CASTING A FEMALE 007 IN ‘BOND 25’ HAS LEFT THE INTERNET SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED
▶ Chris Newbould explains why fans do not need to be upset by Lashana Lynch’s role in the film
To say the internet went into meltdown after the revelation that black British actress and Captain Marvel star Lashana Lynch is set to play 007 in Bond 25 would be something of an understatement. A trawl through Twitter to find representative opinions provided plenty of comments, but few that could be published in a newspaper. Let’s just say feelings were strong on both sides of the debate.
The media was in on the anger, too. A headline in the UK’s Daily Telegraph read: “Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s black, female 007 shows the new Bond will display the worst kind of virtue signalling”, while American news website The Raw Story caught the mood perfectly with its headline: “White dudes flip out over casting of a black woman as next Agent 007.”
We can’t help but think everyone should calm down. What many opponents of the “black female Bond” concept seem to have overlooked in the course of their online ranting is that Lynch will not play James Bond. Daniel Craig will, as usual. Lynch will be 007. That’s Bond’s assigned MI6 code number, not his name.
Given Bond was last seen quitting MI6 and driving off into the sunset with Madeleine Swann at the end of 2015’s Spectre, it seems perfectly reasonable that the British Secret Intelligence Service could have found a replacement 007 by now. It really makes little difference to the story whether that replacement is black or white, male or female.
What will be interesting is Bond’s response to his replacement, and how this fits into the narrative. Remember, there have been many 007s and James Bond wasn’t even the first. The Bond novels expand beyond Ian Fleming’s original 14 books to works commissioned by his estate after the author’s death in
1964, beginning with Kingsley Amis’s Colonel Sun in 1968.
The writer currently carrying the Bond torch is Anthony Horowitz, and the first line of his 2018 novel Forever and a
Day is “007 is dead”. Horowitz doesn’t mean Bond, though.
Forever and a Day is a prequel to the events of Casino Royale, Fleming’s first Bond novel, and follows the agent on his first mission as 007, investigating the death of the man whose “00” designation he has inherited.
The films have also dealt with the notion that the “00” prefix isn’t fixed to one person. Agent 002, otherwise known as Bill Fairbanks, is killed by Scaramanga in 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun, at a cabaret venue in Beirut in the preamble to that movie. Fast forward to 1987’s
The Living Daylights and a new 002 is one of three agents, alongside 007 and 004, sent on a training mission to Gibraltar.
Agent 009, meanwhile, is killed in 1983’s Octopussy.
But the agent is replaced by a new 009 who launches a failed assassination attempt on the villain in 1999’s The World
is Not Enough, former KGB agent Renard. And 009 is also named as the intended recipient of Bond’s flashy Aston Martin DB10 in Spectre.
We’ve seen female “00” agents on screen before, including in MI6 briefings in both Thunderball and The World is Not Enough, so there’s really nothing new about this notion, and Bond hasn’t always been 007 himself. In both Licence to Kill and Skyfall Bond is not even an active MI6 agent at the start of the movies, in the former following a resignation and in the latter after faking his death. In both movies, his place as 007 hadn’t been filled and he ended up reclaiming his title. It looks as though that could be trickier this time, should he even wish to. Following the example of Dr
Who, who took on his/her first female persona in the form of Jodie Whittaker’s Dr in 2018, there has been immense pressure for fellow British national treasure Bond to follow suit.
Long-term producer Barbara Broccoli has always maintained that there will never be a female Bond, however. It may be controversial to say so, but she has a point. The Dr is a shape-shifting immortal alien who can take on any form. James Bond is a suave, slightly thuggish, highly sexist man – definitely a man.
By introducing a non-white female into Bond’s vacated role, Broccoli and co have met both sides of the debate in the middle (and by one side, we don’t mean the racist misogynists are who are complaining now but the fans who believe Bond’s character should remain male).
Even Bond 25 co-writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was brought on board specifically to give the film a slightly less “blokey” feel, has rubbished the idea of a female Bond, saying “the important thing is that the film treats the women properly. He doesn’t have to. He needs to be true to this character”.
The producers have perhaps brought some of the confusion on themselves by using 007 and Bond so interchangeably in the franchise’s marketing historically. But let’s all take a deep breath, relax and look forward to seeing how Bond himself reacts to this younger agent stepping into his shoes. It’s a safe bet there will be fireworks.