I'm not sure that that's accurate. Fleming may've hated the casting, but after Dr. No came out, he gave the written Bond some of Connery's traits, like his humor and his Scottish lineage. It would seem that Fleming did embrace Connery once he saw him in the role. It doesn't seem different than how fans hated the Craig casting but have embraced him since.
If Bond is mostly a style and a personality, why does his nationality matter, either? It seems similarly arbitrary to say that being British isn't negotiable. I imagine that, if Bond's gender and race are changed, there will then be calls for a change in nationality, as well, using the same argument that everything else has been malleable so far, so why not one thing more. You have to draw a line somewhere, even if it seems arbitrary to those who would simply draw it elsewhere.
Fair point about Fleming.
As to the second, his being British is inherent to the character. As is his being male for that matter. Making him American or Russian or whatever is a huge fundamental change for a character who serves Queen & Country. Different countries, different cultures, different histories with spycraft and I'd say different attitudes too. There's a class to a British spy that just isn't associated with other cultures. A lot of that comes from Bond himself of course, but other literature as well. Let's just make Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer British while we're at it!
For what it's worth I think being male is also essential to being Bond. Given his broad personality and proclivities.
You change those things and you're changing the actual character. You change his race and what is actually different about the character in the modern setting? I personally don't see any change to WHO Bond is.
That's why nationality feels essential to me but race feels arbitrary.
Now all this said, I have spouted my belief around these parts that there are no truly bad ideas, only bad execution! Some ideas obviously have much much higher margins of error.
Changing Bond's race is a very low margin of error thing to me.
Changing Bond's nationality and sex are very high margin of error ideas. You could do it, but why and how? You either have to change actually attributes of Bond to make him be more American or female, which I would argue is then making him not Bond so what's the point or you make the character exactly the same be he happens to be American or a woman, which just feels like an incongruous fit. Doable perhaps but tough for me to imagine.
