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Comments
Yes, that is sarcasm.
No but neither are the other ones and he's not that developed in Fleming so I guess they feel they can take licenses.
I think out of them all only Michael Kitchen comes any way close to capturing the Tanner of the books. He has the best relationship with Bond and tries to act as a brake on M's excesses, especially in TWINE, not that she heeds his advice!
Anyway Rory Kinnear is alright.
Kitchen was the best Tanner but the role never had to expand much. Even now Tanner is basically someone Bond talks to and to whom he can be more open than M or even Moneypenny and Q. So I'm ok with Rory Kinnear playing it.
Lucky man.
If only I could have a British accent.
That could be said of anyone holding a job position in MI6 though. Tanner is one more friendly terms with Bond than most except maybe Moneypenny. But it's a friendship devoided of sexual tension of course. Yes he's a minor and anecdotal character but you need some of those.
You could certainly give it a try...
We seemed to manage perfectly well without him for 8 films and when he did appear in TMWTGG he brought as much as Kinnear has to the role. The character might as well just be called 'man in suit who spouts exposition'.
In FYEO he has zero resemblence to Fleming's character and basically just pre empts Edward Fox's version of M by 2 years.
Kitchen is the only one who has brought anything to the role at all and even then he is completely interchangeable with Robinson. God knows why we need them both in TWINE? Feels like EON just didn't want to sack either of them so just divided their dialogue in two.
And then we come to Rory. What else can be said that hasn't already? You could cast the invisible man and he'd have more screen presence.
Apart from us on here who debate these things would a single member of the public miss Tanner? No.
Does he move the story forwards? No.
Is he part of the Bond tradition like M, Q and MP? No.
Just get shot then.
Mmmmmmmmmmm
But we don't need someone for Bond to talk to mate.
From DN to TMWTGG he managed just fine talking only to M, Q and MP.
I don't think FRWL and OHMSS are any less brilliant films just because Bond didn't spend 5 mins discussing where Q has set up his workshop which is all he has done with Tanner for the last 2 films.
We can work out for ourselves that this is MI6.
I just thank Christ Rory wasn't around previously:
YOLT - 'M's set up on this submarine. New digs'
LALD - 'M's come round to visit you. Nice digs - love the coffee maker.'
TMWTGG - 'M's set up on this capsized ship. Slanted digs.'
TSWLM - 'M's set up in this pyramid. Old digs. Very old, around 2000 years.'
MR - 'M's set up in this gaucho monastery. Rather odd digs.'
Etc
Precisely
I think that's enough digs at Rory.
No, I mean sack the actor and recast. He's rubbish.
That'd give Bond a great and innovative personal revenge mission, not seen for simply ages.
He also made a great Lord Lucan is a recentish adaptation in the UK.
RK's acting ability can't measured on what P&W have given him, no Tanner is pretty vanilla but this isn't because Kinnear is a poor actor.
When the new Bond comes around it's probably best to either junk the character or recast, if he's worth having in there then at least make him more than a glorified secretary. Like someone said he needs to look like someone who would step into M's shoes when needed and Rory doesn't show that at all due to the blandness of the material he's given.
With what happened in SPECTRE the way they painted themselves into a corner with all the ESB rubbish reboot and recast, maybe keep Ralph and Wishaw but Harris and Rory can go.
Ralph has a great intro in SF but he wasn't served with decent shot at being the new M with SPECTRE, doing what they did with Dench going from PB to DC I woudn't be against but dial back their involvement considerably none of this they need to be their for a reason that Craig and Mendes kept talking about.
Maybe in the right hands that can be dealt with but with Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee at the laptop that is clear that they have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and hopefully this time their P45's won't be revoked as before.
Actually from DN onwards he talks to other people, government officials and so on. Like I said the MI6 is not staffed with three persons.
I hope you're not confusing MI6 staff with people Bond meets on his mission like Pleydell Smith and Colonel Smithers? For this debate I assumed we were classing it as referring to the MI6 regulars and not even MI6 agents such as Kerim or Pinder?
There's a difference between having Bond speak to various people concerned solely with a particular mission and a bloke standing out of focus behind M and spouting the occasional line of exposition.
To my mind it took until TMWTGG for Bond to interact with other MI6 staffers thus:
DN: Briefing with just M and Boothroyd.
FRWL: Briefing with just M and Q.
GF: Colonel Smithers - not MI6 staff.
TB: Group Captain Prrichard - not MI6 staff.
YOLT: Briefing with just M.
OHMSS: Various briefings with M. Briefing with Sir Hilary - not MI6 staff.
DAF: Briefing with M and Sir Donald Munger - not MI6 staff.
LALD: Briefing with M and MP.
TMWTGG: Briefing with M, Tanner and Colthorpe - both of them seem to be MI6 staff.
This is not to say they don't exist, we see the communications room as early as 5 minutes into DN. Just that while in a book it's fine to have Bond having steak and kidney pudding in the canteen, film is a more stripped down medium and it serves no real purpose having Bond walk round every department saying hello to everybody.
I'd love to spend the first half hour of a Bond film seeing Bond doing his work out, having his scrambled eggs and the Times, going through his inbox and visiting the shooting range. But the running time would end up over 3 hours.
The last two films have already felt a bit bloated and most of that has been due to prolonged scenes at MI6.
And Rory is the worst symptom of this. He's just.... there without influencing proceedings one iota. A bit like James Milner.
So what you are saying is that we should try Rory Kinnear at left back.
Yeah. Left back in the dressing room!
The old ones are the best.