The James Bond franchise is taking a cue straight out of the Steven Spielberg playbook, digitally removing all guns for… reasons. Should you be perusing the Prime Video James Bond Collection, and your brain suddenly hurts, relax. You’re not having a stroke, nor are you encountering the Mandela Effect. That’s just good ol’ fashioned censorship. The edit leaves poor Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan posing with handfuls of air, the teaser art looking less like hard-boiled secret agents and more like vapid male models posing for this season’s collection for Dolce & Gabanna.
The negative press was so noticeable that the entire image set was scrapped and replaced with screenshots as of Saturday Oct. 4, with firearms still omitted, but we got the evidence before it was taken down. Now that a controversial new company has their mitts on the billion-dollar intellectual property, is it time to start panicking? A company offended by the sight of a spy brandishing a firearm does not really understand Bond lore or iconography. Does that artistic decision portend things to come from a company out of touch with the fan base? We have some thoughts. At the risk of diving headlong into conspiracy waters, we’ll stop short, and merely dip our toes in it.
James Bond and His License to Kill Permit to Brood Sternly
The eagle-eyed Bond aficionados at fansite mi6-hq.com caught this retroactive edit first, a move evidently accommodating modern sensibilities. You can clearly see the pistol in Connery’s hand in the raw images used in Dr. No DVD copies circulating online, such as this version from the Dutch retailer Bol. Movie buffs looking for collectibles might want to hang on to those. No one is comparing the British spy to John Wick or Rambo, but the PPK pistol is an iconic component of the character and mystique. It’s more than a photo, showing someone requested the promotional photos to be edited, not once but twice.
Usually, it’s only nipples getting airbrushed out of film posters, but studio art departments have another forbidden item to worry about besides errant areolas. This is painfully stupid as pretty much every book cover/novelization, DVD case, billboard, Blu-ray wrapper, magazine shoot, vintage poster, video game box art, and collector’s edition printed over the last sixty years features the character posing with a gun. The whole aesthetic and tone are established in the opening gun-barrel intro, dueling a central plot point in The Man with the Golden Gun.
There is a precedent behind the modernization. Director Steven Spielberg digitally disarmed FBI agents in ET: The Extraterrestrial, thinking it too intense for a kid’s film when he re-released it post Y2K. Spielberg, after much backlash, backtracked on the intrusive censorship in a Time interview, stating, “no film should be revised based on the lenses we now are either voluntarily or being forced to peer through.” Despite that mea culpa, he had started an annoying trend. Max (HBO streaming) got flack for their clumsy edits of nicotine products from posters in 2022, per Vulture.
Does Anyone Actually Want a Softer, Cuddlier Bond?
This could, and we emphasize “could,” simply be Amazon gauging the community to see which changes and tonal shifts will fly, and which reinventions are going to earn eye rolls. They notably left the 007 logo, featuring a pistol, intact. This is Amazon after all. They bought this IP to make boatloads of money, not for any deep artistic purposes; multinational corporations are moral vacuums. With Amazon taking over complete control of the films since purchasing the rights, there have been whispers that the new Bond was doomed. Changes haven’t officially been announced, but the poster issue sends conflicting messages concerning what direction Amazon is taking the franchise.
Strangely, other posters/promos on the Prime Video site clearly show firearms, so boss Bezos’ rationale on this one is muddled at best. Maybe the future films will be more about martial arts and gadgets than shooting bad guys? Your guess is as good as ours, and right now the Bond faithful are not pleased. In a time when the action genre has developed to foster multiple action franchises and heroes, it’s important to maintain focus, embrace the identity of the character, and not make every character a generic, interchangable good guy. Right?
Amazon’s Censors Miss the Point of Ian Fleming’s Creation
The critique goes beyond historical preservation, censorship, or respect for the original film crew’s hard work and vision (though those are all valid reasons in themselves), but cuts to the heart of who Bond is. He’s a killer. All the suave mannerisms and tendencies — his impeccable wine selection, table etiquette, and upper-class smugness — are there specifically to complicate or contrast his brutality. He executes threats to the security of the United Kingdom, he holds grudges, and takes pleasure in his wet work with a pun or two.
Does anyone at Amazon understand that? In their defense, this argument predates the Amazon deal. Last month, Bond author Anthony Horowitz remarked, “If I was asked tomorrow to write the script, I wouldn’t be able to do it,” the series stuck in a dead end of their own making. This adds fuel to that fire, cranking up the pressure for the next film to not bungle the beloved character in what can logically only be yet another origin-story reboot, considering the finale of the last movie. Insert your own “you only live twice” joke here.
