10 James Bond Screenwriting Lessons You Can Learn From Spectre

2. Give The Bond Girl A Backstory

After years of Bond girls being little more than arm candy, the Pierce Brosnan years attempted to give Bond€™s female co-stars substantial roles. Unfortunately, more often than not this resulted in characters like Christmas Jones, a nuclear physicist hilariously played by Denise Richards, and Jinx, a poor attempt at making a "female Bond" played by Halle Berry. Instead of giving Bond€™s female co-stars more dignity than characters with names like Pussy Galore, attempts to make these women into Bond€™s equal never worked out. What the writers didn't get then is that a Bond girl doesn't have to be Bond's equal to be an interesting character. Madeleine Swann might not yet make the list of most iconic Bond girls, but because Swann plays a significant role as the daughter of one of Bond€™s former villains she enters the narrative with stronger footing that previous Bond girls. While Madeline eventually plays the role of €œdamsel in distress€ at the end of the film, her character doesn€™t just move the plot forward by waiting for her turn to get laid by 007. In that way, Swann is tied to the narrative directly and isn't in the film just because Bond happened to stumble upon a beautiful woman during his mission. The writers of Spectre understood it isn't about giving the Bond girls a cool job or making them seem as tough as Bond is; it is about making them relatable to Bond's fans by giving them interesting backstories that support the narrative.