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Comments
I think once you replaced Lee with someone who wasn't playing the 'same' M as him i.e. they weren't Miles Messervy, that ship had set sail at a high rate of knots.
True. But why not just have another Sir Miles Messervy, just as you have another, but the same, James Bond.
I'm not sure why they didn't simply recast the part when Lee died. It would have been better than giving us Robert Brown. But at the same time, Dench was great in the part later and I also like Fiennes in the part. Maybe they'll bring back Miles Messervy for the next Bond.
It was never stated that Brown wasn t Messervy. He might well have been.
I think he was meant to be the same character, but it’s ambiguous enough you can see it either way.
Not explicitly, no. But I believe it to be the same character he played in The Spy Who Loved Me. I would hope it was, at least. If he was playing Messervy, that makes the casting even worse as he possesses almost none of Lee's qualities.
He seems similar enough to me with little things like having a pipe, which has never carried over to later Ms. We just never got an instance of his name being dropped. I think the fact that they don’t give him an introduction but have him in his first scene seem like he’s always been a part of the series is supposed to tell you this is the same M, much like how Caroline Bliss was treated as the same Moneypenny.
Yeah I know you were. Sorry, I have never used an emoji so my meaning can often be lost!
I never really read it that way, myself. Coincidentally, but not controversially, Bliss was pretty terrible as well.
Also, I kind of wish they had Dench's M smoke a pipe. That would have been quite intense.
I see no evidence in Octopussy to suggest that Robert Brown isn’t Sir Miles Messervy. The first ‘new M’ was featured in GE.
My thoughts exactly.
That's my thinking as well.
And mine, too.
The only thing that nags me in Dench's time is her incompetance. Making the wrong judgement on Elektra is one thing, but in Craig's time she seems increadably accident-prone. I had to agree with the chair(wo)man at the hearing. First she is too quick with promoting Bond (CR), then she misunderstands his drive and professionalism (QoS), she's got MI6 infiltrated by an unknown (Quantum) organisation (QoS), consequently she has Bond shot (SF), and it turns out one of her hand-picked top agents she left to rot (poor judgement!) and is willing to kill/have killed British agents to take revenge (SF). Only to not mention her wound to Bond which leads her to die.
All in all, by far the worst performance of any M (not acting wise!).
No need to apologise at all mate.
Or to update, and dare I say freshen, the series with the times. "Tradition" often means "straight white male." The same argument is made against Elba, Berry, etc.
Until I see a script of OCTOPUSSY or a deleted scene that explicitly states Hargreaves was promoted to M, I'll believe Brown was playing Sir Miles.
In addition:
I found Robert Brown to be an outstanding M.
Don't drink and play with your silencer...... :))
Good point.
Also, EON had already made it a practice of reusing actors for different roles, the biggest one being Charles Gray as Henderson and then Blofeld.
But like I said earlier, it's really just up to interpretation. If one wants to just view his M as Hargreaves, okay. I used to for awhile when I was first a fan, but over time it just made sense that EON was simply recasting and didn't put much thought beyond that.
Has anyone ever tried asking someone like John Glen if Brown was intended to be Hargreaves as M? I doubt Wilson would care if you asked him.
Good point. Maud Adams is too totally different main characters too.
As we know, after Lee's death in January 1981, Broccoli and the other producers, decided to leave M out of For Your Eyes Only out of respect for Lee (state he was ‘on leave’) and assigned his lines to M's Chief of Staff Bill Tanner. In 1983, Brown was hired to portray M (apparently) on the recommendation of Bond actor Sir Roger Moore.
It was never clearly established if Brown was the same M as Lee's character, or not (but given that there is no evidence whatsoever to the contrary one would assume he is Sir Miles). So to assume otherwise is ‘fan interpretation’ based zero evidence in the 1983 plot.
In 1995, Brown was succeeded as M by Judi Dench in GoldenEye (where the change of character is clearly stated in the plot; “Your predecessor kept some Cognac....”).