Idk about this. New spiderman is black. And has a dad instead of an Aunt. That worked and actually opens up what you can do with the character.
007 is getting a make over.
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I think the fact that Ghostbusters in particular wasn't a good movie had more to do with it not doing well than the fact that they were all women. I thought Ocean's 8 was an okay movie, my issues with it had nothing to do with women being the majority of the cast.
I think I'll choose to wait to see what this movie looks like before judging it. I was hoping that someone other than Daniel Craig would play James Bond - just ready to see someone else in the role.
Bottom line, I look for entertaining movies. The gender of the main characters doesn't bother me.
WTF are you smoking? Having the lead by anything but a white-straight male doesn't mean they are saying being a white straight male is a bad thing. How insecure are you?
To be fair wonder woman should crush the other justice league movies. In the last 40 years (a little longer than my lifetime) how many superman movies and how many batman movies have we had? Thank God that they actually did something different for a change.
And again Wonder woman was always a woman, it's a role written for a woman. It's not a role written for a man where they decided to shoehorn a woman in there for some reason.
People will buy into strong female leads, female heros. That isn't the issue here. It's taking a male character and rebooting it with a woman. That is flipping stupid and actually a sad thing for the whole concept of getting more female leads. Because it's like they couldn't figure out how to write a female character so instead they decided to start taking male characters and making them into women.
If they want to make big steps for strong female leads, do something different. Hunger games was something different. Wonder woman might have existed in comics for more than 50 years but she hasn't existed much on the big screen. We could use more new stuff anyway. 80% of the movies these days are sequels or re-boots. And those have their place but there is too much of it. And freaking Batman gets a reboot every 2 or 3 years. I'm so freaking tired of Batman re-boots. At the very least give batman new stories and just replace the actor without comment like they have James Bond for 50 years.
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The shanken not stirred womanizer has been doing pretty well for them. Why change a formula that works.
Because some 50 years of the same character gets predictable and you run out of fresh situations you can put that character in.
Any good protagonist is proactive, meaning that they drive the action forward. Bond is a legendary character but even he can only drive the action forward in so many new ways. Who he is as a character limits his choices for what he will do.
Which is why after 50 years you need a new character. Because they can make new choices Bond couldn't and be a good proactive protagonist to drive the action forward in new and interesting ways.
The 007 universe needs to be explored beyond Bond. Will this new female lead be able to do this successfully? Jury is still out. But she could be a vehicle to open the 007 universe wide open which makes for richer story telling.
I would have no problem if they made a movie based on the MI6 universe with a woman agent in the lead role. But she can't be 007. 006 would be okay.
Personally I think they need to break free of 007 entirely. Or do some prequel where the original 007 was a woman because that is who the enemies would suspect least.
If all they do is make her the same exact shaken not stirred character, but with tits, then that will be useless, IMO. I want a fresh direction for the franchise.
I think they could have sold a spin-off about a female MI6 agent. But trying to sell a woman as the new bond is crazy and I strongly doubt it will work.
And honestly I don't think predictability is a problem. You could always invent fresh situations, but for it to have lasted this long, people just like the character. Bond has been a reliable franchise for longer than Star Wars.
Meh I think the pre-qual woman bond would be a harder sell.
Women often acted as spies during war time. Problem is that Bond is less a spy and more a man of action. He doesn't provide information to the UK of an enemy nation or organization.
He infiltrates extremely large and impossibly well funded international criminal organizations and brings them down from the inside.
Agreed. The traditional Bond character getting old and stale isn't the issue. The character is a good character and obviously bankable having made 20 movies about him. Hollywood tries too hard to be edgy and looking for an angle to sell. Just write a good story with a good plot and good action, that's it. It will sell.
They are missing an opportunity here as I'm guessing a female James Bond will be rejected because, well, James Bond is not female. But they could have used James Bond 007 as an opportunity to introduce another double zero agent who is female and then could have spun that character off and made an entire series of films based on that new character while also retaining the original James Bond 007 character. Now you have two film franchises instead of one.
The issue is not strong female lead characters. The issue is shoehorning a female into a male character role and retconning that male character in the process. Because that is what the agenda is all about, it's a two part process of not just promoting strong female leads but tearing down traditional male roles.
For todays audience one note predictability is absolutely a problem. Audiences expect way more vastness and detail in their franchises now. Star Wars set the bar, Harry Potter reinforced this bar, and Marvel leapt right over the bar. Even Pixar has created an interconnected universe. Hell, Jumanji has branched out with new protagonists.
With Reddit and other chatrooms fans now dissect their favorite franchises down to their finest details. Movie producers don't have a choice but to introduce new characters to drive new story lines.
007 following this trend seems like the natural progression of things.
I think that's actually what they're doing with Lashana Lynch's character in "No Time to Die". I haven't seen anything that says she's 007, only that she's a 00 agent. It seems like they're using the retired James Bond as a means of introducing this new character. I guess we'll know a lot more in about 3 months or so.
Better idea . . . do movies about Judi Dench's M before she was promoted to the job. Obviously she had to work her way up from somewhere. Maybe it's a similar role to Bond, or maybe it's something a little different. But it's still MI6 so it's unlikely to be something boring. Plus you can mix that in with some '70's and 80's and maybe a little '90's Nostalgia. Character has a time limit because you couldn't just keep rebooting a different actress, but you can get probably at least 5 movies out of that.
Well, yeah, exactly. Expand the world. This isn't expansion, it's retconning the character.
Is Bond still bankable? His last movie was 5 years ago. Granted, Spectre made a killing at the box office, but 5 years in between movies seems like a pretty long drought.
If you look at the timeline, the time between movies is not very consistent with Bond. There are a couple of 4 year gaps, and there is also a 6 year gap in there.
The Bond fan base doesn't just disappear in 5 years and "who the new bond is" makes big news for a reason.
The Bond fan base might eventually go, but now is not that time.
Also I'm not entirely sure that the Bond fan base is comparable to the Marvel, Star Wars or Harry Potter fan bases. I don't necessarily think they feel the need for a large universe. They just want a movie about a British man of action who shoots people and blows things up to take down impossibly well funded international criminal organizations and bangs lots of extremely attractive women in the process.
In fact I might argue that they are more resistant to change than the other film franchises. Imagine the meltdown that would happen if a Bond started liking his Martini's stirred. The meltdown if Bond where gay. The meltdown if he actually banged Moneypenny (This hasn't been done has it, again I've only watched a few of the movies.)
This is even though it's basically acknowledged that James Bond and the 007 title are just things that pass from person to person, they still want each and every James Bond to be pretty much the same guy.
I don't think you can draw the comparison between them and Harry Potter fans.
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There were all kinds of original movies coming out of Hollywood in 2019. However, the blockbusters have been remakes and sequels because that's apparently what the general public is clamoring for. We got Ford vs Ferrari, Parasite, Uncut Gems, Knives Out, Us, Transit, Ad Astra, Midsommar, The Peanut Butter Falcon and 1917 just to name a few. They all did far worse than remakes and sequels like Endgame, The Lion King, Toy Story 4, Captain Marvel, Star Wars, Aladdin, and Joker. Just look at the domestic box office for 2019:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2019/
Just a bunch of junk.
Is she going to be seducing a string of studs in speedos or will they make her a lesbian to keep the Bond girl tradition? Maybe both? ...at the same time?
The fan base doesn't disappear, but only putting out a movie every 5 years is certainly a good way to limit how much money the studio can make.
It's inconsistent. Sometimes it's every 2 years than they have some longer gaps in there. There was a 6 year gap once between '89 and 95.
Not sure it is a sign of respect to simply remake a movie or character with new and improved female leads doing essentially everything a man has done before except not better.
There are plenty of stories out there and to be made that are original and have strong female leads. How is it empowering to try and fill the shoes of Dan Akroyd or Sean Connery in their signature roles? No matter how well you do the comparison will always hang over you. If you remake a song from the Beatles you better nail it but even if you do....you are not the Beatles.
Is there some sort of impossible hurdle to actually write an original screenplay about a female spy? Seems to me there would be plenty of real life examples to pull from.
There are plenty of stories out there and to be made that are original and have strong female leads. How is it empowering to try and fill the shoes of Dan Akroyd or Sean Connery in their signature roles? No matter how well you do the comparison will always hang over you. If you remake a song from the Beatles you better nail it but even if you do....you are not the Beatles.
Is there some sort of impossible hurdle to actually write an original screenplay about a female spy? Seems to me there would be plenty of real life examples to pull from.
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