A good read! It's certainly a complicated question. I am absolutely in agreement that in any modern period, Bond can be easily reinvented to change race/gender. I do think there's something very 'male' about Bond, so I don't know if a 'female' version would be right without a bigger re-write to the character. That said, many of Bond's cinematic outings aren't faithful to Fleming, as you point out. But I really think of this in the way I read female hard-boiled novels, like Sue Grafton's. There is a stark physical and psychological difference to say Robert B Parker's Spenser and Grafton's Milhone--they are doing the same tough 'guy' PI job, but in very different ways, with very different mindsets. So I ramble on that to say, I could see a female 007, but the studio would need to be realistic about what that means and how that's conveyed on screen. She'd likely not be as thuggish and brute-like as Craig's Bond, but could easily be cool and suave like Connery's.
A good read! It's certainly a complicated question. I am absolutely in agreement that in any modern period, Bond can be easily reinvented to change race/gender. I do think there's something very 'male' about Bond, so I don't know if a 'female' version would be right without a bigger re-write to the character. That said, many of Bond's cinematic outings aren't faithful to Fleming, as you point out. But I really think of this in the way I read female hard-boiled novels, like Sue Grafton's. There is a stark physical and psychological difference to say Robert B Parker's Spenser and Grafton's Milhone--they are doing the same tough 'guy' PI job, but in very different ways, with very different mindsets. So I ramble on that to say, I could see a female 007, but the studio would need to be realistic about what that means and how that's conveyed on screen. She'd likely not be as thuggish and brute-like as Craig's Bond, but could easily be cool and suave like Connery's.