Sony leaks reveal wants for Idris for next Bond

jet set willy wrote:

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

a black B***

GS, why do you keep using asterisks when mentioning the above? I'm guessing it is because you cannot bare the idea so much, that you cannot even bring yourself to type the words on screen...?

 

Sort of like when people type G-- for "God"; they either don't believe in the idea or they avoid spelling it out due to tradition or superstition.

The words "black" and "Bond" will never be typed side-by-side by me. They do not go together.

I guess if EON wanted to do a series of 007 movies, but with a character not James Bond (maybe Bond has retired and a new agent has taken over the 007 designation) then it wouldn't technically violate my position, but I think most people that go to see the movies think of 007 and James Bond as the same person. It would be very difficult to separate the two.

Interesting. I sometimes asterix Southampton but then if you'd been there you would.

bitchcraft wrote:

My contention has nothing to do with disliking Elba's acting chops per se - because I don't. Nor does it have anything to do with generation either. I simply don't want Bond "blackwashed" now or ever, by anyone, cuz he ain't black. He's not asian, he's not Mexican, he's not from the Middle East, he's been fictionalised as whitebread from Day 1, end of fucking story.

It would be a total travesty changing his race altogether and I am sickened by those who want to play the race card and use this as an "accomplishment" of sorts, that casting Elba would be an 'absolution' for the Bond franchise.

Like it or not, that is my opinion and it is not negotiable.

Besides...black Bond fans chimed in their 0.02 about Craig being suitable/unsuitable for 007 and if they found him unsuitable then, how could a complete race change be suitable now?

The following is the kind of social morass that EON would find itself in if it were to hire a black actor to play Bond:

Target's Ads for New 'Annie'-Inspired Collection Draw Controversy
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/targets-ads-new-annie-inspired-760742

Target Under Fire For Using White Model In 'Annie' Clothing Ads
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/31/target-annie-ads_n_6400642.html

Hey, Target: Why is Annie a white girl?
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/30/technology/target-annie-black-white/

Earlier in the thread when I suggested that the Bond series would be the target of protests from not just white people, but blacks as well, I got this snarky response from Jack Wade:
Good grief. What evidence do you have that suggests any of this ridiculousness will happen?


Ummm...like the evidence at Change.org? You know: THAT kind of ridiculousness. But the links above are a mere sampling of the kind of self-inflicted hell EON will bring upon itself by changing the race of James Bond, or anything else fundamental about him. The bottom line is this: if you think it will be an "accomplishment" to cast a black B***, you are seriously out of touch with today's cultural landscape. They (whoever "they" are) will never be satisfied with your progressive, good intentions. IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH. A financially significant amount of THE PLANET will resent the change to a black actor and will not only skip the film, but will drop out of fandom altogether. A decent amount of black people will resent being pandered to, or will find the character nothing like anything they've experienced or gone through and won't have anything to do with the film either. The only people supporting the film will be East Coast journalists, ivy-league sociology professors, and television news producers in New York. The rest of the planet will heave a huge sigh and take a pass.

It's these sort of side issues (like the links above) that need to be avoided, but Babs can't help herself. Bond will be mired down in "controversies" left and right, distracting from the film. It's not worth it. If the Bond series isn't good enough as is, then people should go out and create their own superhero and get it funded.

Seems like the Daily Mail commenters aren't too pleased either.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/23/idris-elba-james-bond_n_6371644.html

Idris Elba as James Bond

Sam Smith's 'I know I'm not the only one' as the title song.

FieldsMan wrote:

Seems like the Daily Mail commenters aren't too pleased either.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/23/idris-elba-james-bond_n_6371644.html

The first thing that bothered me about this whole Idris Elba debate was that Amy Paschal(?) even made the comments in the first place. Up to that point, the idea of Elba being Bond was something that I assumed had just been kicked around in the press. Elba would get asked these questions at red carpet premieres and his response would get a minute of airtime on E.T. or Extra, and that would be the extent of it. As I said, I thought it was just a media-driven story, but for Paschal to be on record (even in private email) as being okay with the idea just took it to a whole new level. What it means is that, while Elba won't get the role because he'll be too old for it when it comes around, the mere fact that Pascal is open to the idea means at some point some one at EON or SONY will pull the trigger on such an idea and make it happen.

They could settle all this right now by announcing a spin-off series for Elba as a different 00-agent, but they won't because there's an agenda here, even if the major players don't recognize they're pushing an agenda. The agenda is to change Bond or, at the very least, lower his esteem in the eyes of many; it started with Moneypenny's awful rant about how Bond's behavior could be considered "sexual harassment", and has gone right on through to having M metaphorically castrate Bond, Bond implying to Silva that Bond may not be a stranger to being touched by another man, to now Bond's racial identity being changed.

Any one of those particular elements I could just roll with and it not bother me; but the totality of it all gets harder to ignore. The sexual harassment quips from Moneypenny, having Bond in that awful EQUALS video and wearing a dress, the notion of Bond being portrayed by anybody other than a white male...just seems to smack of political correctness, and it's not hard to tell whose behind it.

I gather a lot of people are sick of this political correctness being pushed on to us; in particular liberals who themselves are getting caught in a trap of political correctness they're partially responsible for making.

This idea is not new.

A black James Bond was pitched as far back as 1993/1994 before Goldeneye when trying to figure out how to make Bond relevant in a post-Cold War world. A black Bond, a woman Bond, and a 60s period piece were all discussed. How serious those discussions were, who knows? But it was talked about.

Several articles that hit the shelves around Goldeneye's release discuss this.

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/ghost-in-the-shell-scarlett-johansson-casting-a-blow-to-diversity/

Scarlet Johansson is cast as a Japanese character in a new film, with fans outraged by the white washing of the character. So if it's not ok to white wash, why is it ok to black wash?

It's not as simple as that.

Quote :

“We’re seeing Hollywood continue the trend of whitewashing roles from source material that features Asian and Asian American leads while failing to provide roles for Asian American actors,”

Hiring a black actor for Bond isn't exactly the same equivalent. It's not as if white actors are finding it harder to get jobs than people of other ethnicities. Plus, we've not only had several white actors play Bond already, but we have Daniel Craig, who is already a deviation from Fleming's description. If we can accept Craig, why not Elba?

FieldsMan wrote:

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/ghost-in-the-shell-scarlett-johansson-casting-a-blow-to-diversity/

Scarlet Johansson is cast as a Japanese character in a new film, with fans outraged by the white washing of the character. So if it's not ok to white wash, why is it ok to black wash?

On a slightly different note....

Margaret Cho was accused of racism for her portrayal of a North Korean General on the Golden Globes last night. Question: if not her, then who? A white actress? Who better to play a Korean than a Korean? It's not like she called them the Rolden Robes or something. I thought she was pretty fun. So was Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

http://deadline.com/2015/01/margaret-cho-golden-globes-racist-north-korea-1201348324/

But back to SONY and Idris Elba. Elba will likely never get the role because of his age, but if he were 10 years younger I'd be a lot more concerned that Amy Rascal and Babs "Coltrane" Broccoli would pull some sort of diversity stunt like this on us and foist a black Bond on an unwilling audience.

To make matters worse, I can imagine Elba's Bond origin story: instead of losing his parents in a skiing accident, his father abandoned the family for a shot at playing in the NBA Europe and the mother, a crack-whore, died in a drive by drug-deal gone bad. Bond is raised by his Uncle Charlie, a cleric in a local Mosque. Uncle Charlie has trouble getting through to Bond; James prefers life on the streets in the 'hood. Much like La Femme Nikita (or the much better remake, POINT OF NO RETURN) after committing a particularly violent and heinous crime, he's recruited into the secret service after being offered a chance to give back to a society from which he's taken so much. It's either work for MI6 or go 6 feet under.

Actually, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. We couuuld do a with a male version of POINT OF NO RETURN, maybe with Elba in the mentor role that Gabrielle Byrne played. Hmmm...I'm kind of liking this idea. It *COULD* work.

Why, having signed a black Bond, would they devise a backstory such as that, that rehearses generalised negative perceptions? Doesn't that just undermine the idea?

If they do it, he'll be Eton-educated and with the same basic character.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

FieldsMan wrote:

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/ghost-in-the-shell-scarlett-johansson-casting-a-blow-to-diversity/

Scarlet Johansson is cast as a Japanese character in a new film, with fans outraged by the white washing of the character. So if it's not ok to white wash, why is it ok to black wash?

On a slightly different note....

Margaret Cho was accused of racism for her portrayal of a North Korean General on the Golden Globes last night. Question: if not her, then who? A white actress? Who better to play a Korean than a Korean? It's not like she called them the Rolden Robes or something. I thought she was pretty fun. So was Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

http://deadline.com/2015/01/margaret-cho-golden-globes-racist-north-korea-1201348324/

But back to SONY and Idris Elba. Elba will likely never get the role because of his age, but if he were 10 years younger I'd be a lot more concerned that Amy Rascal and Babs "Coltrane" Broccoli would pull some sort of diversity stunt like this on us and foist a black Bond on an unwilling audience.

To make matters worse, I can imagine Elba's Bond origin story: instead of losing his parents in a skiing accident, his father abandoned the family for a shot at playing in the NBA Europe and the mother, a crack-whore, died in a drive by drug-deal gone bad. Bond is raised by his Uncle Charlie, a cleric in a local Mosque. Uncle Charlie has trouble getting through to Bond; James prefers life on the streets in the 'hood. Much like La Femme Nikita (or the much better remake, POINT OF NO RETURN) after committing a particularly violent and heinous crime, he's recruited into the secret service after being offered a chance to give back to a society from which he's taken so much. It's either work for MI6 or go 6 feet under.

Actually, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. We couuuld do a with a male version of POINT OF NO RETURN, maybe with Elba in the mentor role that Gabrielle Byrne played. Hmmm...I'm kind of liking this idea. It *COULD* work.

And in which case you could no longer tag the words `Ian Fleming's James Bond' anymore to the film, as this has absolutely nothing to do with his creation whatsoever.....

Makeshift Python wrote:

It's not as simple as that.

Quote :

“We’re seeing Hollywood continue the trend of whitewashing roles from source material that features Asian and Asian American leads while failing to provide roles for Asian American actors,”

Hiring a black actor for Bond isn't exactly the same equivalent. It's not as if white actors are finding it harder to get jobs than people of other ethnicities. Plus, we've not only had several white actors play Bond already, but we have Daniel Craig, who is already a deviation from Fleming's description. If we can accept Craig, why not Elba?

Going over old ground again. There are plenty of posts stating earlier why a black actor is a much further deviation away from Fleming's creation than a white actor with short blonde hair, mainly down to the origins of the character, and the author who wrote him, which is immersed in an old-fashioned, Empire-ruling, upper class, traditional English heritage, Imperial WHITE British character from a different era. A white actor, regardless of hair colour, doesn't deviate away from this 1950's colonial background history.

Changing Bond's roots this dramatically for the sake of modernisation, then you can no longer use the tagline `Ian Fleming's James Bond' anymore, because it simply wouldn't be. You could use instead something like - `a modernised James Bond, inspired by the original character created by Ian Fleming' - but it doesn't have the same ring to it somehow.....

Do we believe, though, that James Bond is a depiction of how white British people live?

Drama should challenge as well as entertain, which means adaptations should be able to go in any direction.

Bond will become far more interesting when Eon's film rights expire. Look at how the Sherlock Holmes universe has expanded now that the character is out of copyright.

Flush wrote:

Do we believe, though, that James Bond is a depiction of how white British people live?

That's a bit of a bizarre question. Bond never lived like the majority of white British people, back when Fleming wrote him in the 1950's, or in the movies over the past 50 years, mainly because of his dangerous job, and his extravagant, upper-class lifestyle and background.

How many white people do you know who go off jet-setting globally first class, killing people, bedding countless women, eating the finest food and drink, while driving around in an Aston Martin.....?

jet set willy wrote:

How many white people do you know who go off jet-setting globally first class, killing people, bedding countless women, eating the finest food and drink, while driving around in an Aston Martin.....?

Well, I don't know Vladimir Putin personally ...

Erica Ambler wrote:

Drama should challenge as well as entertain, which means adaptations should be able to go in any direction.

Bond will become far more interesting when Eon's film rights expire. Look at how the Sherlock Holmes universe has expanded now that the character is out of copyright.

True, adaptations can go in any direction. Unfortunately I am set in my ways, and could only ever see Bond as Fleming wrote him, and all the actors who have played Bond until now have had the main essence of his creation (even Brosnan). A black actor would be a serious deviation away for me.

I understand those who couldn't give a toss about Fleming, and only care for movie Bond will probably never be bothered by Bond changing his skin colour too, as long as the actor is cool, slick, and charismatic, which Elba certainly is.

[quote="Erica Ambler"]

jet set willy wrote:

How many white people do you know who go off jet-setting globally first class, killing people, bedding countless women, eating the finest food and drink, while driving around in an Aston Martin.....?

None. Which tends to suggest the colour of the skin isn't determinative of what James Bond does. That was my point.

Flush wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

jet set willy wrote:

How many white people do you know who go off jet-setting globally first class, killing people, bedding countless women, eating the finest food and drink, while driving around in an Aston Martin.....?

None. Which tends to suggest the colour of the skin isn't determinative of what James Bond does. That was my point.

Have you read the Fleming novels? Do you understand the origins of the character?

Makeshift Python wrote:

It's not as simple as that.

Quote :

“We’re seeing Hollywood continue the trend of whitewashing roles from source material that features Asian and Asian American leads while failing to provide roles for Asian American actors,”

Hiring a black actor for Bond isn't exactly the same equivalent. It's not as if white actors are finding it harder to get jobs than people of other ethnicities.

If casting Elba is only because black actors have more difficulty finding work then someone should create their own series with a black OO agent. There's no point in changing the background of James Bond purely because a certain ethnicity are going through some hard times with work. It's called casting, and actors learn very early on what their casting is. I'm an actor and I know that playing Bond is never gonna happen for me - even if I'm the right age - because I look Italian and am too short. But you'll never see Daniel Craig playing an Italian gangster, or Brad Pitt playing Mandela.

If Idris Elba becomes Bond get ready for Angelina Jolie as his successor.

FieldsMan wrote:

Makeshift Python wrote:

It's not as simple as that.

Quote :

“We’re seeing Hollywood continue the trend of whitewashing roles from source material that features Asian and Asian American leads while failing to provide roles for Asian American actors,”

Hiring a black actor for Bond isn't exactly the same equivalent. It's not as if white actors are finding it harder to get jobs than people of other ethnicities.

If casting Elba is only because black actors have more difficulty finding work then someone should create their own series with a black OO agent. There's no point in changing the background of James Bond purely because a certain ethnicity are going through some hard times with work. It's called casting, and actors learn very early on what their casting is. I'm an actor and I know that playing Bond is never gonna happen for me - even if I'm the right age - because I look Italian and am too short. But you'll never see Daniel Craig playing an Italian gangster, or Brad Pitt playing Mandela.

If Idris Elba becomes Bond get ready for Angelina Jolie as his successor.

Nice one FM. Sanity prevails.......

jet set willy wrote:

Flush wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

jet set willy wrote:

How many white people do you know who go off jet-setting globally first class, killing people, bedding countless women, eating the finest food and drink, while driving around in an Aston Martin.....?

None. Which tends to suggest the colour of the skin isn't determinative of what James Bond does. That was my point.

Have you read the Fleming novels? Do you understand the origins of the character?

Yes, I have. The origin of the character is wish-fulfilment of a frustrated desk-jockey sailor acting out his personal fantasies having been prevented from fighting in World War 2.

Possibly time to cut the cord. Not sure that represents anything or anyone. Nor should it.

Flush wrote:

jet set willy wrote:

Flush wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

jet set willy wrote:

How many white people do you know who go off jet-setting globally first class, killing people, bedding countless women, eating the finest food and drink, while driving around in an Aston Martin.....?

None. Which tends to suggest the colour of the skin isn't determinative of what James Bond does. That was my point.

Have you read the Fleming novels? Do you understand the origins of the character?

Yes, I have. The origin of the character is wish-fulfilment of a frustrated desk-jockey sailor acting out his personal fantasies having been prevented from fighting in World War 2.

Possibly time to cut the cord. Not sure that represents anything or anyone. Nor should it.

In which case why not start a new spy franchise with a black actor, with appropriate origins that could not possibly clash or confuse with a heritage, history and 60-odd years of baggage that comes with the Bond franchise.

I think Elba is cool and would love to see him in a new action spy movie.

jet set willy wrote:

Flush wrote:

jet set willy wrote:

Flush wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

jet set willy wrote:

How many white people do you know who go off jet-setting globally first class, killing people, bedding countless women, eating the finest food and drink, while driving around in an Aston Martin.....?

None. Which tends to suggest the colour of the skin isn't determinative of what James Bond does. That was my point.

Have you read the Fleming novels? Do you understand the origins of the character?

Yes, I have. The origin of the character is wish-fulfilment of a frustrated desk-jockey sailor acting out his personal fantasies having been prevented from fighting in World War 2.

Possibly time to cut the cord. Not sure that represents anything or anyone. Nor should it.

In which case why not start a new spy franchise with a black actor, with appropriate origins that could not possibly clash or confuse with a heritage, history and 60-odd years of baggage that comes with the Bond franchise.

I think Elba is cool and would love to see him in a new action spy movie.

Who determines "appropriate origins" though?

Unless they re-reboot and give period pieces, if they were trying to make films that commented at all on race (which I really believe they're not), aren't the Fleming origins of Bond now just as odd and unlikely for a white person as they would be for a black person? Any person?

I think that was my point. I may be wrong, I don't mind being wrong and I have no manifesto to promote, but I'm a bit lost why for films evidently being set in the here-and-now - if not five minutes into the future - there's a clinging to [adopts General Orlov voice] Out-Dated! Imperialist! Dogma!