Summary Warning! This article discusses sensitive topics including domestic abuse, misogyny, racism, and torture.
10 General Misogyny Bond isn't known for his treatment of women Close If there's one area the James Bond series is famous for, it's its general mistreatment of women. Especially early in the series life, the "Bond girls" were regulated to damsels in distress, objects of affection, and little else, having no development of their own.
In 2006, Sean Connery's first wife, Australian actress and writer Diane Cilento detailed abuse she suffered at the hands of Connery during their marriage in an autobiography. This prompted a re-examination of some troubling comments Connery made in a 1965 interview in Playboy, of all places, in which he sanctioned hitting women. It's hard to watch Connery being so flippantly sexist in Bond films with the retrospective of the active misogyny he's repeatedly demonstrated.
In the movie adaptation, the villainous henchman Oddjob is characterized as a wordless, violence-minded brute with uncomfortable implications regarding his heritage. The most blatant example might be Sean Connery's Japanese disguise in You Only Live Twice, in which the super spy sports some unnecessarily stereotypical eye prosthetics. It's hard to ignore this moment, in particular, as one of the worst-aged scenes in all of James Bond.
5 Choppy Editing Of The 60s, 70s, And Early 2000s Filmmaking practices have come a long way since the original Bond films Close It's not only the cultural aspects of James Bond that have aged less than gracefully as the franchise continues to endure. Its very filmmaking foundations have also suffered from some outdated practices in the older entries. The 60s, 70s, and early 2000s were inundated with questionable editing choices that seem far outdated by modern techniques and styles.
The most alarming example by far remains in Timothy Dalton's The Living Daylights, an often-overlooked entry in the long-winded Bond saga. In this film, Afghanistan's Mujahideen fighters help Bond against the U.S.S.R.'s government, which is hard to take seriously with present-day knowledge. In hindsight, the Mujahideen ended up forming the basis for the Taliban terrorist organization, an infamous enemy of the U.S.