Not that you were, but please, don’t expect a gender-swapped James Bond in the future.
In a new interview with The Guardian, 007 executive producer Barbara Broccoli, who will begin work on the 25th James Bond film early next year, has assured the public that: “Bond is male. He’s a male character. He was written as a male and I think he’ll probably stay as a male. And that’s fine.”
(Also: Barbara Broccoli? She’s certainly got a Bond-esque name, one that would fit in with some of the English spy’s past women heroes—Halle Berry’s Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson, Denise Richards’s Christmas Jones, etc.)
Broccoli continued, “We don’t have to turn male characters into women. Let’s just create more female characters and make the story fit those female characters.” She also conceded that, hello, Bond can’t be considered feminist because of “those early movies.”
“It was written in the 50s, so there’s certain things in [Bond’s] DNA that are probably not gonna change,” Broccoli said, adding, “But look at the way the world has changed. And I think Bond has come through and transformed with the times. I’ve tried to do my part, and I think particularly with the Daniel [Craig] films, they’ve become much more current in terms of the way women are viewed.”
I’d ask how, but attempting a feminist reading of the James Bond filmography seems like a big waste of time.
In February, Rachel Weisz told Telegraph that James Bond creator Ian Fleming wrote Bond one (gross) way, adding, “Why not create your own story rather than jumping on to the shoulders and being compared to all those other male predecessors? Women are really fascinating and interesting and should get their own stories.” I expect this is the point Broccoli was trying to make without accidentally damning the franchise.