James Bond

Use Elba as 006 and mentor of 007 and play with the expectations as if he's a villainous reboot Alec Trevelyan or not.

Edited by dcutter2 on Nov 30th 2022 at 9:12:15 AM

Wait till someone suggests a Frenchman!

Jean Dujardin looks like he could fit right into the Bond universe.

Edited by Redmess on Nov 30th 2022 at 10:25:38 AM

Yeah, I could totally see him as playing a Felix Leiter/Kerim Bey type "agent from another country who is friendly with Bond".

I mean, he basically played Bond already.

I don't really see Bond as representing British Imperialism or Colonialism. He is very much rooted in Cold War politics, a guy who doesn't exist sabotaging enemy operations while maintaining Plausible Deniability. As early as Goldfinger had him dealing with private, isolated individuals with evil plans. As mentioned he has generally been very respectful to the locals, usually trying to protect them against an evil foreigner. He's trying to save lives and punish a bad guy, not further Englands personal agendas.

Edited by EmeraldSource on Nov 30th 2022 at 2:03:29 AM

Yeah, I'm not quite sure how he is supposed to be imperialist either.

I mean, in the books, Bond is a raging racist, misogynist moron fighting against the "evil Reds" for God, Queen, and Country, it's impossible to disassociate it from the political and social context of British imperialism's massive decline after WWII and the rise of Pax Americana. By 1956, the British Empire was basically dead in its old form after the humiliation of the Suez Crisis. James Bond in the books is a power fantasy for the old generation.

Edited by Diana1969 on Nov 30th 2022 at 4:35:04 AM

Oh, I see, I haven't read the books.

there were books?(most people haven't read the books,I'd go as far as to say the films have eclipsed them completely)

Edited by Ultimatum on Nov 30th 2022 at 11:03:55 AM

That happens a lot with older books, actually. Especially with books that became classic Hollywood fare, like Dracula and Frankenstein.

There is certainly some subtext there, as the Cold War was an evolution of Imperialism and Colonialism in the modern age, and Bond is usually written as a product of his time rather than ahead of it. It's more fighting a losing battle as the world is moving on, something that became heightened in the movies with Goldeneye because it was the first post-Cold War Bond film.

I think that would technically qualify it as postcolonialism, but yes, I think you're right.

I feel like working for MI 6 makes Bond an imperialist/postcolonialist figure by default since his functon is being a cog in the wheel that keeps UK interests/power intact overseas, a la the CIA facilitating government overthrows so they can place US friendly leaders/autocrats in power for their own benefit.

But that might just be my leftist lizard brain ^^

I mean these days, Bond fight over the top supervillains and terror threats rather than assassinating foreign political figures arguing for peaceful and fair treatment.

That might be an interesting idea actually. Make Bond a villain protagonist of sorts. Have a series of movies where goes from doing MI 6's dirty work to questioning his ethics to trying do the right thing/working against MI 6. Whether he's successful or no depends on how cynical the filmmaker/scriptwriter is/are.

Yeah, the one that came close as a political assassination was Dr Kananga in Live and Let Die... and mainly due to being the mastermind of the drug trade.

One reason I prefer the more over-the-top superhero-y iterations of the character, who go to space and fight cackling world-destroying supervillains. Having him be more grounded just kind of drags these sorts of questions to the forefront and highlights how dated the character is, conceptually. Not that it's not worth examining these sorts of things, mind you, but I don't fully trust a multimillion-dollar-budget mainstream blockbuster to do a remotely adequate job of that, colonialism and capitalism being as intertwined as they are.

But the supervillains are three-quarters of the fun of any good Bond movie! How could you ever take that out and still be James Bond.

Whether the gritty/serious Bond films or the goofy/over-the-top Bond films, the bad guys are almost exclusively crime syndicates looking to turn a profit. Even when the books had Bond explicitly fighting the Soviets (such as From Russia with Love), the films retooled it into fighting the apolitical SPECTRE.

I don't see what's inherently dated or problematic about the British government having someone investigate organized crime.

It also struck me that there's a surprisingly large number of evil technocrat or more recently techbro villains, including Christopher Walken's Trumplica character, the Murdochesque villain of Tomorrow Never Dies, and basically all of the villains of the Daniel Craig movies.

That probably just comes with the territory of building superweapons and such.

Would we get populist villains next?

Depends on the issues I guess?

At least as a side villain who would benefit from the main villain's plan, like with C and Blofeld.

Hmm, a populist villain would not mesh well with the kind of secrecy that usually comes with Bond villains. Those are generally work in the shadows types, and not really the kind who try to get public support for their evil schemes.

Of course they could be a populist who also happens to secretly be a supervillain, but that would seem rather incidental.

I think with an actual populist villain, you'd move more into the territory of dictators and such.

Another issue is that Bond then would have to deal with, well, the populace backing the villain. And he's not that kind of hero. Bond works best with small criminal organizations and megalomaniac solo acts, not so much with significant portions of entire countries backing a villain.