Just as there is a long cinema tradition of James Bond himself, there is also the long tradition of what has come to be known as the "Bond Girl." There is always at least one beautiful woman that crosses James Bond's path on every adventure. Often they are little more than a love interest, but sometimes they've been his equals and occasionally they're even his adversaries. Ana de Armas becomes the newest member of this tradition in No Time to Die but the actress says her primary goal with her character was to break out of stereotypes and give a performance that represents women well.
Ana de Armas spoke with the Mexican edition of Vogue and she said there (translated via Google from Spanish) that the main thing she spoke with director Cary Fukunaga about regarding her character was making sure that her character was realistic and not falling victim to classic stereotypes. According to de Armas...
What matters most to me is representing women and female characters in an empowered, realistic way and outside of stereotypes. In this movie of agent 007 I have been aware of paying the greatest attention and being careful with the subject. That was the main thing I addressed when I spoke with the director.
The James Bond franchise has been going for almost 60 years on the screen and so that means that times have changed a great deal for the super spy. It's difficult to argue that many of the women Bond encountered, especially in the early years, weren't falling victim to stereotypes and "empowered" is certainly not a word that would be used to describe a lot of them.
And because of the overall success of the franchise and the tradition that has been created, you can still see some of that creeping into the more modern films. But Ana de Armas didn't want to be just another "Bond Girl." It sounds like the fact that she wouldn't be that sort of character was her primary concern when she first came on, or was considering coming on board, No Time to Die.
We've certainly seen in the trailers that Ana de Armas' character can handle herself in a fight, and that's good, but it's only part of making the character realistic or empowered. Check her out in the most recent trailer below.
We will likely learn more about the character as we get closer to release, which is still planned for November at this moment. We're all wondering at this point if the movie could see a further delay. On the one hand, nobody wants to wait for more James Bond, we could all use the hero right now, but at the same time it's unclear if the world will be in a good enough place next month.
