Who should have played Jinx? And are the worst Bond girls American?
Number24
NorwayPosts: 22,334MI6 Agent
I've just seen the first part of JBR's review of DAD.One of the things the duo agreed on is that Halle Berry was miscast as Jinx. In that case there is an obvous question: Who should have played the role? Let's assume we're talking of a better (pre Lee Tamahori?) movie with better dialogue.
Here are some suggestions from me:
Charlize Theron - in 2002 Theron had some good movies behing her like the Cider House Rules and she would be making Monster the next year. In other words well known, but not super famous. Incredibly beautiful, a little bit exotic and a fine actress.
Salma Hayek - we know from inside information she screentested for DAD and I think she would have been great. Her screentesting shows EON was considering actresses who weren't American. Here she is with Pierce in 2004:
Aishwarya Rai - I know Jinx is an American agent, so it can be questioned if Rai would fit the role. But she was 29 at the time, unknown in the West and a superstar in Bollywood.
Do you have any opinions on the matter.
Here are some suggestions from me:
Charlize Theron - in 2002 Theron had some good movies behing her like the Cider House Rules and she would be making Monster the next year. In other words well known, but not super famous. Incredibly beautiful, a little bit exotic and a fine actress.
Salma Hayek - we know from inside information she screentested for DAD and I think she would have been great. Her screentesting shows EON was considering actresses who weren't American. Here she is with Pierce in 2004:
Aishwarya Rai - I know Jinx is an American agent, so it can be questioned if Rai would fit the role. But she was 29 at the time, unknown in the West and a superstar in Bollywood.
Do you have any opinions on the matter.
Comments
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Check it out, you won’t be disappointed
She's funny too, watch her in Arrested Development (a guest role full of James Bond references)
As you say, the script still would have to be rewritten with better dialog. I'm sure I would have liked Jinx better if she'd had better lines, so change to a more likable actress might not have made that big a difference.
Terri Hatcher's scenes in TND also suffer from really weak dialog. It's hard to properly credit the actor's contribution when the script is that poor.
Usually people talk about Monster, which I've never seen. Apparently she achieved a Christian Bale style body transformation for that role, which is especially daring for an attractive young actress, as Hollywood expects actresses to stay slim and pretty, not gain weight and look scary.
If she was Fury Road/Atomic Blonde level tough in a Brosnan-Bond movie, she would have made Brosnan look damn near useless, relying his silly little machine gun while she tears the bad guys limb from limb with her bare hands!
Suddenly I need to see this alternate universe DaD with Theron as Jinx instead of Berry, I'm having so much fun imagining it!
I agree that Charlize Theron could easily have upstaged Brosnan in the action stakes. Eon's mooted idea of starting a spin-off Jinx franchise might have had better legs with Theron in the role. (Though any debate about which actress has the better legs would be moot!)
I don't think I'm alone in thinking the American Bond girls in modern times haven't been good. When was the last good (in terms of story and acting, not morals) American Bond girl? Holly Goodhead? Pam Bouvier?
Why is this? I think part of it is the fact that they are Americans arent't seen as exotic, at least in movies. But I think the onther reasons are how the characters are written, directed and somethimes acted.
Discuss ...
So Jinx, Pam and Holly are like female 'action Leiters', and Bond's sexually charged alliances with them offer a fantasy resolution to a British post-war anxiety dating back to Fleming: the UK's questionable importance on the world stage as a post-imperial nation in the shadow of the USA as a technocratic superpower. British, European and Asian Bond girls don't have to carry that particular transatlantic baggage, whether or not they're espionage professionals - and neither do Tiffany Case, May Day, the Kim Basinger Domino or Paris Carver, as vamps, sympathetic molls or gold-diggers. Certainly by DAD, any sex-inflected, fantasy resolution to implied transatlantic rivalry was feeling rather cliched - more of a 20th century theme for the genre - and this may explain some of the fan fall-out with Jinx (or Christmas Jones before her).
I think it depends on the film in question. Certainly in the case of DAD, casting Halle Berry, who won a Best Supporting Oscar during production, would have helped to raise the film's profile. Similarly, casting Denise Richards in TWINE was a definite attempt to appeal to the younger American demographic of viewers.
"I don't think I'm alone in thinking the American Bond girls in modern times haven't been good. When was the last good (in terms of story and acting, not morals) American Bond girl? Holly Goodhead? Pam Bouvier?"
I think it comes down in the end to good chemistry with the Bond actor of the day. This is an area where (in my opinion) some of the American Bond girls fall short- particularly Denise Richards and Halle Berry with Brosnan, and Tanya Roberts with Moore.
I don't think the supposed lack of 'exotic quality' with regards to American nationality is the main problem here, necessarily. It ought to be remembered that the best Bond girl of the last twenty years was British- Eva Green as Vesper Lynd in CR. What matters is strong acting and writing, and tangible chemistry with the main star. CR, for example has this in spades where TWINE and DAD are markedly less successful.
"The spectre of defeat..."
French, surely, though representing the UK's Treasury.
On tales where 'Bond meets his American match'...
The irony is, I think, that in the post-Craig era of Bond there may be opportunities to tell, in a relevant way, more stories about Bond sexually consummating relationships with female American agents initially seen as rivalling him. The escapist need on the part of a British audience for a fantasy resolution to the problem of 'the special relationship' may again become acute in a real world where Biden wins, de-prioritises a trade deal with the UK in his support of the Good Friday Agreement and leads a restoration of progressive globalism which leaves Brexit on the wrong side of history...
I would argue that this is essentially the function of the Felix Leiter character, at least in the older films- to depict a glamourised fantasy Anglo-centric version of the Special Relationship where the UK takes charge of solving American problems. In Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever and The Living Daylights, to name a few, Bond is shown to be more competent and effective at dealing with America's foes than Leiter and his CIA colleagues, who tend to trail hopelessly in his wake while the UK is seen to take a senior leading role.
This phenomenon reaches its peak in the Brosnan era, where Jack Wade is depicted as an embarrassing, loudmouthed boor, Bond's social and cultural opposite. Interestingly, in real life in the mid-1990s, relations between the UK and US were at something of a low, primarily due to Northern Ireland. The portrayal of the CIA and American interests in GE and TND unsubtly reflects this.
Perhaps as you say, if relations between Biden and Britain get off to a bad start, these issues will come to the fore in Bond films again...
"The spectre of defeat..."
https://youtu.be/xa2RJPrY2Og
Does anyone actually think of Vesper as English though? I can see that Green is trying the occasional word with a British accent, but she's massively French.
But when they filmed Goldfinger, Pussy Galore, was played by a British actress and they dropped the backstory. So I think that means Jill St John's Tiffany Case was the original American cinematic Bondgirl.
it never occurred to me she wasnt British. In the book she's an employee of MI6 stationed in Paris, in the film she's working for the Treasury Department. Backstory has changed slightly, but the default assumption is she's British. Was there any dialog to suggest otherwise?
Well everything she said in her heavy French accent!
I get that the character is English, but she just.. isn't.
Do you know, I don't think I've ever heard Bach speak in her natural accent: I assumed she was a Brit!
Anya certainly doesn't speak with an American accent (if not an accurate Russian one), so it's not really the same thing.
There are plenty of occasions when Bach's Queen's/Long Island accent comes out. It's definitely not a typical American accent, and her accent is distantly evolved from a Yiddish accent, but in a very New York kind of way.
Such as when?
Does Green genuinely convince as an Englishwoman to you? I am actually curious, I didn't know people thought she did.
Barbara Bach speaks in her natural accent in the scene when Jaws is tearing apart the van. She’s not trying at all in that scene.
Eva Green goes in an out of a British accent. There are so many different British accents that as an American I wouldn’t know how exactly she is supposed to sound. To me, she sounds very British with certain words and has the French mumble with other words.
I can certainly see that Green is trying the occasional word with British pronunciation (and she also seems to think that British people exhale completely before speaking for some reason!
Mind you, I guess Mathis is extremely Italian for no particular reason!
but if she is an American should she be added to the list of alltime worst BondGirls? is it a subset of actors or characters?
I don't seriously think she is that competent an actor. Jill St John was better. But the character is one of the alltime great Bondgirls, as fars I'm concerned.
I dont think I've ever seen Eva Green in anything else, is one reason it never occurred to me Vesper was anything but British. preconceptions from other appearances can influence us.
I never used to think Pussy Galore was anything but American, assuming whatever Fleming wrote to be canon unless explicitly contradicted. but because I recently watched seasons 2 and 3 of the Avengers, I now see the character as being Cathy Gale working undercover. Hard not to, she's not playing the part as a typical gangster dame, definitely more Cathy Gale than the character Fleming wrote. But Blackman has a steely sort of Katherine Hepburn type voice, no discernable accent, I'd never have guessed she was British if I hadn't done further research.
Do we count her Pussy Galore as one of these American BondGirls?
1) goes undercover in a gang, 2) plans a heist for them in which they rob a gold vault, 3) plans the use of a gas to knock out everybody in the vault, and 4) has to figure out how to pass a message to Steed while effectively held prisoner (she sends a postcard!).
It's like the audition that got her the job one year later with Auric Goldfinger!
but serious question to Number24 since its his hypothesis:
do we count either Barbara Bach or Honour Blackman as American BondGirls? is it the actress or the character?