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Comments
You hit the nail on the head
Why do you do this?
I still prefer Dench to Fiennes, but in general, you're correct. And Harris is terrific--the sort of sexy agent (those legs!) that Bond would find appealing. SF did a great job of leaving up to the imagination what happened between them in Macao. And did I mention those legs? @ClarkDevlin couldn't be more wrong about her.
As a character, @TripAces, it's your word against mine.
I think the words you used were "wrongly interpreted." I think she's perfectly cast-a good interpretation of the character. Perhaps you mean that she should simply remain behind a desk. That's more subjective. I prefer the fact that Moneypenny is in the field a little bit.
There were no question marks.
I don't know about that. The only real offenders are Harris and Kinnear. Harris is a fine actress but I still find her incredibly miscast in the part. Kinnear has had very little to work with but he hasn't really put in anything to make Tanner even remotely interesting. A strong character actor would make these parts stand out even with the dodgy writing.
Which is exactly why Wishaw and Fiennes excel in their respective roles.
As for Benji? Yes, I agree with you. I enjoyed him in M:I-3 and Ghost Protocol but if he were killed off in the next one I'd be absolutely fine with that. They've done all they can with him as a character. A weaklink in the M:I team now, imo. I'd never say the same about Q.
Halle Berry is an Oscar winner. I guess that makes her the best Bond girl by default.
These are merely Skyfall characters. They were introduced three at a time and suddenly Bond was a veteran and assumed all the credit for old series' events rather than to continue the story with loose ends from QoS. They were not the good part of what SP had to offer including the interesting story of the very fact that Bond formed a relationship with the daughter of Mr. White, aka the guy who had a hand in Vesper's dealings up to her death.
I know what you mean about Fiennes. His acting in his two movies so far has been bizarre. He snears an awful lot and comes across as being massively uninterested in the material.
She is certainly one of the best looking.
That's a nice way of looking at it. Both CR & SF are standalone films with only Judi Dench as Recurring cast with bond. I am sure Lea seydoux return won't make much difference to the story.
I thought he did quite well, personally. He was saddled with a large majority of the incredibly dull C/Whitehall scenes in SP and managed to make M seem genuinely invested in the Secret Service and Bond's plight as opposed to just being a civil servant type. A nice development on his Skyfall persona.
I mean, the sub-plot itself was still ham-fisted and had about as much energy as an Uncle's boring birthday party story, but Fiennes did a pretty good job.
Kinnear's definitely welcome back and if you look at the circumstances that he was brought in, being Bond and M's darkest days in MI6, you can say that he helped keep the characters focused and onward. He deserves more credit than given. The very fact that he makes a return in SF is one of the few redeeming factors that doesn't erase any trace memory of the CR-QoS timeline.
Nothing unless you want spoilers to ruin the movie for you. What's a title going to do?
The current office team is simply a mere reflection of the situation and people that the Millennial generation is stuck with.
I wouldn't mind a complete re-cast after this next film. I'd love to see Fleming's actual characters: Admiral Miles Messervy, Major Boothroyd and Moneypenny return. Maybe a Tanner that embodies the Tanner in the books?
1. Regarding perceptions of the characters changing so catastrophically - that's not entirely the case for me. As I pointed out earlier, I had issues at the end of SF with Harris as MP even in that film. The jury was out on Fiennes as M at the end of SF for me. Fiennes & Whishaw are more than competent and actually can possibly fit the characterizations they have been given (Whishaw certainly can, as evidenced by his role in SF), so I'm not blaming them. As mentioned earlier, with Fiennes it's more the lack of gravitas in comparison to Lee, Brown and Dench. This is not a comment on his acting, but rather how he appears as the character of M to me.
2. Now, regarding Whishaw as Q vs. Benji. My point is that the MI character was established earlier as a sort of 'in field' younger comic relief support for the protagonist. That was a role that he made succesful in two films that preceded SP. I personally find him amusing as that character, although slightly annoying at times (I think that's what he's meant to be). He certainly owns that type of interpretation in my mind at this moment imho. I had no problems with Whishaw in SF because he was mainly behind the desk. Any comparisons were more with 24's Chloe. However, in SP they decided to make him a sort of pseudo field operative like Benji. That, to me at least, brought unfavourable comparisons with MI:GP and RN. Why? Well because I had already by that time accepted Benji's role and involvement as the character he had been clearly defined to be. This new Q was still being defined, and as they dumped him in the field with his computer it just seemed like an uncreative 'have your cake and eat it too' cop out to me, particularly since the comic exchanges that many were raving about here (cats and mortgages and what not) didn't jive for me in the film. I think the film makers should have gone for more differentiation with Benji when deciding to involve what is essentially a new Q character in more film time, or at least make sure that they knocked it out of the park (which they didn't for me).
3. Regarding your question about why this isn't readily reparable - well, these interpretations don't have a history yet. They were only set up as the old characters at the end of SF (except for Q). So SP was the first real chance we had to see them in their defined roles. If the roles don't work for some of us for whatever reason, then that's just the way it is. I don't know about other members, but I've never had a problem with the acting or the intepretations of any of the previous incarnations of M, Q or MP. I may have preferred the earliest versions, but at least the later ones were, up until now at least, internally consistent and credible (even if somewhat dislikeable on occasion) over a series of films. I can't say that about this new batch. Can it be fixed? Sure it can. I'm more questioning whether it should be, at least for Craig's last.
4. Re: my problem with Harris as MP, I've noted it a few times on here in the past, but it's got to do with her not being credible for me as a 'behind the desk type'. That's as much her game as Craig trying to be an insouciant Bond as far as I am concerned.
I fully agree with you on this.
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Agreed @patb. This is why I would have strongly preferred they not come back and Craig be given a 'fresh start' for his last one. It's not a knock on the actors, but just a fact that I can't unsee what I saw, and it doesn't get any better on repeat viewings.
All in all, I guess B25 will determine these new incarnations' legacies a great deal.
It's risky for Fukunaga to bring them back imho, but hopefully he can make it all work, and ensure that their involvement is more organic and meaningful this time around.
RE: Swann - I'm beginning to wonder if she will only appear in flashback. Perhaps they all will?
As long as check cleared, he'd be OK with it.