If Idris Elba Becomes 007... I'm out...

Yeah, but did TheGodfather stop watching 007 films?

 brown is the new dark blond; guess we would need to undress the man to find what is natural, but too late. Blond enough for me.

Bond is hardly the same as Rocky, given the character changes quite often and not just the actor playing him. That being said, there's already a 006 and 008.

That's a poor analogy. Shaft's story was about him being African American. That was an essential feature of who he was as a character.

James Bond's story is about him being British and a spy. It's never been about him being white, just as it's never been about him speaking with a particular regional British accent, or having dark brown or black hair.

If they made the new Bond speak Italian without knowing any English--that would change the character to the point that it would not make sense. If they made him congenitally blind--again, something like that would be hard to reconcile with all of the past versions of the character because that would change an essential feature of his character. If they made him 4 feet tall, or covered his face with tattoos and piercings, those things would change essential features of his character. Or if they gave him a superhuman ability, like being able to fly or grow new body parts after an injury--those would be changes to essential features.

Things like making him left-handed, though, would not change anything essential about him because his story was never about him being right-handed.

For some people, giving him a mustache would be jarring, but a mustache, like a ring or a hat, is something that can be put on or taken off, unlike these other characteristics we have been discussing. Which is why, depending on the actor, and the sort of mustache it is, I don't think it would change an essential feature of the character.


So whether Bond is played by a white or black actor should not matter for a performance in 2019, even though it would have been earth-shattering 50 or 60 years ago. In 2019, his race is not a character that defines him--unless you're someone who sees people as being essentially different based on race.

Nah, I'd pay good money to watch that movie.  

Another good contrast with the James Bond situation would be that of Detective Jane Tennyson from the Prime Suspect tv show. You could not change Jane Tennyson's character into a man without completely losing all sense of what the original character and her story was about. Prime Suspect was about what it was like for a woman to rise through the ranks of the old boys' club of Scotland Yard.

It wouldn't be "a woman." It would be "a woman who is Bond, 007."
The archetypal woman in film has traditionally not been allowed to be sexually voracious without apology. The archetypal Bond has. So that would be an important consideration.