Here's the latest trailer for No Time To Die, which seems to be derivative of earlier Bond movies, as well as the Mission Impossible films. Yet another example of Bond following, rather than leading. It's all gone a bit pc when the new 007 is a black woman (and it wouldn't surprise me if she's also a lesbian), because, as we all know, there are attempts afoot to programme us all into accepting that women can do everything that men can do. And vice versa - except for having babies and menstruating of course (but at least we can catch man-flu and they can't).
Personally, I didn't see anything wrong with the old idea that men could be good at some things and women other things, with a bit of meeting in the middle, but under the new religion of 'equality'*, diversity, and inclusivity (for the sole purpose of enabling those with an inferiority complex to feel good about themselves), traditional outlooks are being jettisoned faster than a fart from The Flash! (*What some people fail to realise is that 'difference' doesn't necessarily mean inequality. An apple is still a piece of fruit despite not being an orange.)
Personally, I didn't see anything wrong with the old idea that men could be good at some things and women other things, with a bit of meeting in the middle, but under the new religion of 'equality'*, diversity, and inclusivity (for the sole purpose of enabling those with an inferiority complex to feel good about themselves), traditional outlooks are being jettisoned faster than a fart from The Flash! (*What some people fail to realise is that 'difference' doesn't necessarily mean inequality. An apple is still a piece of fruit despite not being an orange.)
Let's just hope the movie is worth the entrance fee, because there's only one stunt in the entire trailer that stands out - and even then it's based on a scene in The Great Escape with Steve McQueen (or his stunt man). Right up to date, eh?
10 comments:
Black woman. Lesbian that would be correct. They will want to keep the Bond girl. Sigh another for the dustbin. The way things are going all that will be watchable will become .. eg .The life of a worm.
If this one's a clunker, LH, with Bond the butt of jokes at the hands of 'wummin', then I'm giving up on it. However, I'm kind of hoping that Craig is allowed to go out on a high.
This is a clever move to answer those wanting a female 007, thinking they were getting the main character. It’s like that American who bought London Bridge thinking they were getting Tower Bridge.
Could be right, CN, but I'm unsure as to whether it's maybe meant to take the p*ss out of them or the rest of us. We'll find out I suppose when we finally see the movie. I fear the worst while hoping for the best.
First, it was thought by many that In Day Another Day, Halle Berry would be the next female “secret agent” buy the production company has to much to do with just the James Bond franchise.
The five chapter , Daniel Craig Series, which takes place over 15-20 years (in real life it’s 15 years, but in the movies it’s a bit longer) shows an aging Bond. In the book Moonraker, Bond says that 00s are 35-45 years old. So we ae seeing Bond retired. (This was part of the plot in “Never Say Never Again.”
Now this is fiction. We have not seen the movie. Can we have a female 00? Sure, why not. It’s fiction so, as the Black Widow, a former Russian spy does, she can probably outfight anyone.
The Bond movies stopped innovating after their first decade or so. And they did become a bit formula as they repeated themselves. Mission Impossible the TV show was unique and well written. M.I. the movies have tried to make Tom Cruise into James Bond so they will look alike.
Kid, movies are made not just to “please” people but to make money. If diversifying brings in a bigger audience, great, it means there will be more movies.
Bit let us be honest, Bond movies do well, although some movies do better than others. And the real villain here is the virus. Will that be Bond;s biggest adversary: people scared to go to the movies?
I believe the plan was to spin-off Halle in her own series of movies, BP, but it never happened for whatever reason. As for a female 007, as a (temporary) plot device, I don't really have a problem with it as such. It's the timing that's the problem. Men are constantly under attack these days, accused of being part of a culture of 'toxic masculinity' and basically being made to feel that they should be ashamed for being men. Much in the same way that white people are under attack for being white, and that they're all mainly responsible for every problem or hardship that every black person (or people of any ethnic origin) has ever experienced.
So it's mainly the agenda that irks me, as it's based on a false or distorted premise from the start - that all men are part of a culture that has subjugated, dominated, exploited, and humiliated women as a group since time immemorial and that it's still going on today. It's really too big a subject to go into in one response, but the point I'm making is that all men aren't the sole villains when it comes to every bad thing that's ever happened to women. Take prostitution for example. It's debatable (because its roots are lost in the mists of time) whether the 'oldest profession' was invented by a male or a female, but many prostitutes enjoy their job, enjoy what they see as the freedoms and 'luxuries' it brings, though obviously there are also many who feel they have no option but to go down that road, just to survive. However, to quite a number of women, it's a choice, and one that they make themselves with no coercion from men. (And of course, there are cases where the opposite holds true.)
The point I'm trying to get at is that we don't need to be spoon-fed woke 'morality' by a tiny minority who want to remake the world in their own image and have the rest of us bow down to it. I just find the whole routine extremely tedious. Modesty Blaise has been around for decades and I don't know why that hasn't been made into a big-screen movie franchise yet. There's also Honey West and April Dancer, so the idea that women have never been catered to is nonsense.
The Bond movies set the pattern for what followed, but now seem to be trailing in the wake of what they helped create. Indiana Jones, Jason Bourne, and Ethan Hunt have all been in far more entertaining and original films than Bond has been in over the last few years, and the Bond producers are reduced to recycling stunts that have all been done before (and better) in other movies. Isn't it odd that the first four Bond films were made within a year of one another, and that three of them are probably the best of the entire bunch, whereas now that there are several years between them, despite there being some good moments, overall they're disappointing.
Great comment, BP, as it made me think - even if I've not conveyed my thoughts in an entirely coherent or articulate way.
And I should perhaps add that I'm not a supporter of the idea of prostitution - I think the world would be a better place without it. All I was trying to say is that I don't think the fact it exists is solely the fault of men. Is the 'addict' worse than the 'dealer'. It's a difficult call to make, but all men seem to get the blame for it.
What happened to the Halle movies was simple: EON productions is a very small company that has to raise funds to produce every movie. They just couldn’t raise money and produce (meaning write and film) a second series. Simple as that.
Bond movies are made to sell tickets, that’s all. Political discussions about prostitution and such are not relevant for me to address.
Times change. Bond no longer smokes, for example, and he smoked like a chimney in his beginnings. Gay people are no automatically villains who also need to be cured. Women and Black people, for the first 45 years of Bond (in the books and movies) held no important role in government. Gosh there is a long list of how the world has changed since 1950 and yes, a lot of that is reflected on the screen.
“Indiana Jones, Jason Bourne, and Ethan Hunt have all been in far more entertaining and original films than Bond has been in over the last few years.” I don’t really see it that way, Kid.
The first Raiders was certainly a great film, ands ironically for this discussion, the one with Sean Connery was also good. Not so the other two which, in your words, “reduced to recycling stunts that have all been done before.” The same for the Bourne and Mission Impossible movies. The Bourne movies reused the basic plot to boredom and I think it was the last one, was terrible. (The without Bourne). I am bored by the Mission movies because you know, like Bond, he will always escape.
Honey West and April Dancer were TV shows that were terribly made and neither went more than a year. They were not movies. But female detectives on TV in the 1960s and 1970s were rare. Even many of the super-hero movies starring women have been bad: The original Supergirl, Electra and Catwoman. Nowdays Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman have been darn good. Do you get the Suprgirl TV show in Great Britain?
Well, it's perhaps not quite that simple, Barry. Apparently, MGM would have been covering the cost of any spin-off series, and they didn't want to risk spending money on financing a movie featuring a character from a Bond film that was widely derided at the time. Eon were said to be furious at their decision. And although Eon Productions is a 'small' company, they signed a deal with Columbia Pictures in 2008 to develop 15 movies (outside of the Bond franchise) with budgets of up to £40 million each.
And while it's true that Bond movies are made in the hope of making money, that doesn't mean that 'political' views or societal agendas don't come into play as well, if it's thought that more profits will result. (And also because the motives of the studios are not necessarily the same as that of the writers.) That's why the female writer of a TV series called Fleabag was drafted in to work on the script of No Time To Die, because, sure, they wanted to appeal more to a female audience, but also they wanted to tap into the sentiment of the 'Me Too' movement in an attempt to address criticism of Bond's 'toxic masculinity'. I like to think that I can see beyond the obvious in some matters, BP.
I can quite understand why you wouldn't want to talk about prostitution, but the only reason I mentioned it is because the Bond producers are aware of how some people consider Bond a 'sexist, misogynist dinosaur' and men in general as being mainly responsible for all of society's ills, especially ills that affect women. In recent years there have been serious calls to make Bond black, female, bisexual, and probably a whole host of other things. The introduction of a black, female 007 at this time is therefore surely no coincidence, but whether it's to mock such demands or cater to them (even temporarily) won't be clear 'til we see the movie. However, the subject of whether men are mainly responsible for all of society's ills (of which prostitution is one) is very much relevant I'd say, and it's in that context I addressed the issue, using prostitution as an example to show that things are more complex than that.
As for the Jones, Bourne, and Hunt movies, I wasn't really thinking of the plots, I was mainly thinking of the stunts. Even in that relatively short trailer for No Time To Die, I can see one which is based on a scene from one of the MI movies. It's a sad day when Bond films copy, rather than innovate.
The quality of the TV series of Honey West and April Dancer (or anyone else) isn't the point I was trying to make; it was that there are already female characters that movie franchises could be built around, so the notion that women have been ignored (because they were women) isn't quite accurate. Like you said earlier (and this time it more aptly applies), it was because, back then, nobody could detect a potential profit from doing such movies. Remember also, that many male superhero TV shows and movies have been terrible and of poor quality in relation to the big blockbuster movies with multi-million pound budgets of the day. (And even some in the latter category were crap.)
I think we get Supergirl in Britain, BP, but I haven't seen it. I don't really watch a lot of TV these days.
P.S. Re-reading your first paragraph, BP, I may have misunderstood what you were saying. It sounded like you meant that Eon is a penny-ante outfit who didn't have the money, the time, or the facilities to do other movies outside of the Bond franchise. However, they've done other movies before (in the '60s) outside of Bond, and are currently planning to do more, so that's not the case.
I assume now that what you were actually saying is that MGM wouldn't finance a spin-off series. However, there's still talk doing the rounds that a Jinx movie may yet be on the cards, though it's not known whether it would star Halle Berry. Maybe that's where this new 007 comes in, eh? We shall see.
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