faithful read/interpretation of Fleming, we get the traditional male roles for Bond and M. That's all we're asking for and I don't think it's too much to ask, although I did enjoy Dench in the role. I enjoy Fiennes more. If they want James to be a lady or represent some other demographic, they can kindly start a new franchise and I wish them lots'o luck.
M (James Bond) - Wikipedia There is reason for thinking that a more telling lead to the real identity of M lies in the fact that as a boy Fleming often called his mother M. ... While Fleming was young, his mother was certainly one of the few people he was frightened of, and her sternness toward him, her unexplained demands, and her remorseless insistence on success find a curious and constant echo in the way M handles that hard-ridden, hard-killing agent, 007. John Pearson, The Life of Ian Fleming[6] also Macintyre wrote that in his study of Fleming's work, Kingsley Amis outlined the way Fleming had described M's voice, being: angry (three times); brutal, cold (seven times); curt, dry (five times); gruff (seven times); stern, testy (five times).[10] I think Dame Judi's M fits the bill.
That's fascinating dime-store psychology but at the time Fleming wrote his books, the idea of a female M was a complete nonstarter and anyone who grew up in the '50s and '60s knows it. I'm not a fan of revisionism, but the Craig era certainly calls for an update. I enjoyed Dench in the role and don't object to Dench as M -- nowhere near as staunchly as I'd object to a female Bond. But maybe what the next reboot needs rather than dragging us further away from the original character is a more faithful period-piece Mad Men style approach.
I think my point is that the gender of M doesn't matter nearly as much as getting the character of M right. Dench related to Bond just as severely as Bernard Lee, the original movie M, and Fiennes is carrying on in the same vein. Apart from the more laid back Robert Brown M/Admiral Hargreaves character, I don't think they've strayed far from the relationship in the novels. My main objection to Dench's M is that she was out of the office and ankle deep in field work far too much for a person whose job is to be the face and defender of the service in Whitehall. But that's down to the writers, directors and producers, not the actor.
Holy crap, that would be awesome. A state-of-the-art action/spy thriller set in the original cold-war era with precision attention to period details would make for an amazing Bond film today.
Any time I've mentioned that idea of a period Bond piece somewhere it gets a lot of support. I think the Broccolis need to put their finger in the wind and pick up on this idea.
They'd need someone to approach the Broccolis in the right way. Work up the idea into a script first draft and have a good elevator pitch, hopefully with a lead actor or director attached, and support from Sony or another studio. No easy feat. But much preferred to the alternative. I cringe to think where 007 is headed in these times.
Tarantino has always wanted to direct a Bond film, and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was a pretty great period piece...
James Bond: Why Quentin Tarantino's 007 Movie Never Got Made Why Quentin Tarantino’s James Bond film never got made According to the Toronto Sun, Brosnan said “It was after Kill Bill Vol. 2, and he wanted to meet me Brosnan recalled Tarantino complimented him highly. “He was pounding the table, saying you’re the best James Bond, I wanna do James Bond, and it was very close quarters in the restaurant and I thought, please calm down, but we don’t tell Quentin Tarantino to calm down. He wanted to do James Bond, and I went back to the shop and told them but it wasn’t mean to be. No Quentin Tarantino for James Bond.” Although Brosnan told the producers of the Bond franchise — Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson — about what Tarantino had to say. They turned down his offer to direct one of the films. Instead, a new version of Casino Royale would get made without Tarantino in the director’s chair.
