Fans of the James Bond film franchise who recently searched for the movies on Amazon Prime Video noticed something curious: The world’s most famous licensed-to-kill spy no longer had a weapon with which to kill.
In promotional artwork for “Dr. No,” the gun once held in Sean Connery’s crossed arms was noticeably missing. In artwork for “GoldenEye,” Pierce Brosnan still held up his right arm but with no gun in sight, and artwork for “Casino Royale” appeared to have been cropped to avoid showing a gun in the hands of Daniel Craig.
Amazon, it seemed, had quietly scrubbed away the firearms that 007 brandishes in some of the most recognizable images in movie history.
After noticing the changes on Friday, fans took to social media to ridicule the move and accuse Amazon of “woke”-inspired censorship. Many worried that the changes presaged more extreme moves from the tech giant, which acquired creative control of the Bond franchise in February from the family that held it for more than 60 years. Fans have been waiting anxiously for Amazon to announce who will replace Craig as Bond.
A user on X wondered if Amazon planned to remake the movies with spitballs instead of lethal weapons.
One person on Reddit wondered if the titles might be deemed too violent: “I can’t wait to watch ‘Tomorrow Never Passes Away Peacefully Surrounded By Its Loved Ones.’”
“Dr. Yes,” another user chimed in.
Fans also took to altering the images themselves. The fearless, debonair secret agent wielded a banana and a hot dog and a foot-long hoagie. (A license to nosh?) Brosnan glowered menacingly as quaint floral wallpaper floated behind him.
It seems that Amazon had uploaded the new images in time for “Global James Bond Day,” which is held annually on Oct. 5 to celebrate the anniversary of the release of the first Bond film, “Dr. No,” in 1962. But the ensuing hullabaloo prompted the company to make more changes: On Saturday, 24 hours in, it reverted to its previous promotional images.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Gun iconography has been a part of the James Bond franchise essentially from the beginning, when the graphic designer Joe Caroff stretched out the top of the 7 in the 007 logo so that it would resemble Bond’s Walther PPK pistol. The films typically begin with a view of Bond through the barrel of a gun. (He fires a shot, killing a presumed assassin.)
The changes made by Amazon, which did not include wiping away the celebrated logo, seemed a part of a trend in recent years among streaming services that has led to the editing out of nudity and even cigarettes from films and film posters — and to fevered debate.
Classic novels by Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie, among other authors, have been revised to remove offensive language and references to race and gender. Racist and sexist phrases in, yes, the original Bond books by Ian Fleming have been removed.
For the 20th anniversary edition of “E.T.” in 2002, Steven Spielberg replaced federal agents’ guns with walkie-talkies — and came to regret it. For the 30th anniversary, he, as Amazon ultimately did with its Bond artwork, brought the weapons back.
Spielberg said at a forum in 2023 that no film should be revised because of lenses “we now are either voluntarily or being forced to peer through.”
Movies, he added, are signposts of “where we were when we made them and what the world was like.”
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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