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A clearout...apart from our Desmond..
And the one thing we DONT want now is another clearout of Q,M,Moneypenny...we need consistancy,whether or not DC comes back....
And that is so important,let newbies to Bond get used to the characters and establish a 'pardon the pun' Bond with the them...if you have no bond then you will never care...to be a Bond enthusiast you HAVE to care ....
This may be controversial but I wonder if Desmond should have left long before TWINE. As charming as he was in the role, he was something of a cliché by the late 80s.
He says the same phrases in several films ("pay attention 007")
@BAIN123 OW ..me olde matey.....i wont comment on that...now go and lay down with a cool flannel on your head ... ;)
I know. Desmond was like a loveable family memember in Bond but it did stretch credibility somewhat having him as long as they did.
I'll back you up there mate - up to a point. He was pretty doddery by GE (see how he fumbles with the belt to demonstrate it). But I'm still glad he's there.
I put this in another thread but I do love how unconvincing the shots in this advert are of him playing the game.
Agreed. I actually really do like the current MI6 lineup of M, Q & Moneypenny. If Spectre marks the end of the Craig era (and personally, I don't see it going any other way), then I hope they would be carried over for the next era. Not only because I like them, but they already work so well together, and they'd bring a feeling of familiarity while we're introduced to a new Bond.
I am glad that Desmond stayed around as long as he did. If there was one long standing cast member who should have been replaced earlier, it is Maxwell imo. She was kept on for 7, maybe 8, films too many.
Surely not dear Rory as Tanner. No. Say you're joking.
Alright in all seriousness I quite like the stock company, Fiennes as M, Ben Wishaw as Q and Naomi Harris as Moneypenny. We don't need Tanner, or certainly recast the part. But I'd be more hopeful of reducing these roles to how they used to be. Just a cameo, get the job done and move on. The recent era has been like 'James Bond and chums.'
Exactly right Benster....this trend of M,Q,Moneypenny being out in the field started with the Dench,Brosnan era and its getting silly now.
I remember watching LTK and seeing Q helping Bond in the field as a real treat,a pleasant surprise,which really worked and added light relief to a tough Bond film (brilliant film though ).
They need to reign things back in and revert to basics for these characters,recast Tanner to be someone who has a personality and can add something to the film,and bring back Felix,who is fine as he is.
I would prefer the current MI6 lineup to remain in place until they all grow old as Lee, Maxwell and Desmond did. With all the time and trouble spent establishing a new continuity in the current films, it would be such a waste to discard them like John Cleese after 2 films.
Should have been a great scene, but it's played too light to hold any drama.
In fairness to Rory, even though he is duller than reading the Düsseldorf telephone book cover to cover, he is not helped by the script which gives him absolutely nothing to do.
In a book you can have these incidental little scenes of Bond walking down a corridor or going to the canteen but in film the general maxim is if something doesnt move the story forwards it ends up on the cutting room floor.
Apart his role as Basil Exposition there's nothing Rory contributes in his 3 films that couldnt be done by another character. Back in the day M used to explain the mission and that was it. And thats all you need.
Its as if dishing out a bit of exposition is way beneath Dench and Fiennes so they have Rory in there to do it so they can concentrate on deep character arcs stuff.
Regarding the current MI6 crew: they are nowhere near as iconic as the original group (Lee, Maxwell and Llewelyn), who really defined an era. If they must keep someone, I recommend Whishaw, but I won't lose sleep over MP or M being recast.
Thats a fair point Wizard,but,didnt Lois Maxwell and Bernard Lee etc have the same problem,and they are iconic ?
Oh,and page 44 of the Dusseldorf telephone directory has some very interesting contacts he he ;)
Not really.
MP's job - A bit of light hearted banter and flirting after the excitement of the PTS and before we get into the mission proper.
M's job - Hand out the mission, bit of exposition and get the plot started.
Q's job - Hand out the gadgets with a bit of comic banter.
What role is Rory fulfilling? The other MI6 regulars have everything covered. Standing out of focus behind Judi Dench or Ralph Fiennes is simply not needed.
Remember we managed perfectly well until GE without a Tanner character. He's fine in the Brozza era because Michael Kitchen does something with the role and you can imagine he has both the respect and friendship of Bond. Ditto with Robinson.
But Rory is basically the Elvis (the shit QOS henchman not the King of Rock n Roll - the thought of Rory gyrating his pelvis like Elvis makes my stomach turn) of MI6. The moment where he offers his hand to Bond as he's getting out of the boat is not something Kitchen or Salmon would have done and it has the audience laughing at him, not with him which shouldnt be the case.
If they insist on keeping the character at least recast him. Kitchen is probably a bit old now but Salmon is only 53.
Thats where my favourite word about Bond arrives....CONSISTANCY....Kitchen and Salmon were perfect in their respective roles as Tanner and Robinson...we do need a character like that ,like an intermediary between MP's flirting and Q's geekiness.....the middle man....so ,once again ,we speak from the same hymn sheet Wizard....
We'll draw a veil over the fact that that is not a word but I'm afraid we are not in agreement.
I dont necessarily subscribe to the theory that we need such a character. Didnt have one in FRWL or OHMSS and how did they turn out?
The MI6 staff has only become more bloated because in the Mendes era half the film is now about MI6 and their trials and tribulations.
But if we are going to have said character it needs to be someone able to fill the role credibly as Kitchen and Salmon did and not the human equivalent of beige.
The same can be said with Villiers, he's pretty useless and no more than an MP surrogate for M but Tobias Menzies like Rory is a fine actor.
They are just assigned a pretty dull script and not very interesting characters but this nothing to do with either actors abiliities.
Whereas Caroline Bliss is a bloody awful actress.
I can see where you're coming from but I'm glad they kept him around. There was just something warm and reassuring about his presence in the films and I think with how much more modern GE felt and the M and Moneypenny recasts (which don't get me wrong I was happy with), they needed at least one link to the old films and it made sense for that link to be Desmond since he'd been there almost since the beginning.
And I like him in the Brosnan films. I think they had great chemistry (the best Bond/Q pairings along with Moore/Desmond and Craig/Wishaw imo) and while I can see why it'd annoy some and take them out of the film, I always thought it was nice how happy Brosnan looked to be sharing scenes with Desmond. It's clear he's thrilled about it, I'm sure us fanboys can relate to that. And they had some great moments, I like it when they joke about the exploding pen together in GE for instance and I think Brosnan is great in TWINE (which wasn't planned as one but makes a brilliant final scene), he looks genuinely sad at the thought of Q retiring without overplaying it.
I think they should have bought R in earlier. I actually aren't a fan of Cleese in TWINE (he's great in DAD though), I think they overdid the slapstick stuff, but you're right that as Desmond got older his role in the films got less credible, so someone to help with the technobabble would've helped I think.
I'm also glad that they kept Desmond on because, as someone on here pointed out, you can find a link going back from the new ones all the way back to DN (the current lot all shared a film with Dench who shared films with Desmond who was in almost every film from TWINE right back to FRWL, a film that also featured Connery Lee and Maxwell who were in DN). Which is cool I think, I like the fact that we've never had a full everything is different reboot.
Well he left by his own accord, whereas I'm guessing Bliss was pushed. Doubt she would leave her only acting credit lol.
She was pretty hot and decent MP.
Good post @thelivingroyale.
By 1995 the feminists had taken over & the new MP was teasing with threats of sexual harassment claims & being nasty to other women.
I thought she was fine in TLD. She didn't get the best dialogue but did ok with what she had.
LTK was hardly kind on any of the actors as it had an abysmal script with dialogue to match. Her screentime in that must have been all of 15 seconds.
That was my feeling when watching GE for the first time as well. I didn't like the face to face scene between Bond and MP in this film. Brosnan seems extremely uncomfortable and affected (I'm not sure if this and the Q scene were the first ones filmed or not, but he overacts in both scenes). EDIT: HarrisSamantha Bond's approach is terse, unexpected and too stand offish, and is compounded by the soon to follow pile on by Dench's M.
Both scenes seem out of place, given that Brosnan's Bond is hardly Connery or Moore's rogue, and GE is a film that follows two tame (from a womanizing perspective) Dalton Bond films.
I much preferred EDIT: HarrisSamantha Bond in her unseen intro vmail which Bond picks up in the Aston at Monaco ("onatopp of things") and again on the phone with Bond in TND ("kiss off your lesson"). She's better unseen imho.