Okay everybody, I know it's still pretty early in the day, but a whole lot of woman is about to come your way, so hold on. The newest trailer for Spectre , the upcoming Bond movie, was just released, and it introduces three all-new Bond girls, so fans have some catching up to do. (As does society, since we're still referring to the grown-ass women who cross paths with James Bond as "girls" and largely refusing to learn their names. But I digress.) This movie — and actually all the films in the franchise that star Daniel Craig as Bond — seems to be doing a better job of fleshing out the female characters than its predecessors, so progress is definitely being made here. Why, just in this batch of ladies, there's the first Mexican Bond girl, a doctor, and the oldest Bond girl in the history of the series. So golf claps all round.
The first of the three whose casting was announced was Léa Seydoux, a French actress who plays Dr. Madeleine Swann, a psychologist at a private clinic in the Austrian Alps. She gets a lot of screen time in the trailer, which seems to prove that she's a useful contemporary of Bond's rather than just a pretty face, staying cool under pressure and understanding the situations she finds herself in even when they require more than swapping spit.
She seems to be the one viewers are supposed to root for, and right off the bat as far as being a capable human being, she reminds me a lot of Strawberry Fields, played by Gemma Arterton in Quantum of Solace, or Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green in Casino Royale. Both were strong, confident women who didn't seem to need Bond's help — or even affections, in Fields' case — to accomplish their goals. (Let's just hope Swann is less treacherous than that second one.)
The second Bond girl to be announced was a character named Estrella, played by the Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman. Unfortunately, that's about all that's known about her — not even a last name! — so it's likely that Sigman is killed off early. But as I mentioned earlier, she's the first actress of Mexican descent to play a Bond girl, so her importance can't be overstated.
And finally there is Lucia Sciarra, the widow of an infamous criminal. Sciarra is played by Italian actress Monica Belluci, who at 50 is the oldest actress ever to be cast as a Bond girl. Woo woo! Like Sigman, she doesn't appear to have a ton to do beyond that, but it's possible that she's a femme fatale whose role was minimized in the trailer because she has more to do in the movie. Here's hoping, anyway. I feel like maturity is a really specific (and powerful!) thing in a Bond girl, so in that way, Lucia Sciarra reminds me of previous romantic interests who tended toward that end of the spectrum, instead of the hot young thing end. People like Honor Blackman, who was 39 when she played... ahem... Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, or Halle Berry, who was 36 when she took on Jinx in Die Another Day.
All in all, I'm pretty impressed with the franchise for covering such a wide range as far as age, diversity, and personality types, so I'm excited to see if their work pays off when the movie comes out on Nov. 6, 2015. And in the meantime, check out all these badass women in the trailer.
Can't wait!
Images: MGM/Columbia (3)
