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Killing a retired Bond would the seem perfectly apt.
Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan gave us active service Bond. Craig bookended the stories with trainee Bond and retired Bond.
Unless Disney want to pick up schoolboy Bond, the story of 007 is complete
007’s story will never be complete...not unless they blow him to bits and pieces.
That too. And it brings a certain continuity, even when it's a reboot.
What I loved about the MI6 cast of Craig's run is that they didn't simply conform to how the characters used to be in the older films. Like, just because we grew up with Desmond Llewellyn doesn't mean we should only look for 50 year old curmudgeons. Ben Whishaw was great in the part BECAUSE they made his Q a completely different character.
For a new Q, I think it would be fun if they cast an attractive female in the part. However, she's not into Bond, precisely because she's seen how he treats her gadgets and that irritates her as much as her predecessors. "You can't fool me, 007. I've seen you treat women the same way you treat Q branch's equipment: With equal contempt. If you want flirtation, Miss Moneypenny is eight floors above us. Now, pay attention 007."
M does have a bit of a penchant for setting up covert offices in pyramids and submarines and all of that. But I agree that he is not a field agent and that Tanner would be more suitable. As much as I like Rory Kinnear and think he did a fine job (and as a desk aide myself, I identify with him a tiny bit), they did do Tanner dirty in the last few films.
I personally think Tanner should next go to one of the guys who slightly aged out of playing Bond himself: Rupert Friend, Luke Evans, Matthew Goode maybe even bring back Tobias Menzies and have him play the role proper instead of "Villiers". Played opposite a young 007, he could be a bit of a mentor figure, maybe even the person who got him into the service in the first place. I always like the dynamic in the books, where Bond first banters with Moneypenny, then gets the assignment from M and then goes to Tanner for more detail and a bit of gossip about the old man.
As for M, I am not against Fiennes continuing, but going from what I just wrote, I would return the role to more of a behind-the-desk situation. Have some Grande Olde British Actor (Fiennes counts, Rylance or Oldman would be ridiculous, bringing Carlyle or Pryce back could be fun, Charlotte Rampling or Kristin Scott Thomas would also be interesting) come to Pinewood for a week and a hefty paycheck and do some monologuing and that's it. If you need someone in Bond's ear during missions (and I don't even think you need it) have that be Q, Tanner or a new character.
And I know this is sacrilegious, but I am not against taking a note from the Carte Blanche novel and saying MI6 is it's own, publicly known thing, but M runs and Bond works for an even more secret organization that is pretty much just the 00s and Q section that run the types of operations that the "official" MI6 can't. I totally agree that it makes Bond special to be Her Majesty's Blunt Instrument and not just some guy in a huge bureaucracy. And it hasn't made sense for about 30 years that the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service is involved in one officer's missions to this extent..
Yeah I agree there, it does seem slightly silly that M is the head of MI6 and yet seemingly spends most of his time with one officer. I quite like the Carte Blanche setup.
They seemed like they might go there with a Guy Haines-type who is close to the PM. They kind of tried to go there with C in SP, but he frankly did not come across as much of a threat.
45.
A UK spec ops member was training in a country in Africa in 2019 when terrorists seized a hotel, and he voluntarily almost single-handedly intervened and helped stabilize the situation. That's what Bond should feel like.
We should go back to the "Dr. No" era of style where it felt like M., Q. And Moneypenny etc. are all slightly annoyed with Bond because they should have to get back to their national security jobs, which I imagine are busy. I don't want the movie to treat Bond like a special boy, it's too Meta.
Cast people to play strong characters, don't just change things for the sake of it. And the strongest characters still exist in the past Bond movies and books, so maybe go back to that!
Great post, and seconded.
Also, can we please stop having M, Q, Moneypenny, Tanner, May, and his florist talking into Bond's ear during his missions?
Good lord, let the man do his job in peace and quiet!
Interesting, good spot. I did notice in NTTD that he introduces himself to the captain of the HMS Dragon as simply 'M', which suggests that he's got serious clout even to slightly lower members of the military.
I blame Andrew Scott. I find him utterly overrated as an actor.
I mean, my headcanon for the Craig era is basically what I described above. There is no way the Head of MI6 hangs around outside a Russian apartment complex or has personal talks with an agent after their girlfriend died and there is no way all of MI6 fits into those bunkers in Slyfall. So to me Olivia Mansfield and Gareth Mallory where in charge of the 00 section which includes Q and that’s about it.
The strange part about the designation at the end of SP is that a policeman would know what MI6 is (they are standing right in front of their former HQ) and possibly who leads it (the merger would have been in the news, it’s the biggest shake-up of British intelligence since the war), but how would he ever know what a 00 section is? And wasn’t that abolished by C?
So while it fits my personal theory that Mallory is Head of 00, not Head of the SIS, it is very strange.
Edit: And now you’ve made me think of that scene in SP again, which makes me angry.
„Alright boys. Shots have been fired on or around one of the Thames bridges and a helicopter had crashed. What we’ll do is seal off the bridge but not advance towards the helicopter. Whatever is going on there, we’ll let play out. Even if you see guns drawn or anything, don’t intervene under any circumstances. And if the soon to be deposed Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service comes round, let him through. Chap called Mallory.“
Mallory should have said he’s Vallance from the Special Branch or whatever.
Yes, absolutely. M's clearly not just head of the 00 Section in NTTD - 'serious clout', indeed.
Um, isn't that what...well, you're right. Vaporized.
But my understanding of the Bond world is that MI6 is an intelligence service, collecting and analysing information, sometimes gathered by assets in the field, which then provides information to the Government. However, it maintains a small discrete operations section, which are deployed where M decides direct action is necessary. Therefore, the 00s answer direct to M, who is the only person with the full appreciation of the problem and the authority to deploy lethal force.
Hence M’s threat, in Dr No, to return 007 to ‘standard intelligence duties’ if he doesn’t follow orders and dump the Baretta
In real life, ‘C’ is widely known as the Head of MI6. The Captain of HMS Dragon would certainly know who he is, assuming identity is confirmed etc.
It’s entirely feasible for the police to be informed that there is a major terrorist incident taking place, that the military have taken jurisdiction and that plain clothes military are active and therefore the police are to secure the border and not to get involved
He says MI6. I even watched it with subtitles. For some reason Bernard Lee doesn't break his lines between "MI6" and "there's" so it almost sounds like he says "MI7" when said in quick succession.
Reminds me of how there's people that insists J.W. Pepper says "they're democrats, Maybelle" when he actually said "we're democrats, Maybelle".
Thanks and same to you. Mine was a bit of response to an element of fandom that just does not and should not ever work with Bond.
The "scooby gang" element is so divisive among fans etc. because it succeeded at what it was trying to be: cute. For half of fans, cute was easy to read on screen and played well and they liked that stuff in Skyfall, Spectre and NTTD where we saw everyone's bedrooms. But I don't think anyone would argue that type of fan/audience fluff would never find its way into a Fleming typewriter. It's literally the screenwriters playing with the characters as if they were children with dolls.
It's not just fan service; taking familiar characters and forcing an otherwise inappropriate intimacy upon them for cringe humor or melodrama is not only trendy but trend because it's just easy, or even lazy for the writers. It's almost ironic that attempting to stick to a familiar "Bond mission" format would actually be more of a challenge, consistently.
The fandom style where every character in a story has some sort of intimate affection toward one another, almost shipping, is anti-Bond. You can want Bond and Q. to talk about cats in the latter's living room in your head but it doesn't mean we should be so easy to please when it comes to what makes it to the screen. I want to see what absurdly exciting new heights the franchise can climb to, not get stuck inventing absurdity in our established hero's past.
I don't want to watch fan fluff, I want to see the world through an exciting new lens from the best hands in the industry working on what they consider the project of a lifetime. Fleming and this franchise have already found a strong formula for what works well and only seem to have diverged in recent years for awards vanity. Don't limit our standards to box office projections and awards hype this go-around unless you want more soap opera.
I feel like I should say I enjoy many concepts and elements of Skyfall, the return of Mr. White and SPECTRE in concept, and I think NTTD is a solid Bond movie if you accept that it was inevitable some clever filmmaker was going to kill Bond on screen.
Well said. I couldn't agree more.
Honestly, so what? Fleming's just a corpse now. He didn't have any say on how the filmmakers could make their first three films when he was alive, and he won't now.
I have zero problem with the characters interacting.