James Bond, the dashing 007 of British intelligence, is famous for his way with the ladies: smooth, casual, kind of misogynistic sometimes. If you’ve watched any of the pre-Daniel Craig movies, you know what I mean. The womenfolk in the films tend to be treated a bit like furniture from Ikea: Nice to look at when they’re new, but not especially long-lasting and quickly forgotten when gone.
Look, don’t take my word for it: Here’s M calling Bond a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” in the 1995 film GoldenEye, which by the way co-stars Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, who kills her victims by crushing them with her thighs while she orgasms.
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Casino Royale made a point of flipping the script, to a limited extent, by having Daniel Craig’s Bond repeat Ursula Andress’ famous ‘walking out of water’ scene from Dr, No, but even so there’s a lot of baggage there—particularly given that First Light’s Bond is a younger (and thus, presumably, dumber, hornier, and all-around more obnoxious) version of the character: Bond just coming into bloom, as it were. Casual sexism is baked into the character and, while that might be fun in a 90-minute film, PC Gamer’s own double-0 killer Joshua Wolens recently made the point that it may be much less so over the course of a full-length videogame in which the sexist, misogynist dinosaur is you.
This is something that IO Interactive has considered as well, and—probably no great surprise here—it’s not going to give players the full Sean Connery Experience.
“It’s pretty simple, actually,” narrative and cinematic director Martin Emborg told Eurogamer. “When you look at all the films and all the interpretations, also in games and other media, it’s always seen through the lens of the decade that it’s made in. So you can tell how the same stories are being interpreted in different ways as the years progress.
“And it’s been going on for 60 years. So it’s our time to look at this character and see what does it take to save the world in 2026? And some things fall by the wayside and some things are more important than ever.”
Which isn’t to say that IO’s Bond will be like IO’s Agent 47. The 007 First Light story trailer has an obligatory Bond girl appearance (and seemingly another walking out of water moment), and a hint of the ol’ double-entendre banter. Emborg said “beautiful women are there” in the game, and Bond himself is “a young man, he’s got game, and he’s very cool.”
He also knows “that people are worried about that kind of thing,” but added, “I can’t wait for people to play the game and experience the character, because everything we’ve done in creating this game has been to give you the richest, truest Bond that we can possibly make.”
Except for the casual misogyny part, I suppose.
007 First Light is set to launch on May 27.
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