PHOTOS: Hollywood's Greatest Lady VillainsOf course, many of Bond’s women didn’t help to expand that catalog. “You also have to look at the place of women in most of the Bond films … it’s pretty grim,” says Angyal. From the femme fatales who use sex to trick Bond, to the women used as playthings in villains’ games, to the one-off sexual playthings who hop in and out of his bed, to the pining secretarial standby Moneypenny, the ladies of the Bond series, are for the most part, accessories to Bond himself. Not the stations that inspire the next female super spy.
But times have changed and with it Bond girls, who’ve gained more tactical importance and chutzpah in recent films. But more importantly
female spies have become more common in film and television. We’ve seen ladies take the reins in the espionage game on shows like
Alias, Chuck, and
Nikita, and while
Alias was appointment television during its early 2000s run, Sydney Bristow hasn’t exactly maintained a spot as the de facto lady spy. Though Jolie has made a mark for herself as a slithery spying heroine, she certainly can’t carry that torch for 50 years, plus. We find similar qualities in more nuanced superhero characters like
Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle (
The Dark Knight Rises) and
Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow (
The Avengers), but neither character has become the cultural hero on the level on the British government’s secret weapon.
PHOTOS: 12 Most Unforgettable 007 DeathsPart of the roadblock for spying ladies is the audience’s thirst for romance. Whereas Bond gets to “love” his Bond girls and leave them, female spies almost always have more sentimental love interests (in their past or present) when they’re running the show. These women rarely have one-off sexual encounters like Bond has had (though he does so less often in more recent films), lest they be painted as a femme fatale rather than a heroic figure. Oftentimes, a character’s proclivity for romance rather than pure sex is what separates her from the villainess. Even
Homeland’s unostentatious spy Carrie Matheson finds herself in a deep romantic entanglement while on the trail. It’s practically unavoidable. But still, that may not be the real
reason we don’t have a female character with the same commanding presence as Mr. Bond.
There’s an element of pop culture-lovers’ capacity for accepting new long-lived characters. Recurring roles in big budget movies are limited, mostly, to heroes born out of comic book legacy and 007, most of which started sewing seeds in the ‘50s and ‘60s. They’ve had time to cull their fan bases and establish themselves. Current films that claim devotion on that level are limited to series based on book series like
Harry Potter and the Bourne films, but even then, the names aren’t built to continue endlessly like Batman and Bond can. With something like Potter, the source material is sacred and limited, meaning the capacity for endless adventures of Harry Potter and friends is practically nonexistent. Bourne tried to continue on with a new hero after the franchise lost Matt Damon, but while the box office numbers were good, the
Bourne Legacy felt less like a continuation of Jason Bourne’s adventures and more like a segue into the life of another, completely different super soldier. Perhaps the lack of a non-comic book, recurring female heroine on the level of James Bond has little to do with sexism and more to do with the fact that the role of go-to pop culture spy is already filled.
Perhaps the question isn’t when will we have a female James Bond, it’s will we ever have a character who captures generations of movie-goers the way 007 does? Maybe what we’re looking for isn’t a lady version of the world’s greatest spy, but a female character who captures the world in the same way. Maybe we’ve already met her, but then again, we probably won’t realize we've found her until we notice that she’s been stringing us along for a whopping 50 years.
Follow Kelsea on Twitter @KelseaStahler[Photo Credit: iStock Photo; ABC]
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