This weekend, we reported on a story that quickly went pretty viral. In a sad sign of the times, Amazon Prime Video posted brand new James Bond digital posters, celebrating James Bond Day, but all of the posters were digitally manipulated to remove guns from them. Read all about it in our previous story.
After much fan backlash, Amazon quickly restored the older thumbnails that had been featured on the service for months now. Sounds like a victory for fans, right? Well, not quite, as some of those images have been censored as well. Check it out:
It’s pretty wild that Amazon would alter one of Skyfall’s signature images, but I guess that’s where we’re at. What’s so strange about this whole thing is that Amazon Prime certainly doesn’t shy away from featuring guns in their thumbs otherwise. Check out this screen grab I took of my Prime queue:
Literally every other action movie poster has guns on it other than the 007 ones.
So, what gives? Who made this decision? Could it be that Prime is trying to market James Bond to a younger audience, and it is wary of including guns in them? I will say that outside of the Skyfall abomination, I have less of an issue with the new posters as most of them are just cropped images from the films, which is fine. But, I don’t get why Amazon is so worried about James Bond, the character they literally paid a billion dollars for, being seen with a gun. When the new 007 movie finally comes out, will none of the advertising feature the character brandishing a Walther PPK? Like it or not, guns (and girls) are part of the character’s cinematic legacy, and scrubbing them is a thumb in the eye of fans who’ve made this series the most successful and long-running one in cinematic history. What do you think of Amazon’s reversal? Let us know in the comments.
