With No Time To Die set to hit theaters next month, director Cary Fukunaga opened up about putting his own spin on the iconic James Bond franchise and how he navigated adapting the super spy to modern times. In a lengthy interview on his career, including his breakout work on the first season of HBO’s True Detective, Fukunaga wanted to steer the franchise away from its misogynistic past when Sean Connery sauntered around in now-problematic mode. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
Perhaps the biggest hurdle for the film was bringing its globe-trotting lothario into Hollywood’s post-#MeToo reality. After all, No Time to Die began development in 2016, before the industry embarked on a period of self-reflection in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s downfall for predatory behavior. Though Craig’s oeuvre puts a greater emphasis on the quality of drinks than the quantity of women, the history of Bond includes casual misogyny and worse.
“Is it Thunderball or Goldfinger where, like, basically Sean Connery’s character rapes a woman?” Fukunaga asks. “She’s like ‘No, no, no,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That wouldn’t fly today.”
Phoebe Waller-Bridge was brought onto this film to “polish” the script, but Fukunaga shoots down the notion that her job was to make Bond more “woke.” Instead, Fukunaga praised Bond producer Barbara Broccoli for wanting Waller-Bridge to strengthen the female roles and force him to interact with fully developed characters who aren’t there just to, uh, service him.
“You can’t change Bond overnight into a different person,” Fukunaga explained. “But you can definitely change the world around him and the way he has to function in that world. It’s a story about a white man as a spy in this world, but you have to be willing to lean in and do the work to make the female characters more than just contrivances.”
No Time To Die opens in theaters on October 8, 2021.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)