[worry]

That sucks. It might have made me actually want to see a Bond film.

[polishgenius]

Abyss, on 13 November 2012 - 11:50 PM, said:

I'm fairly certain the 'black Bond' comment was a reference to a completely unrelated flic where Elba may play a secret agent type who is similar to Bond in the sense that Jason Bourne is the 'younger Bond' and Neeson's character in the Taken movies is the 'retired Bond'.

No, it comes from Naomi Harris saying Idris Elba told her he met with Barbara Broccoli to talk about the possibility of a black Bond.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 14 November 2012 - 12:39 AM

[worry]

Barbara Broccoli? What the hell, are we just making up names now? I just heard that Michael Pena is having talks with Samantha Cauliflower to replace Tom Cruise in MI:5. But Paramount CEO Joseph Jalapenopepper is denying the rumors.

[Abyss]

polishgenius, on 14 November 2012 - 12:38 AM, said:

Abyss, on 13 November 2012 - 11:50 PM, said:

I'm fairly certain the 'black Bond' comment was a reference to a completely unrelated flic where Elba may play a secret agent type who is similar to Bond in the sense that Jason Bourne is the 'younger Bond' and Neeson's character in the Taken movies is the 'retired Bond'.

No, it comes from Naomi Harris saying Idris Elba told her he met with Barbara Broccoli to talk about the possibility of a black Bond.

Yes, but the metaphorical sense, not in the sense of James Bond being black, and even if Harris meant the latter, i'm all but certain Elba meant the former and she misunderstood.

[Hinter]

Abyss, on 13 November 2012 - 11:50 PM, said:

I'm fairly certain the 'black Bond' comment was a reference to a completely unrelated flic where Elba may play a secret agent type who is similar to Bond in the sense that Jason Bourne is the 'younger Bond' and Neeson's character in the Taken movies is the 'retired Bond'.

The rest is just internet feeding frenzy bollocks.

At last, a voice of reason. Don't believe everything you see on TV folks.

[Coco with marshmallows]

worrywort, on 14 November 2012 - 12:50 AM, said:

Barbara Broccoli? What the hell, are we just making up names now?

Interesting tidbit - allegedly the family name came about as their ancestors were one of the first large scale merchant traders of the vegetable.

[Salt-Man Z]

The obvious answer is to out James Bond as a Time Lord.

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 14 November 2012 - 01:38 AM

[Abyss]

Cocoreturns, on 14 November 2012 - 01:17 AM, said:

worrywort, on 14 November 2012 - 12:50 AM, said:

Barbara Broccoli? What the hell, are we just making up names now?

Interesting tidbit - allegedly the family name came about as their ancestors were one of the first large scale merchant traders of the vegetable.

It's hardly any worse than Pussy Galore, Holly Goodhead or Chew Mee.

[Tsundoku]

http://en.wikipedia....ry_character%29

The Fleming Bond:

Looks
Fleming compares Bond's appearance to Hoagy Carmichael.

Facially, Bond resembles the composer, singer and actor Hoagy Carmichael. In Casino Royale Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless." Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch Officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is "certainly good-looking ... Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold." Others, such as journalist Ben Macintyre, identify aspects of Fleming's own looks in his description of Bond. General references in the novels describe Bond as having "dark, rather cruel good looks".

In the novels (notably From Russia, with Love), Bond's physical description has generally been consistent: slim build; a three-inch long, thin vertical scar on his right cheek; blue-grey eyes; a "cruel" mouth; short, black hair, a comma of which falls on his forehead. Physically he is described as 183 centimetres (6 feet) in height and 76 kilograms (167 lb) in weight. After Casino Royale, Bond also had the faint scar of the Russian cyrillic letter "Ш" (SH) (for Shpion: "Spy") on the back of one of his hands, carved by a SMERSH agent.
Background

In Ian Fleming's stories, James Bond is in his mid-to-late thirties, but does not age. In Moonraker, he admits to being eight years shy of mandatory retirement age from the 00 section—forty-five—which would mean he was thirty-seven at the time. Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, gives him a birth date of 11 November 1920, whilst a study by Bond scholar John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921. According to Griswold, the Fleming novels take place between around May 1951, to February 1964, by which time Bond was aged 42.

It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background, using a fictional obituary, purportedly from The Times. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, to give Bond both a sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories. The novel reveals Bond is the son of a Scottish father, Andrew Bond, of Glencoe, and a Swiss mother, Monique Delacroix, of the Canton de Vaud. The young James Bond spends much of his early life abroad, becoming multilingual in German and French because of his father's work as a Vickers armaments company representative. When his parents are killed in a mountain

After the death of his parents, Bond goes to live with his aunt, Miss Charmian Bond, in the village of Pett Bottom, where he completes his early education. Later, he briefly attends Eton College at "12 or thereabouts", but is removed after two halves because of girl trouble with a maid. After being sent down from Eton, Bond was sent to Fettes College in Scotland, his father's school. On his first visit to Paris at the age of sixteen, Bond lost his virginity, later reminiscing about the event in "From a View to a Kill". After leaving Fettes, Fleming used his own upbringing for his creation, with Bond alluding to briefly attending the University of Geneva, (as did Fleming) before being taught to ski in Kitzbühel (as was Fleming) by Hannes Oberhauser, who was later killed in "Octopussy".

In 1941, Bond joined the Ministry of Defence and became a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves, ending the war as a commander. Bond applied to M for a position within the "Secret Service", part of the Civil Service, and rose to the rank of principal officer.

At the start of Fleming's first book, Casino Royale, Bond is already a 00 agent having been given the position after killing two enemy agents, a Japanese spy on the thirty-sixth floor of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York City and a Norwegian double agent who had betrayed two British agents; it is suggested by Bond scholar John Griswold that these were part of Bond's wartime service with Special Operations Executive, a British World War II covert military organisation. In 1954, according to the Soviet file on him in From Russia, With Love, Bond is made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George.

Continuation Bond works

John Gardner

In 1981 writer John Gardner was approached by the Fleming estate and asked to write a continuation novel for Bond. Although he initially almost turned the series down, Gardner subsequently wrote fourteen original novels and two novelizations of the films between Licence Renewed in 1981 and COLD in 1996. With the influence of the American publishers, Putnam's, the Gardner novels showed an increase in the number of Americanisms used in the book, such as a waiter wearing "pants", rather than trousers, in The Man from Barbarossa. James Harker, writing in The Guardian, considered that the Gardner books were "dogged by silliness", giving examples of Scorpius, where much of the action is set in Chippenham, and Win, Lose or Die, where "Bond gets chummy with an unconvincing Maggie Thatcher". Ill health forced Gardner to retire from writing the Bond novels in 1996.

Gardner stated that he wanted "to bring Mr Bond into the 1980s", although he retained the ages of the characters as they were when Fleming had left them. Even though Gardner kept the ages the same, he made Bond grey at the temples as a nod to the passing of the years. Other 1980s effects also took place, with Bond smoking low-tar cigarettes and becoming increasingly health conscious.

The return of Bond in 1981 saw media reports on the more politically correct Bond and his choice of car—a Saab 900 Turbo; Gardner later put him in a Bentley Mulsanne Turbo. Gardner also updated Bond's firearm: under Gardner, Bond is initially issued with the Browning 9mm before changing to a Heckler & Koch VP70 and then a Heckler & Koch P7. Bond is also revealed to have taken part in the 1982 Falklands War. Gardner updated Fleming's characters and used contemporary political leaders in his novels; he also used the high-tech apparatus of Q Branch from the films, although Jeremy Black observed that Bond is more reliant on technology than his own individual abilities. Gardner's series linked Bond to the Fleming novels rather than the film incarnations and referred to events covered in the Fleming stories.

Raymond Benson

Following the retirement of John Gardner, Raymond Benson took over as Bond author in 1996; as the first American author of Bond it was a controversial choice. Benson had previously written the non-fiction The James Bond Bedside Companion, first published in 1984. Benson's first work was a short story, "Blast From the Past", published in 1997. By the time he moved on to other projects in 2002, Benson had written six Bond novels, three novelizations and three short stories. His final Bond work was The Man with the Red Tattoo, published in 2002.

In Bond novels and their ilk, the plot must threaten not only our hero but civilization as we know it. The icing on the cake is using exotic locales that "normal people" only fantasize about visiting, and slipping in essential dollops of sex and violence to build interest.

Benson followed Gardner's pattern of setting Bond in the contemporary timeframe of the 1990s[104] and, according to Jeremy Black, had more echoes of Fleming's style than John Gardner, he also changed Bond's gun back to the Walther PPK, put him behind the wheel of a Jaguar XK8[93] and made him swear more.[106] James Harker noted that "whilst Fleming's Bond had been an Express reader; Benson's is positively red top. He's the first to have group sex ... and the first to visit a prostitute",[84] whilst Black notes an increased level of crudity lacking in either Fleming or Gardner.

Others

Kingsley Amis
In 1967, four years after Fleming's death, his literary executors, Glidrose Productions, approached Kingsley Amis and offered him £10,000 (£135,353 in 2012 pounds) to write the first continuation Bond novel. The result was Colonel Sun published in 1968 under the pen-name Robert Markham. Journalist James Harker noted that although the book was not literary, it was stylish. Raymond Benson noted that Bond's character and events from previous novels were all maintained in Colonel Sun, saying "he is the same darkly handsome man first introduced in Casino Royale.

Sebastian Faulks
After Gardner and Benson had followed Amis, there was a gap of six years until Sebastian Faulks was commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new Bond novel, which was released on 28 May 2008, the one hundredth anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth. The book—entitled Devil May Care—was published in the UK by Penguin Books and by Doubleday in the US.

Faulks ignored the timeframe established by Gardner and Benson and instead reverted to that used by Fleming and Amis, basing his novel in the 1960s; he also managed to use a number of the cultural touchstones of the sixties in the book. Faulks was true to Bond's original character and background too, and provided "a Flemingesque hero" who drove a battleship grey 1967 T-series Bentley.

Jeffery Deaver
On 26 May 2011, American writer Jeffery Deaver, commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications, released Carte Blanche. Deaver restarted the chronology of Bond, separate from the timelines any of the previous authors, by stating he was born in 1980; the novel also saw Bond in a post-9/11 agency, independent of either MI5 or MI6.

The films didn't influence me at all and nor did the continuation novels. I wanted to get back to the original Bond who's dark and edgy, has quite a sense of irony and humour and is extremely patriotic and willing to sacrifice himself for Queen and country. He is extremely loyal but he has this dark pall over him because he's a hired killer - and he wrestles with that. I've always found him to be quite a representative of the modern era.
Jeffery Deaver

Whilst the chronology changed, Deaver included a number of elements from the Fleming novels, including Bond's tastes for food and wine, his gadgets and "the rather preposterous names of some of the female characters."

William Boyd
On 11 April 2012, the Fleming estate announced that William Boyd would write the next Bond novel, due for release in the autumn of 2013; the publishers will be Jonathan Cape.

---------------------------------

So there you have the literary Bonds: the original and the successors visions. Then there's the cinema versions.

Maybe the original (and appalling) Casino Royale film had it right after all? What a terrible thought.

http://en.wikipedia....%281967_film%29

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This post has been edited by Sombra: 14 November 2012 - 04:41 AM

[Macros]

Barring hair colour Craig right reads the closest.
cold blue eyes, ruthless and hard. A battered yet handsome man.

[Battalion]

Elba is one of my favorite actors, but James Bond is a white man. I don't understand why anyone would want to see a black James Bond, despite Elba's talent as an actor - it just wouldn't be Bond. I wouldn't want to see an A Team remake with a white B.A or a Chinese Face either, because it changes who those people are.

Having said that, I support the idea for an Elba spy movie.

Maybe a James Bond spin off, where Elba is Darren Blake, A.K.A 004, a Ruthless government assassin, or something. The two films could run concurrently, they could even play cameos in eachothers films, share the same M and Q (obviously), load Elba/Blake up with gadgets - Bond complains in the following movie "why didn't I get on of those things that 004 got?" kind of thing.
Leading up to a super spy movie where they both star and have to begrudgingly help eachother out.

And then, after twenty years of success, where 004 is King, 007 was killed back in the 20s, and 004s "my friends call me Darren; you can call me Mr Blake," catchphrase is on everybodies lips, people start uttering crazy talk about making Darren Blake a WHITE MAN!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

I think Elba would make a good Bond but I do agree with Battallion on this.

Who would be fine to see Silchas Ruin played by a black guy? Or to see QB/Kalam portrayed as a couple of white guys, dispite their clear discription to the contrary?

It's not to do with race or skin colour, specifically, but, as Battallion rightly says, such a drastic change to the character changes who they are completely.

At the end of the day, as good as Elba would be in the role, James Bond simply isn't a black man.

Now if it was a spoof movie, that could be pretty good...maybe.

[Morgoth]

You know, I saw Battallion's name as the last poster and knew that he'd argue that Bond must be white.

I must have spent too much time in this place, or perhaps some posters are more predictable than others.

Why would Bond have to be white? I don't get it. To me Bond is no more defined by the colour of his skin than is Jason Bourne. Comparing the choice to Silchas Ruin just shows how little strenght there is to the argument.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

I think that skin colour is quite a defining feature. You suggest that having Bourne be a black man is no different to Bond but, to me, Bourne isn't a black man either. Nor is John McLain or Rambo. It significantly changes the character's persona. Imagine if one of Jason Bourne's passports had a picture of a black man because they were essentially the same people.

For the record, I don't think that a character such as Shaft, for example, or, say, Pulp Fiction's Marsellus Wallace should be played by white people either.

As I say, don't get me wrong -- I think the concept is good and it would work for a similar type of character/role but unless James Bond is genuinely turned into a position/rank, Bond the person is and always has been a white man, the same as me. I certainly don't expect to wake up tomorrow and discover that I've turned black over night!

[Battalion]

You act like I'm making an irrational unreasonable argument.
Q:What colour is James Bond?
A:White.
Correct.

It's quite simple really.

[Morgoth]

Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast, on 14 November 2012 - 11:06 AM, said:

I think that skin colour is quite a defining feature. You suggest that having Bourne be a black man is no different to Bond but, to me, Bourne isn't a black man either. Nor is John McLain or Rambo. It significantly changes the character's persona. Imagine if one of Jason Bourne's passports had a picture of a black man because they were essentially the same people.

For the record, I don't think that a character such as Shaft, for example, or, say, Pulp Fiction's Marsellus Wallace should be played by white people either.

As I say, don't get me wrong -- I think the concept is good and it would work for a similar type of character/role but unless James Bond is genuinely turned into a position/rank, Bond the person is and always has been a white man, the same as me. I certainly don't expect to wake up tomorrow and discover that I've turned black over night!

But why is it so? Outside of your knee jerk reaction; what is it that makes Bond inherently white? His upbringing? During the original Bond, yes I see that, but a Bond that is presented as living in todays world that hardly works as an objection. There are black people in Scotland these days. I'm sure you'll find a number of them in MI6 too.

Bond is not upper class. He is not the son of a lord, or from an old and respectable family. He travelled as a child, but that's hardly unique to white men. There is nothing in his background or in his persona that defines him as white as far as I can tell, and as you see from this thread, most people seem to agree. Even those of us who've watched every Bodn movie religiously since we were old enough to understand such things.

[Shinrei]

I think any longlasting character role that has already experienced a chain of different actors should mean suspension of belief should be relatively easy.

At least that's how I see it. The precedent for swapping Bonds around makes the role more fluid in my mind.

Of course, I wouldn't have an issue with having a black Spiderman either, but I'm sure some people would really howl at that.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

Yeah, I wouldn't be bothered if it did happen. As I've said, I quite like the idea and the fact that there have been so many Bonds makes it that much more acceptable, if that's the right word to use.

Even so, in my mind a black man doesn't fit with my image of James Bond, just like a white man doesn't fit my image of Martin Luther King and an Indian lady doesn't fit my image of Queen Elizabeth; the fact that they're both real life people is irrelevant as they've both been portrayed on-screen. Therefore, while interesting, it doesn't feel 'right' to cast Elba as Bond.

This post has been edited by Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast: 14 November 2012 - 12:30 PM

[Morgoth]

Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast, on 14 November 2012 - 12:29 PM, said:

Yeah, I wouldn't be bothered if it did happen. As I've said, I quite like the idea and the fact that there have been so many Bonds makes it that much more acceptable, if that's the right word to use.

Even so, in my mind a black man doesn't fit with my image of James Bond, just like a white man doesn't fit my image of Martin Luther King and an Indian lady doesn't fit my image of Queen Elizabeth; the fact that they're both real life people is irrelevant as they've both been portrayed on-screen. Therefore, while interesting, it doesn't feel 'right' to cast Elba as Bond.

...

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

Now if it was an all black-African cast, for example, like the recent production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, that would be a completely different kettle of fish...