I'm glad you asked. People of different colour obviously will have experienced Life differently, which in turn would have an influence on personality. Skills can be learned, but life experience is unique and greatly affected by things such as background and the obstacles placed in our path on the way to maturity. As a youth, a black Bond will have experienced racism in its many forms in ways completely unknown to the character Ian Fleming created, which in turn would inform his personality and make him quite a different man than anything found in Fleming. He would be a totally new character, so why call him James Bond? It's completely unnecessary.
Let's just say Idris Elba becomes the next James Bond (hypothetically).
First of all the background you are talking about, wouldn't be very different from the current James Bond. His relatively rich parents get killed when he's still a child (or maybe in this case, he's adopted and his adoptive parents die) and he grows up with another rich member of the family (which is regarded as what officially happened to the original James Bond) or maybe he is immediately put in a kind of spy training programme or something like that.
They are constantly changing Bond's background in the film series, so there are plenty of possibilities. The point is, that the skin color doesn't necessarily mean that his youth was different from the original 'white' character of the books. They don't even have to explain it in the film. I'm just saying that being black shouldn't necessarily change him into a completely different or unbelievable character.
One thing is sure: he shows signs of extreme intelligence and skills and is therefore simply the best in pretty much everything he does. Skin color doesn't really matter if you have that kind of talent. You're above everything. Everyone will look up at you.
Because, according to my theory, the 'black James Bond' grew up in pretty much the same environments as the 'white James Bond', I don't see why his personality would be so different than the Bond we have now.
He could still be a snobbish, stylish, cynical, brilliant, slightly tortured (in the last movies this characteristic is getting more obvious), womanizing secret agent who calls himself Bond... James Bond and who likes his Martini shaken, not stirred.
P.S.
I'm not saying there HAS to be a black Bond, but I'm just stating that it doesn't necessarily harm the essence of the character or the series, if executed properly.
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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019
Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019