/*23rd James Bond Film/
Here is another installment in the bond franchise that continues to evolve its main protagonist into a kick butt punch whisker ruffian. It’s a 23rd outing and gushingly thrilling flick. But I shan’t give sway to tell all for my preoccupations lies elsewhere. Besides Bond’s troublesome childhood what viewers might find particularly interesting is the changing of some of the cast members nuanced at the opening of the film and affirmed at the end of the film as the curtain falls down marking the closing of this spy speak thriller.
Mrs Eve Moneypenny is now played by Naomi Harris. This character was previously played by Samantha Bond. Q was portrayed by John Cleese introduced in the previous film ‘The World is not Enough’). Ralf Finesse is cast as Gareth Mallory and subsequently replaces Judi Dench as M at the end of the film.
Here I am mainly concerned with associations as far as portrayals of characters are concerned. It is public knowledge that the James Bond Universe is awash with code names. In this film agent Q is replaced by a young nerd with a knack for computer hacking, played by Ben Whishaw, Befitting here since the villain, Silva. He is a hacker but more so an agent presumed dead previously; after M made a call to trade him off in exchange for numerous MI6 agents. He is out to kill M. He achieves it in the end when the motion picture narrative draws us deeper into bonds childhood background his loyalty to M is pushed to the limit.
It seems Bond is suffering some kind of amnesia for at the closure of the film he asks Miss Moneypenny for her real name as he moves into M’s office, this has a double punctuating effect, one, for we have suspected it all along who she was but perhaps taken aback by her ethnicity for previously this character has been played by white women. Two, when bond walks through the portal and addresses Gareth Mallory as M.
The substitution of characters in the James Bond instalments is never heightengly highly foregrounded than it is here. Like a sign that looses its original meaning with time and evolved to mean something else in the future, agents can be replaced. The James Bond cult has been content with the replacement of various actors to portray the main protagonist for decades now. In a world of apps it just would’nt seem convincing to see a grey head giving advise to a muscle bundle spy about tech dispensers. hense the new Q. Doubly so in a politically corrected universe like our own where the representation of woman and people of colour is at the centre of the international table it seem befitting to portray Moneypenny as black – chucks, it’s about time Bond goes exotic too. Years ago by portraying M as a woman the Bond franchise made headway in political correctedness sprache. Let us see where Finesse will take M’s character – we wait yet for another thrill. It will be interesting to see a chinese bond or an african bond
*its public knowledge
Summer
16 December
© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2012
Intraparadox 