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The Enduring Legacy of James Bond: A Day to Meet the Veteran Agent in His 60th Year on the Big Screen

A day in which fans have the opportunity to meet again with the veteran agent in the service of His Majesty and with a license to kill, but who is prohibited by the producers of some very profitable films from dying or retiring after sixty years on the big screen. .

Source James Bond

The character of agent 007 appears for the first time in 1953 as the protagonist of the novel “Casino Royale” written by the British writer and journalist Ian Fleming. Bond is an officer in British Naval Intelligence during World War II and later during the Cold War.

The books achieved notable success and dissemination. But it was not until actor Sean Connery gave life to the Secret Agent in the film “James Bond against Dr. No”, in 1962, when 007 became a symbol of popular culture.

of a helicopter used in the 1967 James Bond film ‘You Only Live Twice’ with actor Sean Connery. (EFE/MICHAEL NELSON)

My name is Bond, James Bond

In the aforementioned film, the hallmarks of a franchise that is estimated to have grossed more than seven billion dollars (without taking into account the value of the currency at the time of its release) in 25 films since the distant sixties already appear.

The first thing that catches your attention are the elaborate credits and the always recognizable music that introduce us to an atmosphere of sophistication and luxury, with the permanent threat of a supervillain who dreams of taking over the world or considerably increasing his checking account. Dreams of power and riches that are inevitably frustrated by our hero.

Luxury has its manifestation in the high-end automobiles with which 007 stars in chases in which the inventions and gadgets supplied by “Q”, the scientist in charge of technology, help him get out of the most compromising situations on the right foot.

As is often noted in works of fiction, any resemblance to reality is mere coincidence. The phrase can be applied to the diet you follow James Bond.

Beluga caviar, Dom Perignon champagne, vodka and martini cocktails “shaken, not stirred” (Shaken, not stirred, in the original) and above all the indeterminate number of cigarettes that he smoked in the first installments of the saga, would never be recommended. by a doctor to his patients.

There is also no shortage of beautiful women in the Bond universe, usually one good and one bad, who will end up falling at the feet of a seducer, more concerned with maintaining his reputation as a womanizer than with romantic love.

man takes a photo of the wax figure of Sean Conery, the first actor to step into the shoes of agent 007. (EFE/ANDY RAIN)

007 as a sexist symbol

It is precisely this relationship with women, relegated to subordinate roles or treated as simple objects of decoration, that has caused some to consider the character created by Ian Fleming a symbol of the most stale and outdated machismo.

A reproach that went up a notch when Cary Fukunaga, director of “No Time to Die” (2021), the twenty-fifth installment of the series, considered the construction of the character played by Sean Connery as “basically a rapist”.

Man looks at a poster for the James Bond film ‘A View to a Kill’ at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany. (EPA/DANIEL NAUPOLD)

License to change

Since the Scottish actor put a face to the first James Bondfive other actors have given life to the Secret Agentand each of them gave a different character and personality to the character.

In some way these changes in face reflect the evolution of a society in continuous movement. The supervillains, portrayed in a very simplified way in the first installments, reflect the threat to peace and the fear of nuclear holocaust typical of the bipolar world typical of the Cold War.

This vision changed and greed, revenge and social and geopolitical and social current events came into play. A world where power was no longer just a matter of nuclear arsenals and the control of information has become a weapon of domination and destruction.

Will the next be a woman? James Bond?

In times of #MeToo, with a more sensitized society and judging the excesses of this type of characters on a different scale, the debate has been opened about whether the next installment of the saga will star a woman. Little is known and it is nothing more than speculation.

What does seem clear is that the last James Bond It has a more feminine side and moves away from the masculine myth embodied by Sean Connery.

A change that was seen in “Skyfall” (2012), the first film starring David Craig, in which James Bond He emerged from the sea wearing only a swimsuit. A clear allusion to the scene in which Ursula Andress emerged from the depths of the sea in a bikini in the film that inaugurated the saga in 1962, “James Bond against Dr. No”.

These are definitely different times for society and Her Majesty’s secret services, which, led by a woman, prepare their first super-agents to save the world from villains and criminals, both male and female.

Reliable, trustworthy and easy. Multimedia news agency in Spanish.

2023-09-30 19:04:03
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