As with any movie franchise that’s been around for more than 50 years, some aspects of the James Bond series now feel problematic and uncomfortable. While the globetrotting action spectacle has been consistently praised, the franchise’s one-dimensional female representation has drawn some criticism over the years.
The Bond films tend to objectify their female characters – especially the ones dubbed “Bond girls” – while all the fun, substantial roles, like double-crossing spies and megalomaniacal villains, are reserved for men. But the franchise has a handful of strong female characters.
Honey Ryder
The “Bond girl” archetype has been criticized as sexist and one-note, but the love interest in the very first Bond movie – Honey Ryder, played by Ursula Andress in Dr. No – is still the gold standard for this trope. She’s a shell diver that Bond falls for after meeting her on a beach.
Andress became a sex symbol after the release of the movie, but unlike a lot of the subsequent Bond girls, she also got involved in the action. When Bond is captured and taken to Dr. No’s lair, so is Ryder.
Vesper Lynd
Vesper Lynd, the love interest in Casino Royale played by Eva Green, subverts the usual trope. Usually, Bond maintains a cool indifference while women fall madly in love with him, but 007 turns out to be way more interested in Vesper than she is in him.
Bond actually falls for Vesper, surprising even himself, and quits MI6 just to spend time with her. Casino Royale’s romantic subplot has a complicated conflict, because Vesper betrays Bond to save his life, and it culminates in a tragic death scene as Vesper drowns in a sinking building in Venice.
Xenia Onatopp
Most “Bond girls” and female Bond villains are depicted as femme fatales, a staple of both film noir and spy fiction, but Famke Janssen’s GoldenEye character, Xenia Onatopp, is a femme fatale in the most literal sense: she kills men during sex.
She seduces men who have information she needs, then crushes them to death with her thighs during sex. Lust killing proved to be a pretty unique Bond villain characteristic.
Sylvia Trench
These days, it’s rare for a “Bond girl” to appear in more than one movie. But Eunice Gayson’s Sylvia Trench appeared as a love interest in both the first and second Bond films, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, suggesting that she’s Bond’s on-and-off girlfriend.
She’s a lot like 007 himself. While he famously introduces himself as “Bond, James Bond,” she introduces herself as “Trench, Sylvia Trench.”
Paloma
In this year’s No Time to Die, Bond teams up with a hilariously reckless CIA agent named Paloma, played by Daniel Craig’s Knives Out co-star Ana de Armas, to infiltrate Blofeld’s birthday party in Cuba.
The only downside to the Paloma character is that she appears so briefly. With any luck, de Armas will be given a spin-off movie (or at least a larger supporting role in a subsequent Bond movie).
Tracy Bond
Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, better known as Tracy Bond, was the subversive love interest played by Diana Rigg opposite George Lazenby’s one-time Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Lazenby’s Bond movie, praised as one of the series’ finest entries, subverted the chauvinistic approach of the Sean Connery films and presented a romantic subplot in which Bond falls in love and gets married. The shocking final scene gives Tracy one of the most tragic deaths in the whole series.
Eve Moneypenny
Moneypenny is traditionally characterized as M’s secretary, stuck behind a desk and relegated to flirting with Bond. In keeping with the Craig era’s evolution of the franchise’s female characters, Moneypenny was recharacterized as a gun-toting field agent in Skyfall.
Played brilliantly by Naomie Harris, the Craig movies’ Eve Moneypenny has plenty of the kind of explosive action moments and quippy one-liners that Bond himself is known for.
Colonel Rosa Klebb
There aren’t a lot of female villains in the Bond canon. There are a couple who are introduced as love interests, like Elektra King, or eventually become love interests, like Octopussy, but the only traditional megalomaniacal bad guy who’s a woman is Colonel Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love.
The Connery era gradually built up to the reveal of Blofeld as the big bad, and the cold-hearted Klebb was introduced as one of Blofeld’s underlings at SPECTRE.
Nomi
After Bond retires from MI6 in No Time to Die’s five-year time jump, his 007 callsign is revealed to have been taken over by a new agent, Nomi, played spectacularly by Lashana Lynch.
Nomi is shown to be just as adept at carrying the legendary 007 moniker as Bond himself, handling both action beats like ziplining into Blofeld’s birthday party and one-liners like “Time to die!” with aplomb.
M (Judi Dench)
Traditionally, M is just an expository character who gives Bond his new mission after the opening credits and explains the villainous scheme he’ll be foiling. When Judi Dench became the sixth actor (and first woman) to play M on-screen, the character evolved into a dry comedic foil for 007.
Dench made for a hysterically deadpan foil opposite both Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig’s Bonds. In her first appearance in GoldenEye, Dench’s no-nonsense M called out Bond as “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur.” In her final appearance in Skyfall, she got a truly heartbreaking send-off.