'Don’t make James Bond woke'? 9 times 007 already dismantled its own macho mythology
James Bond may be built on old-school machismo, but the franchise has spent decades questioning 007’s masculinity, vulnerability and place in a changing world.
Keith Hamshere/Getty Images
- Morgan Jeffery
Published: Thursday, 9 July 2026 at 7:00 am
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"Bond is so unrealistic, so a hint of reality is good, but let's not try and make it woke," Idris Elba recently told GQ.
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"I think you've got to be pure to what it is: escapism. Don't try to answer the world's taste. Just be Bond."
There is an obvious truth in that. James Bond has always been built around fantasy: the cars, cocktails, gadgets, casinos, exotic locations and impossible escapes, all centred on a man who appears capable of handling almost any threat.
But "just being Bond" has never meant remaining completely unchanged.
For all that the franchise can be accused of being regressive, old-fashioned or fuelled by testosterone, it has repeatedly questioned its own assumptions. Across more than 60 years, the films have challenged Bond’s attitudes, exposed the limits of his masculinity and allowed his apparent invulnerability to crack.
The series has rarely evolved by abandoning the formula altogether. Instead, it has brought new perspectives into Bond’s world, placed him alongside women who can rival or outrank him, and reframed his emotional detachment as damage rather than strength.
Those changes have not always gone far enough. Female characters introduced as equals have still become romantic conquests, while attempts at LGBTQ+ representation have often been fleeting.
But the fact remains that escapism and self-examination are not mutually exclusive, and Bond has often stayed relevant by unpicking its own mythology without losing the elements audiences recognise.
Here are nine times the franchise challenged its macho reputation – and proved that Bond has always changed, even when he stays the same.
1. The Spy Who Loved Me introduced a woman who was Bond’s equal
Roger Moore and Barbara Bach on the set of The Spy Who Love Me. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
The term "Bond girl" has often suggested a fairly rigid role: a beautiful woman who crosses 007’s path, becomes romantically involved with him and frequently requires rescuing before the credits roll.
Major Anya Amasova, played by Barbara Bach in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, is something more interesting. She is effectively Bond’s Soviet counterpart: an accomplished KGB agent operating under the codename Triple X.
Her introductory scene knowingly plays with the audience’s assumptions. We see a man (played by Michael Billington, who himself auditioned several times to play Bond) in bed with a woman (Bach) before he is summoned for an urgent mission, apparently establishing him as the Soviet answer to Bond.
But it is the woman who gets up and answers the call. She is Agent Triple X; the man is simply the lover she leaves behind.
The film does not completely escape the conventions of its period, and Anya ultimately becomes another of Bond’s romantic conquests. Nevertheless, she competes with him, challenges his ego and possesses skills and intelligence comparable to his own.
She is not simply entering Bond’s world. For much of the film, he is forced to share it with her.
2. Licence to Kill allowed Bond to be emotionally damaged
Talisa Soto and Timothy Dalton on the set of Licence to Kill. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
Timothy Dalton’s two-film run is sometimes dismissed as an awkward bridge between the lighter Roger Moore era and Pierce Brosnan’s blockbuster revival. In retrospect, however, Dalton’s portrayal looks strikingly modern.
Licence to Kill (1989) removes Bond from his usual institutional setting and sends him on a deeply personal mission after the brutal attack on his friend Felix Leiter and the murder of Felix’s wife, Della.
This Bond is angry, obsessive and psychologically wounded. His vendetta places him in conflict with M, costs him his licence to kill and exposes the destructive side of the loyalty and aggression usually presented as heroic qualities.
Dalton’s 007 is still dangerous and physically commanding, but the film does not pretend that his emotional detachment is evidence of perfect masculine control. It is partly a defence mechanism – one that begins to fail when the violence reaches people he loves.
Almost 20 years before Daniel Craig’s debut, Licence to Kill was already exploring the idea of Bond as a bruised, emotionally compromised man rather than an invulnerable fantasy figure.
3. Judi Dench’s M put a woman in charge of 007
Daniel Craig and Judi Dench in Quantum of Solace. Danjaq, LLC, United Artists Corporation, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc
Casting Judi Dench as M in GoldenEye (1995) was significant before she had even spoken a line.
For the first time in the official film series, Bond’s commanding officer was played by a woman. More importantly, Dench’s M was not written as a symbolic appointment who would immediately be dazzled by 007’s charm. She was authoritative, analytical and entirely willing to question whether Bond remained useful.
The dynamic altered the traditional power structure of the series. Bond could still seduce women, defy authority and behave as though ordinary rules did not apply to him, but the person with the institutional power to deploy, discipline or dismiss him was now a woman who understood his methods perfectly well.
Dench proved so successful that she remained in the role across two different Bond eras, appearing opposite both Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.
Bond may have been the man with the gun, but M was the person who told him where to point it.
4. GoldenEye openly interrogated Bond’s masculinity
Pierce Brosnan as James Bond with Samantha Bond as Moneypenny in GoldenEye. Keith Hamshere/Getty Images
GoldenEye did not merely cast a woman as M. It made Bond’s changing cultural position part of the story.
Dench’s M famously describes him as "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur" and "a relic of the Cold War", confronting the possibility that the qualities once celebrated by the series might now make its hero outdated.
The exchange works because Bond is not suddenly transformed into a model employee. He remains recognisably Bond: flippant, instinctive and convinced that his methods will ultimately be vindicated. But the film is no longer willing to let him operate without comment.
His relationship with Moneypenny is also reframed. Samantha Bond’s version openly challenges his flirtation, warning that his behaviour could amount to sexual harassment. Their exchanges retain the customary innuendo, but she is presented as a participant capable of setting the terms rather than a secretary helplessly pining after him.
GoldenEye’s solution was not to discard the Bond formula. It allowed the formula to become self-aware.
5. Casino Royale showed that Bond was emotionally inexperienced
Eva Green and Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. 2006 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists
Casino Royale rebuilt the character by stripping away much of the polished persona associated with him.
Daniel Craig’s Bond is introduced before he has fully become 007. He is physically formidable but emotionally immature: arrogant, impulsive and more comfortable reading danger than understanding intimacy.
His relationship with Vesper Lynd gradually exposes that vulnerability. Bond falls in love, imagines a life outside MI6 and allows another person to penetrate the defensive shell – the "armour" – he has built around himself.
The film also repeatedly subjects his supposedly indestructible body to pain and humiliation. He is bloodied, poisoned, tortured and forced to depend on others for survival.
None of this makes him less commanding as an action hero. Instead, Casino Royale suggests that masculinity built entirely around invulnerability is an illusion.
The suave, emotionally remote Bond persona does not emerge because he has never been hurt. It emerges because he has.
6. Skyfall permitted Bond to destabilise Silva’s sexual intimidation
Daniel Craig as James Bond with Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva in Skyfall. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions
Skyfall contains one of the franchise’s most intriguing exchanges when Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) attempts to unsettle Bond through physical and sexual intimidation.
Silva touches Bond and suggests that the experience represents unfamiliar territory. Bond responds: "What makes you think this is my first time?"
The line is deliberately ambiguous. It could be a genuine allusion to Bond having had sexual experiences with men, or simply an improvised response designed to deprive Silva of control.
Either way, Bond does not react with panic, disgust or a desperate assertion of his heterosexual masculinity. He treats Silva’s suggestion as unremarkable and turns the intended provocation back on him.
It is only a moment, not a developed exploration of Bond’s sexuality. But for a character so closely associated with heterosexual conquest, the ease of the response is significant. Bond’s masculinity is presented as secure enough not to require a defensive reaction.
7. Skyfall briefly reinvented Moneypenny as a field agent
Naomie Harris during a press tour of Skyfall in 2012. Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis via Getty Images
Naomie Harris’s character is initially introduced in Skyfall as Eve, an MI6 operative working alongside Bond in the field.
She drives through crowded streets, exchanges gunfire with an assassin and makes the difficult decision to take a shot that could save a mission – even though Bond is in the line of fire.
Only at the end of the film is her full identity revealed: Eve Moneypenny.
Admittedly, the reinvention is short-lived. By the closing scenes, Moneypenny has chosen to leave active fieldwork and take up the familiar desk outside M’s office.
Even so, Harris’s casting changed the assumptions surrounding the character. This Moneypenny had not spent her entire career waiting for Bond to appear in the doorway. She had undertaken dangerous assignments, made life-or-death decisions and experienced the realities of Bond’s profession herself.
Her flirtation with 007 therefore came with a greater sense of equality. She knew what Bond did because she had done it too.
8. No Time to Die gave the 007 number to Nomi
Lashana Lynch and Daniel Craig in No Time to Die. Alamy
After Bond retires from MI6 in 2021's No Time to Die, his famous numerical designation is reassigned to Nomi, played by Lashana Lynch.
The resulting tension is knowingly petty. Bond is visibly irritated that someone else has inherited his number, while Nomi enjoys reminding him that the institution has continued without him.
Her presence challenges the idea that 007 is an identity Bond naturally owns because of his exceptional status. Within MI6, it is a job title – and one that can be held by a Black woman just as legitimately as by James Bond himself.
The film eventually restores Bond’s symbolic ownership of the number, with Nomi asking that he be redesignated 007 for the final mission. But that gesture works precisely because the number was hers to surrender.
Nomi does not become a female James Bond. Instead, she demonstrates that Bond is not the only person capable of being 007.
9. No Time to Die quietly acknowledged Q’s sexuality
Ben Whishaw as Q in Skyfall. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions
No Time to Die also included the franchise’s clearest LGBTQ+ representation when Bond and Moneypenny interrupt Q as he prepares dinner for a date with a love interest.
The moment is brief – so brief that Ben Whishaw later expressed disappointment that more was not made of it – but it casually establishes that a central member of Bond’s MI6 team is gay.
There is no dramatic revelation, coming out speech or reaction from Bond. Q’s irritation stems from his colleagues disrupting his evening rather than any anxiety about disclosing his sexuality.
Such a fleeting reference meant that viewers wanting meaningful representation were understandably left unsatisfied. Still, in a franchise historically dominated by a narrow and aggressively heterosexual conception of masculinity, the scene marked another small shift in what the world surrounding Bond could encompass.
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Authors
Morgan Jeffery
Morgan Jeffery is as a TV and Film expert and has appeared on BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 5 Live and Sky Atlantic.
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