Timed with James Bond Day celebrations yesterday, Amazon unveiled a set of digital posters for the James Bond franchise for use as thumbnails on its Prime Video service.
The artwork is something of a tribute to classic artwork from the franchise, but very quickly, the shots have become a topic of discussion online because of some creative liberties that the streaming giant has taken.
Specifically, every instance of Bond holding his signature Walther PPK gun has been removed. Synonymous with the character and used repeatedly in every bit of promo art for the character for over half a century, it is now gone.
What’s stirred a lot of the talk is that some of these Bond artworks use the original art and then have either cropped it out, switched out Bond’s body, or digitally removed the Walther, which has resulted in Bond posing very awkwardly.
“Dr. No.” and “Goldeneye” in particular have Bond weirdly gripping air in a way that could be interpreted as a rude gesture, “Live and Let Die” has Roger Moore’s head at an odd angle with decidedly unmatched lighting to his body, “A View to a Kill” has given Moore extra long arms, “Spectre” gives Craig a weird shoulder holster, “Tomorrow Never Dies” looks like they reused a shot from an Omega tie-in ad, while others like “From Russia with Love” and “The Living Daylights” opted for just bland promo shots in which Bond looks decidedly bored.
The changed art is up on Prime Video and is now heading to other platforms – iTunes, for example, is already using it on some titles but not others. The change has also raised talk about just what Amazon will do when it comes time to market the actual Bond film that Denis Villeneuve is directing.
Source: MI6 HQ
