Can There Ever Be Another James Bond Movie? A Philosophical Analysis of the Relationship Between 'Actor' and 'Character'

 WARNING: CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS OF DANIEL CRAIG'S No Time To Die.

    I have a question to pose: Are the changes between actors for characters like James Bond (Connery -> Moore -> Brosnan -> Craig) and Spider-Man (Maguire -> Garfield -> Holland), for example, the same exact kind of actor-changes as Dumbledore (Richard Harris -> Michael Gambon) in Harry Potter or Clarice (Jodie Foster -> Julianne Moore) in the Silence of the Lambs? The question is ambiguous, I know, but bear with me. I am asking whether what is happening when a character's actor is different in the case of James Bond is the same thing as what is happening when Jodie Foster gets replaced with Julianne Moore.

    The reason I ask is because I have recently seen Daniel Craig's newest and final Bond film, No Time to Die, and, quite contrary to the title, James Bond dies. It was melancholic to be sure, but it evoked a reaction from some I know that I never would have had: there can be no more Bond films. Why should one think that? Well, isn't it obvious? You can't make a Bond movie if Bond is dead (excluding prequels)! If you made another James Bond movie, it just wouldn't be the character "James Bond," but just another character with the same name. It isn't that hard to get is it?

    Well, I see quite a few major problems with this line of reasoning, and I'll propose some examples for clarification. Dumbledore dies at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and so it would be absurd for another actor to pop in and start playing as a living Dumbledore, because Dumbledore is dead! That would simply be a complete contradiction in continuity. No one can be both dead and alive. So why doesn't this apply to the death of Craig's Bond? I contend that the difference between the death of Bond and the death of Dumbledore, and also of the difference between different Bond actors and different Dumbledore actors, consists in a distinction between intra-serial (within a series) and trans-serial (across series) continuity, and the mistake of believing that there cannot be any more Bond movies is a fallacious transposition of the properties of intra-serial continuity to trans-serial continuity.

    The Harry Potter movies constitute a single series, and as a single series, it has its own continuity. Within the series, the token-characters are the same token-characters throughout the series, which explains why it would be absurd for Dumbledore to die and yet not be dead, because the new living Dumbledore would be a distinct token-Dumbledore and not the same token-Dumbledore that died. They would be completely different token-characters, which is the point made by the opposing viewpoint above. 

    However, the reason this applies to Dumbledore and not James Bond is because it is not the case that the totality of James Bond movies constitute a single series of movies; rather, there are several different series of Bond movies, and as such, possess their own respective intra-serial continuities that differ from each other. Connery's Bond and Craig's Bond are not the same token-character, but they are the same type-character. The only kind of continuity that must be shared between type-characters is trans-serial continuity. For example, James Bond in general is the British, male, womanizing MI6 agent, codenamed 007, who prefers shaken martinis and goes on daring missions, etc. (even the property of womanizer is questionable, since Ian Fleming's original conception of Bond was of quite a boring man). The reason Connery's and Craig's characters are both James Bond is not because they are the same token-character in the way that Richard Harris and Michael Gambon are the same token-Dumbledore, but rather because Connery's and Craig's Bond share trans-serial continuity by being different tokens of the same type, or in layman's terms, different instances or versions of the same character.

    Here's an issue for those who believe the contrary. The villain Dominic Greene (as far as I know) is nowhere to be found in any of the original Bond novels. So, we can either assume that Greene is really a villain apart of the novel-Bond canon yet was just never included in any of the novels (which could never be verified without Fleming's confirmation), or that Greene is not apart of the original Bond canon which means that the canon/continuity in which Greene appears is distinct from the novel canon/continuity. There are more issues along these lines, but this article is too long already and its existence is even pretty questionable (regarding this, I'd like to point out that this is not fundamentally about the subject-matter, which could be anything. It's rather about correcting what I perceive to be incorrect reasoning which is the result of something habitual which permeates through a person's intellect and is relevant to the way they think generally and possibly the basis of their decision-making, so it is much deeper than movie-talk).

    In conclusion, believing that there can be no more Bond movies because he is dead is the result of fallaciously taking the properties of intra-serial continuity with token-characters and applying them to trans-serial continuity with type-characters. In other words, it is the result of collapsing distinct canons into one. Therefore, if intra-serial continuity does not affect trans-serial continuity, then there is no issue with the creation of a new Bond continuity, and thus a new Bond movie series.