Captain Marvel star Lashana Lynch’s role in Bond 25 will reportedly have audiences dropping their popcorn in shock.

Lashana’s role has been kept underwraps but sources close to the production have now claimed that Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s rewrite of the script will see the 31-year-old be introduced to audiences as 007.

Now that is a moment we can’t wait to see.

James Bond fans will know that the spy retired at the end of Spectre and as Bond 25 opens he will be living a life of luxury in Jamaica. However soon we will return to MI6 in London and the insider reveals that ‘there is a pivotal scene at the start of the film where M says “come in 007”, and in walks Lashana who is black, beautiful and a woman’.

With Bond in retirement, it makes sense for the agency to pass on his codename to another agent, and we are here for it being a woman.

‘It’s a popcorn-dropping moment. Bond is still Bond but he’s been replaced as 007 by this stunning woman,’ the source told The Daily Mail.

Elsewhere, Christoph Waltz has also reportedly been spotted on set, hinting at the return of his Spectre villain, Blofeld.

The return of the character was speculated about earlier in 2019 when the working title of the film was alleged to be Shatterhand; the name comes from an alias used by supervillain Blofeld in Ian Fleming’s novel You Only Live Twice (1964).

However Blofeld had been captured by MI6 at Spectre’s conclusion, leaving fans wondering how he could return.

New reports alleged that Waltz has been seen ‘shooting scenes at Pinewood studios’ and ‘when a visitor spotted him Waltz insisted: “You haven’t seen me.”‘

Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek is set to Bond 25’s main villain in an as-yet-named role but Blofeld could make an appearance perhaps as a prisoner being interrogated for information. Bond 25 will be in cinemas 8 April, 2020.

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/14...es-new-007-10287976/

It could be a clever way to continue the 007 franchise, while effectively ending the James Bond title.

If you think about it, all of Craig's Bond films have been running in a sequential order that was much more evident than for any of the other Bond actors. Yes they all aged in the role because they were aging, but Craig's movies were building blocks with common links over time. His Bond character was aging and changing himself.

For that reason, I could see them actually killing off Bond in 25 and the series turning over to a new 007 entirely. It worked for Doctor Who, and the series can hardly go back to some strapping 35 year old actor as Bond with all this back story of a retiree returning. Nor are they going to make the new Bond older than the last one.

I think the producers have sort of painted themselves into a corner by taking most of the humor and all of the camp out of the franchise in the Craig era. They have tried to revamp into serious spy thrillers that don't jive with the plausibility of the stunts or the plots. As the saying goes, it's neither fish nor fowl, to me at least. I've been lukewarm at best throughout Craig's tenure.

Now they are going with a totally modern 007 and I image how much they commit to it will depend on what it always does. Does it make enough money?

Naysayers will undoubtedly be referred to as sexist and/or racist.

I don't think that is going to happen. She is supposed to be the current 007 in the upcoming film while James Bond (Craig) is retired.

What will likely happen is that Bond (Craig) will come out of retirement, and her character will die, and he will resume being 007.

As for the age issue, 57 year old Roger Moore morphed into 40 year old Timothy Dalton in 1986, and then Brosnan, and at least through 2002, he was supposed to be the same character who started in 1962.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
What will likely happen is that Bond (Craig) will come out of retirement, and her character will die, and he will resume being 007.

Can't see that. They create the fanfare a year in advance for the appearance of a beautiful, black actress as the next 007 and then kill the character in the movie? That would be a mistake IMHO. Maybe she'd just give him his number back. Like they do with baseball jerseys.

Roger Moore's Bond visited his wife's grave (a nod to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and disposed of Blofeld at the beginning of "For Your Eyes Only," in a way ending the first chapter of the cinematic version of the Bond series as Connery and Moore were about the same age. By Timothy Dalton's time, I think most 007 fans accepted the torch had passed but his past as 007 would need to be made more vague in future movies. He would still be a Commander in the Royal Navy, for instance, but they couldn't really reference his 60's adventures directly because he couldn't pass for that old. I think it was "Die Another Day" in which Brosnan's Bond handles some gadgets from the older movies while visiting Q Branch but that was just a wink to the old fans.

Similarly, when Robert B. Parker passed away in 2010, his estate chose another mystery author to continue the Spenser series. The Spenser character was in his late 30's in the early 1970's with references to have boxed a past-his-prime Jersey Joe Walcott. When Ace Atkins took over the writing, Spenser was still a former boxer but there were no more Walcott recollections with the references to previous events no longer necessarily happening in the 70's to 90's. Spenser and the other characters move through time but he tends to remain in his 40's to make him a believable hero as he outsmarts and out-fights the bad guys. Spenser and Bond can never get too old and risk losing appeal to a younger audience even if they've enjoyed the stories that date back to before they were born.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:

As for the age issue, 57 year old Roger Moore morphed into 40 year old Timothy Dalton in 1986, and then Brosnan, and at least through 2002, he was supposed to be the same character who started in 1962.

Right, things change and we're living in a world with female "Ghostbusters" and increasing numbers of male cheerleaders in the NFL. It started when one paycheck wasn't enough to feed, clothe, school, and house a family by the early-mid 70's. My mom got a job in a wafer fab at that time but then my grandmother worked in a cannery part-time before her and women filled in for men during World War II. At some point we were going to get a female replacement of some longtime male hero keeping in mind Judy Densch had a great run as "M." And yeah, bringing out a female 007 and then killing her off in the same movie would just not be acceptable anymore. They'll run with it maybe two movies worth, but if the new direction doesn't generate big bucks, Bond might take a break for a while as he did after Dalton and after Brosnan.

A couple of years ago, there was an article about Bond writers running out of fresh ideas for stories and villains. If the new Bond gets a good story and some good action, she'll have a chance in the modern climate.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
What will likely happen is that Bond (Craig) will come out of retirement, and her character will die, and he will resume being 007.

Can't see that. They create the fanfare a year in advance for the appearance of a beautiful, black actress as the next 007 and then kill the character in the movie? That would be a mistake IMHO. Maybe she'd just give him his number back. Like they do with baseball jerseys.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:

A couple of years ago, there was an article about Bond writers running out of fresh ideas for stories and villains. If the new Bond gets a good story and some good action, she'll have a chance in the modern climate.

Jess

That pretty much sums it all up. To say that Bond is a worn out old shoe is an understatement. Craig Bond films weren't better because of Craig but because the style of the films took a much needed change in direction. Changing characters as a sacrifice to the "modern climate" has mostly been a bust in Hollywood. Although it is always interesting to see what they might do with this, I would be perfectly fine to seal up Bond at 25 and relegate the character to Hollywood history.

If we want strong female spy types, lets give them a clean slate to work with.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
If we want strong female spy types, lets give them a clean slate to work with.

A clean slate is not really needed, all they have to do is make a 'proper' film around Peter O'Donnell's creation Modesty Blaise. I think enough time has passed since the awful 1966 movie version escaped for it to be given another go. I read a few of the books a few years ago and any would make excellent movies. There's a nice wikipedia entry all about her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modesty_Blaise

Bond's wife was also referenced in Dalton's "License to Kill" (1989) when Felix Leiter said that Bond was married, "a long time ago"

So that further connects him to the Connery-Lazenby-Moore Bond.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
Roger Moore's Bond visited his wife's grave (a nod to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and disposed of Blofeld at the beginning of "For Your Eyes Only," in a way ending the first chapter of the cinematic version of the Bond series as Connery and Moore were about the same age. By Timothy Dalton's time, I think most 007 fans accepted the torch had passed but his past as 007 would need to be made more vague in future movies. He would still be a Commander in the Royal Navy, for instance, but they couldn't really reference his 60's adventures directly because he couldn't pass for that old. I think it was "Die Another Day" in which Brosnan's Bond handles some gadgets from the older movies while visiting Q Branch but that was just a wink to the old fans.

Similarly, when Robert B. Parker passed away in 2010, his estate chose another mystery author to continue the Spenser series. The Spenser character was in his late 30's in the early 1970's with references to have boxed a past-his-prime Jersey Joe Walcott. When Ace Atkins took over the writing, Spenser was still a former boxer but there were no more Walcott recollections with the references to previous events no longer necessarily happening in the 70's to 90's. Spenser and the other characters move through time but he tends to remain in his 40's to make him a believable hero as he outsmarts and out-fights the bad guys. Spenser and Bond can never get too old and risk losing appeal to a younger audience even if they've enjoyed the stories that date back to before they were born.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:

As for the age issue, 57 year old Roger Moore morphed into 40 year old Timothy Dalton in 1986, and then Brosnan, and at least through 2002, he was supposed to be the same character who started in 1962.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
If we want strong female spy types, lets give them a clean slate to work with.

I think its harder than that, as so many things are when you get down into the weeds. For one thing, it's already been done, both in mild and strong terms. There have been many films over the years that had both major and supporting characters who were female spys.

The Mata Hari character is actually a staple in many of these movies, especially if they develop into the love interest of the hero spy. But with modern films, we want to elevate Mata Hari not just to be the lead, but also to do it better than the guys in action stories. We don't want Barbara Bach or Halle Berry to be spies in distress needing rescue. Modern writers would have them smacking it out with Bond. Only it doesn't seem to work when you really see it and it doesn't look like audiences really want to see it unless there is that something more to the movie.

I give you Charlize Theron and Atomic Blonde as the prime example of a clean slate and a smack down female spy, double-double-double agent actually. Theron was Furiosa in the last Mad Max and that was no damsel in distress, but it also had a male hero and a small franchise title connection. It did pretty well, but she didn't have to carry it. She did carry Atomic Blonde and it broke even, but probably not much more. It was no smash hit, despite having a female lead that could out Bond Bond.

Thing is, I don't think audiences like watching females get realistically beaten up by males, even when they win the fight. It's OK if women are duking it out with other women. This is what usually happens in films, the genders pair up for battle. Emma Peel generally fought the women in the Avengers plots, but when she did fight men, it was more dance moves and they certainly never left a mark.

The James Bond and Jason Bourne types are constantly being beaten up and tortured and its viewed as great action. Do the same thing with a female character and see how many people will find it distasteful. Male and female character roles can be interchangeable up to a point, but when screen writers try to make every character type genderless, they run into trouble because the audience has its own gender ideas and because there are certain physical facts that are just true.

There are already many examples of strong females in films and this new 007 could turn out to be another one of them, as long as they don't try to make her a Bond.

I don't know how many of you have read the James Bond novels/short story collections. There have been 40 official books to date, with Ian Fleming having done the first 14.

In the 1950s-60s books (15 total), Bond was a World War II veteran, and some of the early novels reference the fact that he bought his car in the year 1933. The 14 John Gardner novels (1981-1996) depict the same Bond in the then present day, but the only reference to his age is that Bond has some grey hair.

The 6 Raymond Benson novels from 1997-2002 are also set in the present, but no mention is made of Bond's age.

5 novels have been published since 2008 by several new authors. To get around the age issue, 4 of them are actually set in various years between the late 1950s to the late 1960s.

However, one novel, "Carte Blanche" (2011) depicts Bond as being in his 30s in this decade, and it specifically indicates that this 007 was born in 1979 ! So this one book is the oddball, that doesn't quite fit with the rest of the canon.

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



Similarly, when Robert B. Parker passed away in 2010, his estate chose another mystery author to continue the Spenser series. The Spenser character was in his late 30's in the early 1970's with references to have boxed a past-his-prime Jersey Joe Walcott. When Ace Atkins took over the writing, Spenser was still a former boxer but there were no more Walcott recollections with the references to previous events no longer necessarily happening in the 70's to 90's. Spenser and the other characters move through time but he tends to remain in his 40's to make him a believable hero as he outsmarts and out-fights the bad guys. Spenser and Bond can never get too old and risk losing appeal to a younger audience even if they've enjoyed the stories that date back to before they were born.

Jess

I was thinking of "Modesty Blaise" when I was writing my last post. Unfortunately, the clean slate also means no name recognition (and in her case for anyone under 50) so I doubt a big studio would go for that. The other thing is there would be too much of a push to modernize her unless they set it in the 60's with all the locations and art direction needed to give it a great look, but then again, that's a big expense. I'd like to see someone do something with the character.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin F:

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
If we want strong female spy types, lets give them a clean slate to work with.

A clean slate is not really needed, all they have to do is make a 'proper' film around Peter O'Donnell's creation Modesty Blaise. I think enough time has passed since the awful 1966 movie version escaped for it to be given another go. I read a few of the books a few years ago and any would make excellent movies. There's a nice wikipedia entry all about her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modesty_Blaise

Hi Tommy C,

I don't recall the line but it's been years since I've seen "License to Kill." You can see what I mean, though. about making past events more vague - no reference to the year, just that it was "a long time ago" and leave it to anyone's imagination especially for those unfamiliar with the timeline.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Bond's wife was also referenced in Dalton's "License to Kill" (1989) when Felix Leiter said that Bond was married, "a long time ago"

So that further connects him to the Connery-Lazenby-Moore Bond.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
Roger Moore's Bond visited his wife's grave (a nod to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and disposed of Blofeld at the beginning of "For Your Eyes Only," in a way ending the first chapter of the cinematic version of the Bond series as Connery and Moore were about the same age. By Timothy Dalton's time, I think most 007 fans accepted the torch had passed but his past as 007 would need to be made more vague in future movies. He would still be a Commander in the Royal Navy, for instance, but they couldn't really reference his 60's adventures directly because he couldn't pass for that old. I think it was "Die Another Day" in which Brosnan's Bond handles some gadgets from the older movies while visiting Q Branch but that was just a wink to the old fans.

Similarly, when Robert B. Parker passed away in 2010, his estate chose another mystery author to continue the Spenser series. The Spenser character was in his late 30's in the early 1970's with references to have boxed a past-his-prime Jersey Joe Walcott. When Ace Atkins took over the writing, Spenser was still a former boxer but there were no more Walcott recollections with the references to previous events no longer necessarily happening in the 70's to 90's. Spenser and the other characters move through time but he tends to remain in his 40's to make him a believable hero as he outsmarts and out-fights the bad guys. Spenser and Bond can never get too old and risk losing appeal to a younger audience even if they've enjoyed the stories that date back to before they were born.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:

As for the age issue, 57 year old Roger Moore morphed into 40 year old Timothy Dalton in 1986, and then Brosnan, and at least through 2002, he was supposed to be the same character who started in 1962.