5 Characters That Should Get A Gender Swapped Adaptation (And 1 That Really Shouldn't)

After Doctor Who, the character most often brought up, interestingly both by supporters and critics of the gender swap concept, for a potential female future is fellow British icon James Bond. You can kind of see why this might be. The character's post-World War 2, Cold War-era origins have left him with a bunch of archaic attitudes that some would like to see updated for the twenty-first century. Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie's Evelyn Salt is a fairly solid demonstration that a character written as a male spy can still work well if reconceived as a woman. However, Bond is nevertheless one of the worst choices for a female reboot.

Ultimately, for some characters, gender isn't what defines them, isn't what makes the character who they are. For The Doctor, for example, the only character-essential element of their physical body is its capacity to change into something new every few years. For Bond, however, his maleness and his own particular brand of masculinity are inherently tied to what defines him as a character, not to mention makes him distinct from any other super spy from Bourne to Hunt (both of which could easily be replaced by women).

Bond may have some regressive sexual politics, but his womanising and casual misogyny are as much cornerstones of who he is as really specific cocktail orders. They are elements that tie together tonally diverse past interpretations as being discernibly the same character. If, as Danny Boyle suggested pre-creative differences, a director did want to make a "Bond for the #MeToo era" they would do better to make a film that critiques these central aspects of his personality rather than remove them entirely.

The addition of Judi Dench's M, one of the most beloved and successful examples of movie character gender swapping, gave an outlet for criticising Bond as a "misogynist dinosaur" and relic of the Cold War, while maintaining his heroic side. Bond's supporting cast, therefore, obviously has gender fluid potential, which could provide further responses to the character's old fashioned masculinity.

Even if Bond remains male, then, there's no reason not to have a female tech geek assume the role of Q once Ben Whishaw hangs up his lab coat, or have a woman in the already racially fluid role of Bond's frequent CIA ally Felix (Felicia?) Leiter.

What Should We Have Instead?

Seen in the obviously ludicrous Bond not Blond response to Daniel Craig's casting, any physical change to the character will meet some resistance somewhere. But a race swap would be easier to do while staying true to the essence of the character than a gender swap, even if the popular choice of Idris Elba will be too old to commit to the required multi-film contract by the time that Craig leaves the part in a couple of years.

In the end, there will always be those who say that such gender and race swapped casting will always be a poor substitute for writing diverse original characters. Really, though, why can't we have both?