President Donald Trump and James Bond Villainy?
Silhouette Man
The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,845MI6 Agent
So, some six months in, I thought it was time we analysed the presidency of Donald J. Trump, not politically, but from the perspective of Bond 25 and beyond.
The earliest response to the Trump presidency from a Bondian point of view came in January 2017 after he was inaugurated from Purvis and Wade saying how difficult it would be from a script-writing point of view to write a modern Bond villain when there was a real life one in the White House. See articles here: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-01-30/james-bond-screenwriters-say-trump-makes-it-difficult-to-continue-the-007-franchise and here: https://townhall.com/columnists/christiantoto/2017/04/12/donald-trump-is-not-a-bond-villain-n2312300
This seemed rather a cop out, considering that the Bond films traditionally ignored current affairs trends (there are some exceptions of course, like the energy crisis plot in The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974) in favour of villains like Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Hugo Drax in Moonraker (1979). In other words, they focused on megalomaniacs as villains as opposed to what the real world Soviets were up to at the time. Ian Fleming even did the same by moving away from SMERSH to SPECTRE to give the Soviets the benefit of the doubt for a while.
To my mind, President Trump most resembles the villain General Brutus Brute Clay in John Gardner's last Bond continuation novel Cold/Cold Fall (1996) as he wanted a fascist take over of the United States by using a bombing campaign against government building to takeover and use the then President Bill Clinton as their puppet to toughen up on law and order and crime etc. That is the only character I can see who resembles Trump in any real way, and yet there had been no discussion of this character or Gardner novel in the debate on Trump as a potential Bond villain. Strange, but given it's a Gardner Bond continuation novel, not altogether unexpected either. The novel is however well worth a read by the Bond fan in the current US Alt-Right political climate.
So this is the thread to discuss the potentiality of a President Trump inspired Bond villain in an upcoming Bond film, novel or comic strip. Please note that it is not a thread to attack Trump politically as such threads already exist on AJB if one wants to seek them out. This is not the thread for that type of thing, but rather the place to discuss how, if at all, the Trump presidency will influence James Bond villainy in the years to come and especially how it might influence Bond 25 scheduled for release in November 2019.
So I open the floor (of the House?) to those who want to discuss all aspects of the Trump presidency's potential influence on future Bond villainy...
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Comments
Could be Baine ( Obviously Batman not Bond I know )
Looking like he's in charge, when really someone else is pulling the strings
( Putin ) .. that could be Blofeld in DAF
Yes, interesting points of comparison there, TP.
I like Trump being likened to Willard Whyte in DAF with Putin-Blofeld really pulling the strings behind him. If Trump is going to be impeached at some point further down the line, then the Russian collusion allegations seem the most likely cause. It's all slowly unravelling like a Russian doll being slowly opened part by part.
Trump is an embarassment to the United States and all that it stands for, and I apologize to the world that this we failed in our democracy to keep someone like him out of the Oval Office.
All this said, basing a villain on him would lead to a laughably ineffective and buffoonish caricature of a villain, taking the Bond series down even further in its inability to come up with someone truly threatening.
I think it's silly to say it's much harder to write a James Bond plot because of Trump. Fleming wrote the first Bond novel while Stalin was in power. Mao (tragically) lived and ruled many years after that. Many horrible, power-hungry and attention-addicted men and some women lived and ruled while Bond novels and movies were made. If anyone believes Trump is comparable in villainy to Stalin, that person needs a time-out and a long hard think.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/30/james-bond-007-relevant-donald-trump-oligarchs
That said, I don't think they will go down the "Trump as Bond villain" route at all in Bond 25. There are plenty of other interesting things going on in the world at the minute and the US is still very much an ally of the UK, so the screenwriters would have to tread very carefully in my opinion. With the main proponents of this rather daft villain idea now gone from Bond 25 (Purvis and Wade of course) I assume the new writer will mean a sea change in the film story?
Wow, that was brilliant!!!!
Thanks, GM {[]
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
The Bond films never make direct attacks on real people or countries. To create a Trump-like character, they could use a real estate mogul for a villain, but that's not what Trump is to the public anymore and wouldn't be as relevant. To create a world leader like Trump, they would need to create a fake country like they did in LALD, but that may be too comic-book for Bond these days. They could just create a villain with a Trump-like personality who is a public figure in the Bond world. Whatever they do, they don't want to make it too relevant to what's going on in the world today because it will date the film too much.
True. The ultimte irony is that Donald Trump is the most popular President in recent history -- if not ever -- yet he doesn't own the platform which would proclaim him as such. No other president -- while campaigning or while in office -- has turned out crowds like this man has. Sometimes 30,000 at a shot. When Hillary was campaigning in Florida, with Obama, she didn't even turn out the same number of attendees in three rallies combined to just one of the rallies Trump had in the same area.
SH, I respect the heck out of you, but your post overlooks the fact that a lot of us out here are intelligent enough to see past the MSM brainwashing machine and DO NOT think of Trump as a big bad villain. (If you want a true villain, take a look at the track record of his opponent in the election.)
Sure, he says some inappropriate things, but when you consider that the previous president did stuff like give Iran billions of dollars (in cash!), I'd say a couple offensive tweets/illicit affairs is an improvement.
If you want to compare crowds, how about comparing the considerably larger crowd Obama drew at his inauguration in comparison to Trump's? You can't blame the media for making Trump look bad. He puts all the bad stuff about him up on his own Twitter account or says it at rallies or on television! Perhaps the next Bond villain should be publishing the details of his evil plans on Twitter?
Wait what, I thought Trump’s was “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period”?!
https://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/49721/the-short-lived-non-argumentative-polite-discussion-political-thread/
Trump bashing has become so much a mainstay for network and cable TV, as it were the bread and circuses of the masses, a fad like twerking that has such a wide appeal, but one which I’d leave to the Whoopie Goldbergs and Jimmy Kimmels of the world. Staying clear of these is what keeps the series a class act. It’s only when it delved into whatever was trending did any of its classiness loose any of its luster.
Thank you! Although it seems to have overheated currently. Nothing beats politics on a fan site
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Quite agree {[]
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I used to want your job. But I've had the cure
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM