Alias, Perfect Dark, and the early-2000s quest for a female James Bond

Early to mid 2000s the most popular main character of the time was a spy. The TV brought Alias’ Sydney Bristow to young adults and Kim PossibleChildren are the future. Charlie’s AngelsJoanna Dark was remade for film. In games, Joanna Dark was the hero. The Perfect DarkThe spiritual successor to GoldenEye 007. In the 1960s, there were many James Bonds. The era was flooded with female James Bonds. Die Another Day got in on the trend, introducing Halle Berry as Jinx, Bond’s NSA counterpart.

This genre could be reimagined at a moment when women’s representations on television were shifting away from the damsels-in-distress to action heroes and protagonists. Recently, we spoke to some key players involved in the genre. We wanted to know more about the origins of this trend and its impact.

Jeff Pinkner, writer & executive producer of the film AliasHe credits more than any other moment in which the show took place. He says that the Alias writing team didn’t set out to make a show about female empowerment, he points to a media shift happening after the male-centric spy stories of the ’60s and ’70s.

“It was overdue,” says Kim PossibleRobert Schooley, co-creator. After a few years of being away from Cold War era spy media’s peak, the team decided to revisit their older tropes. The over-the-top, fantastical villain schemes, like shark tanks and mountain lairs, could stay, but Kim, as a fresh face for a new generation, wouldn’t be shy about saying how played out they were.

“We looked at the spy and hero characters [we had] when we were growing up and it was the ‘Jims,’” says Schooley. In other words, alongside James Bond, Star Trek’s James T. Kirk and Wild Wild West’s Jim West were the blueprint. Schooley was also given the task of creating a Disney Channel show aimed at a female audience. (The show’s blend of action and comedy ultimately made it popular among boys as well, boosting the Disney Channel’s overall male audience.)

“[Our daughters] didn’t have that kind of character where the action part is ludicrously easy for her,” says Schooley. The goal was to have a female hero who can do everything, without relying on supernatural powers. “The spy genre dovetailed nicely,” says McCorkle.

In particular, the action-oriented, espionage-in-name-only antics of James Bond became the basis for many of these early-2000s properties. Kim Possible’s cartoon nature and younger target audience allowed it to be more comedic, but Pinkner says AliasThe same goes for emulating actual spycraft. It was “meant to take place 3 feet off the ground,” he says.

The 2000s was a time when women were beginning to be included in Bond’s revival. As McCorkle puts it: “The world was just sort of ready for female characters that could kick butt.”

Pinkner, as well as Schooley, both bring up Buffy the Vampire SlayerThe film premiered in 1997, and it had an enormous influence on popular culture. One of the most significant was the influx of anti-evil heroines in Buffy’s wake. The show had an immediate influence on Kim Possible, according to Schooley, while Pinkner says it opened the door by directly being about “female empowerment.” Although BuffyAlthough she was not a spy, her path to becoming a female agent who is action-oriented had been prepared.

Buffy was also notable for its grounding in its heroine’s emotional life, and there was a similar move toward focusing on these spies’ interiority. The film was a success. Kim PossibleYou can also find out more about the following: Alias, the high school and college settings respectively allowed for an exploration of the spies’ personal lives. The spies’ personal lives were explored in the high school and college settings. Kim PossibleIt also aided in the subversion and exploitation of earlier spy media. Everyone at Kim’s school knew if she had disarmed a nuclear bomb over the weekend — she didn’t need to keep it a secret, but equally, it wasn’t going to earn her any social cred. “They treat it as no big deal,” says McCorkle.

On the other hand, Sydney’s double life in AliasHer character was nuanced by the connection between her career and family. “I’m shockingly, incredibly capable, and valuable, and important,” says Pinkner, summarising the character’s arc, “[but] I’m a person who’s not in control of my own life.” Digging into that tension gave AliasIts emotional core.

The idea was to make female heroes more complex in video games. Eurogamer interviewed me about this. The Perfect Dark animator Brett Jones said the team was trying to create a less “two dimensional” Lara Croft. And it circles back to the reimagining of James Bond — Rare’s earlier game, GoldenEye 007, didn’t exactly need to give Bond much emotional depth.

Female spies continued to pop up after the mid-2000sYou can also find out more about the following: may even be going through a resurgence in film now, thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s fleshing out of Black Widow in the past few years, along with stand-alone movies like Atomic Blonde and Red Sparrow. Pinkner stresses this point. Alias was “notable” at the time for its female lead — something that is now “just part of the landscape, which is as it should be.”

The sudden concentration of female spy characters was something of a “lightning-in-a-bottle” moment, says McCorkle. “Sometimes storytellers have that idea that happens to scratch an itch that the audience didn’t know was there. […]We are all those who have benefited. [the trend], you can only call it a happy accident.”