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Comments
Im not fussed about saving money if it gets rid of him.
I'd happily spend half the budget on another pointless explosion if Rory was at the centre of it.
Mind you despite how much petrol, magnesium and phosphorus they set fire to, on the big screen if you blew up Rory it would still come out grey and sound like a fly farting.
I think he's banned from flying as whenever he gets on a plane he causes instant depressurisation as he sucks the atmosphere out of anywhere he goes.
He's more concerned with Ts&Cs (should be a mod on here) and Health & Safety than taking a chance and defying M.
And before anyone tells me this is MI6's second in command and how he should be dynamic for crying out loud, let me answer that now....................................SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE! I DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER YOUR STUPID QUESTIONS.
There, that's my input.
I do agree that Rory seems to give off an almost homerotic admiration of Bond and clearly wishes that he had that confidence and swagger in life.
I picture poor old Rory sat alone in his one bedroom flat eating a pod noodle (obviously just the standard chicken and mushroom. Nothing so daring as a Bombay Bad Boy for Rory) and watching Top Gear on Dave and dreaming about being Bond but at the same time knowing he never can be. It's quite tragic really I suppose.
The classic way to win an argument so beloved of religious fundamentalists!
Remember that at the end of SF there was a period (who knows how long - an hour, a week, a month?) between M dying and Mallory being appointed when Rory was actually in charge of the nation's security!
Just let that sink in for a minute.
'Rory, Rory we've got solid intelligence that there's a terrorist attack imminent in London in the next hour! What she would do boss?'
'Don't know about you guys but I intend to cower behind this table and hope it all goes away.'
If SPECTRE had engineered such a dastardly scheme to put the country at risk we'd be speechless with admiration at their cunning. Probably why the Rory as a traitor idea was scrapped. They realised that Rory actually trying to help SPECTRE wouldn't actually be any different from him just not doing his job very well as normal.
I think M summed up Rory being in charge best when she said 'ask yourselves - how safe do you feel?'
So, for example, (just for the sake of argument), there was a mole within the team and it was suspected that one of the team was a traitor. The focus was on Tanner but Bond refused to believe it could be him. Bond digs deeper and finds that Tanner's daughter has been kidnapped by SPECTRE and he is being forced to pass secrets across. Tanner has been torn between his loyalty to the Queen and the safety of his daughter. Only Bond knows this so he works with Tanner to find a solution?
Just ramblings but when you have a regular character who was been portrayed as dull, reliable etc, it does provide an opportunity to "flip" these values and provide an interesting and new scenario for the audience.
He acts like M's PA, always by her (or his) side. A second in command would surely be elsewhere doing more important jobs than passing phone messages to M.
I don't disagree with what you say except the fundamental crux of your hypothesis - namely that the audience have an expectation of how Tanner behaves.
Sorry to break it to you but the audience have no recollection of Tanner. He's just a bloke in a suit who says stuff. If you changed the actor who portrayed Tanner in every film no one would even notice. The general audience regard him the same as they regard Villiers and that weird Welsh bloke in QOS. He's only an actual character to us on here. To the general public he's just reads things off a computer to M.
If they made Rory a traitor the audience reaction would be 'That's a bit weird making that random bloke in a suit a traitor.'
It would have the impact of Mitchell being revealed as a traitor i.e. not much because the audience don't view him as a full character in his own right but more of an extra who got lucky with a few lines of dialogue.
You could easily retcon that one to the Spectre explosion.
Frankly, I'm surprised the films haven't explored this idea yet. We definitely don't need Tanner sticking around if he's just going to be M's assistant. Especially with Moneypenny back from her very long absence of 2 whole films.
Even if Tanner is second in command that doesn't mean he'd be suitable for the role. In The Sandbaggers Matthew Peele was second in command to C, very good as a right hand man, but proved catastrophic as potential successor. Now Bill Tanner does not have the same personality but I always understood he's a competent but dull civil servant.
Tanner could be a very interesting character, as people have said, the pencil pushing flip side of Bond, his best friend in the service. But they've turned him into an exposition machine.
But in this series he has a very deep brash voice,such charisma about him and an authority.
It goes to show,and I think we all know this already,just how good and versatile an actor Rory is ,AND how much he is being wasted as the wimpy,quietly spoken,gormeless 007 fanboy as Tanner in the Bond films.
They need to utilise his talents more,this comedy series proves that..such a waste.
I cant post a picture on here atm but if you google it you will see.
Anyway I think that Tanner should have been the traitor like he was in one of the SP drafts. Pisses on Fleming a bit but Tanner is such a non character even in the books that would that matter? And it made perfect sense. He did it because he fears being sidelined as MI6 changes and why wouldn't he? We've all noticed how pointless he is. He realised he's just the exposition guy and they didn't really need him (helping Blofeld as a result), very meta. And him killing himself at the end rather than face Bond is very in keeping with the guy we saw hiding under the desk in Skyfall. I would have loved it. His presence in QoS and SF would have been retroactively given a purpose, his tiny little exposition role would have contributed to an actual character arc. Instead we got the mustache twirling C, who's fine (love most of his scenes with M), but you can tell he's a villain from the off. The twist there is a non event. Tanner being a mole would have had much more of an impact imo. I guess they could still do it with Bond 25 but I'm hoping for very little time spent in London and a lot spent in Japan in this one so I'd rather they just left it.
The problem with that whole idea is that the guy is basically a black hole in terms of screen presence. When you finally reveal your big twist where M confronts Tanner as Nine Eyes counts down to going live and says 'You bastard Bill. We trusted you as our friend but you've betrayed your country', 95% of the audience will turn to each other and say 'Who's this guy? Was he that bloke who stood behind Q out of focus at the edge of the frame earlier? What's he got to do with anything?'
Yes it was obvious from the start but at least Andrew Scott came on and did his thing and was nice and odious in the role.
By having Tanner revealed as the big twist you risk dragging an already underwhelming finale down even further as the audience couldn't care less about this guy (no matter how much I personally would have enjoyed his suicide scene).
You could survey every member of the general public who has been to see the last 2 Craig films and they'd all be able to name M, MP and Q but not one of them would be able to say Rory's character name, if they remembered he was in it at all. The role just spouts a bit of exposition and stands in the background (this isn't Rory's fault in fairness). As far as the public are concerned you might just as well bring Villiers back or that little Welsh hobgoblin from QOS and have them as the mole.
Even having Robinson or Kitchen's Tanner be revealed as a traitor in the Brosnan era wouldn't really have have worked as even though they are comparatively engaging and bring some life to their roles the audience would still only remember them as 'That MI6 bloke with M at the start.'
I ageee he'd have been good, I think he was screentested when Craig got it. Surprised he isn't in more stuff to be fair. Obviously he's not going to be leading franchises but he's a solid supporting actor (could be a decent lead too if given the chance) and I'd expect him to pop up in more than he has. I remember seeing him in The Punisher, Alien vs Predator and an episode of Doctor Who. Think that's about it.
Oh my dear old chap you've walked straight onto the punch. The notion that giving Rory Kinnear more screen time is a way to improve things when the script is already on life support would see you sued for medical negligence.
And cutting back and forth between Bond galavanting around Austria and Morocco and the Scooby gang amateur players acting out a poor man's Tinker, Tailor? Absolutely awful.
Maybe not on the same level as M or Ms. Moneypenny but I still like him enough to wish him to return in Bond 25