{"id":8252,"date":"2025-11-02T08:13:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T08:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/?p=8252"},"modified":"2025-11-02T08:13:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T08:13:16","slug":"the-whole-concept-helen-mirren-opposes-female-bond-calls-007-an-8-billion-property-drenched-in-profound-sexism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/?p=8252","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe whole concept\u201d**: Helen Mirren opposes female Bond, calls 007 an $8 billion property “drenched in profound sexism”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Helen Mirren has never been shy about saying exactly what she thinks \u2014 and her latest comments about the future of the James Bond franchise are a clear example.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking ahead of the release of MobLand<\/em> \u2014 in which she stars opposite former 007 Pierce Brosnan \u2014 Mirren explained that while she genuinely admires many of the individual men who have played Bond, she has never loved the idea<\/em> of Bond.<\/span><\/p>\n

She says the problem was never the actors.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem, she believes, was the foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNever my thing\u201d<\/span><\/h3>\n

Mirren told The Standard<\/em> that she liked Brosnan as a colleague and Daniel Craig as a person \u2014 warm, gracious, professional \u2014 but that the original Bond formula never appealed to her.<\/span><\/p>\n

She said she did not enjoy the way women were traditionally positioned within that universe \u2014 a structure built for glamour and spectacle instead of dignity and dimensionality. To her, the character templates for women in the early decades of the franchise were simply not aligned with how complex real women \u2014 especially in intelligence work \u2014 actually were.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why she does not support a \u201cfemale 007\u201d<\/span><\/h3>\n

Mirren also said she does not support the idea of recasting Bond as<\/em> a woman.<\/span>
Not because women cannot lead.<\/span>
But because, she argues, there are already real former intelligence agents whose true stories are stronger than any re-imagined hand-me-down version of Bond.<\/span><\/p>\n

Women in real wartime resistance networks \u2014 including the French underground during World War II \u2014 took astonishing risks. Many of those stories remain under-told.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mirren\u2019s argument is that those real historical figures deserve their own narratives \u2014 not a retrofit of Ian Fleming\u2019s construct.<\/span><\/p>\n

What this says about Mirren\u2019s own career<\/span><\/h3>\n

Mirren has, repeatedly, chosen roles that centre real women who shaped events:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • \n

    Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Maria Altmann in Woman in Gold<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Golda Meir in Golda<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Her view is consistent with that career:<\/span>
    why imitate Bond when you could champion original, documentary-grade history?<\/span><\/p>\n

    The bottom line<\/span><\/h3>\n

    Mirren\u2019s view is not nostalgia.<\/span>
    It is the opposite.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Her critique is about giving real women their own front-of-poster spotlight \u2014 not asking them to wear someone else\u2019s tuxedo.<\/span><\/p>\n

    In her words, the future of female-led espionage drama should not be inside the Bond template.<\/span><\/p>\n

    It should be outside it \u2014 telling the stories that have been waiting, in the archive, the entire time.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Helen Mirren has never been shy about saying exactly what she thinks \u2014 and her latest comments about the future of the James Bond franchise are a clear example. Speaking ahead of the release of MobLand \u2014 in which she stars opposite former 007 Pierce Brosnan \u2014 Mirren explained that while she genuinely admires many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}