James Bond is Dead In The Water

The latest James Bond film Spectre has had largely positive reviews. But I think it unlikely we'll see another film in the genre.

Why? Killed off by its own stars, and the curse of political correctness.

James Bond the character and the novels are very much of their time with the first published in 1953. As we've seen from Mad Men, women were largely men's chattels. They didn't have bank accounts and married women had to leave work when they got pregnant  (this happened to my mother). It was a man's world, and the Bond films, even though the latest ones were not from the pen of Fleming, reflect this.

But rather than enjoy the films in the spirit of the historical period in which they were set, today's films are set in current times and therein lies the rub. Bond is described even by the actor who plays him, Daniel Craig, as a misogynist and uninspiring (source: The Verge).

Meanwhile, the actors who play "the Bond girls" were very quick to demand waspishly to be called women and actors, not Bond girls. Even Pussy Galore chipped in, actor Honor Blackman who appeared in one of the early films and is now in her 90s.

Gosh, how sensitive the luvvies are: anyone would think this was The Seagull or Hamlet, not just an entertaining couple of hours where a buff bloke in a tight suit goes around crashing cars, shooting people and using cliches to get women into bed!

But once you have Daniel Craig saying he'd rather "slash his own wrists than do another Bond film," you realise the franchise is probably Dead In The Water.