Amazon Takes Bond’s Guns Away from Him

James Bond has been disarmed by Amazon, with all guns removed from promotional material for the franchise.

The streaming giant, which recently acquired the rights to the Bond franchise, has stripped 007 of his sidearm in new images advertising the films online.

Stars including Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan appear empty-handed in the promotional pictures.

The company’s revised online posters now feature images from the films themselves, though none of the promotional images show 007 with a weapon.

Amazon’s initial online promotional material also did away with any hint of 007’s female companions, instead showing digitally-enhanced images of various Bond actors standing alone.

However, the company appears to have accepted that Bond always gets the girl, and revised online material for the Bond franchise now features 007 alongside various love interests.

The creation of posters featuring an unarmed Bond may do little to defuse claims that the franchise has become “woke”.

Some fans were concerned that Daniel Craig’s iteration was made increasingly emotionally vulnerable throughout his five films, diverging from the character of a detached womaniser.

The streaming giant had had some say in the franchise, having bought MGM Studios, which held distribution rights for Eon, the original Bond producers.

Barbara Broccoli, the Eon boss, has reportedly rejected a number of Amazon proposals for the Bond franchise in the past, and has dismissed occasional calls for a female 007.

However, Amazon will now have the power to decide the future of Bond and who should play the spy.

While guns are not visible in the current view-facing promotional material online, anyone who decides to watch a Bond film on Amazon, and clicks on a given title, will soon see 007 armed in various images and sequences.

Guns are unavoidable in the franchise, and the first few seconds of the first Bond film, 1962’s Dr No, are the famous gun barrel opening sequence.

The motivation for Amazon removing guns from the Bond posters is not clear, but the practice of removing weapons from promotion material is not new.

In 2018, Disney removed a laser gun from the promotional poster for its Han Solo film, with the Star Wars character shown without one. This year, the company removed several guns from the poster for the action film Thunderbolts.