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This occured to me as well. You don't employ Ralph Fiennes and give him a 2 minute scene. Plus Wishaw is an up and coming star in his own right. Should prove interesting.
She was okay I suppose. In my mind she is always that woman from the sitcom with Geoffrey Palmer. I associate her with what I always felt was the 'TV movie' B-list cast feel of the Brosnan era. Dench, Coltrane, Salmon, Palmer, Hatcher, Richards etc etc.
For me she never had the stature I associate with the role. Would have liked to see Mirren to a female M. The sexual dynamic that wasn't really there with Dench would have been entertaining.
Dench, Coltrane and Sean Bean originate from TV but have all had fairly distinguished careers in film outside of Bond - so they must have some cinematic charm that you simply fail to grasp ;)
Personally, having never seen As Time Goes By, I always associate Judi Dench with Bond now. Geoffrey Palmer I know mainly from Fawlty Towers, Grumpy Old Men and Tomorrow Never Dies.
Actually I remember good old Barry praising Mrs Brown on his Film programme.
For me though she will always be M. That's when I first saw her and got to know her.
I think Bernard Lee though had that background as a serious character actor in 1950s B+W movies - it just seemed to help convey a bit more gravitas.
She can upstage pretty much anyone too! Even in Craig's films quite a few of the laughs during the scenes between her and Bond came from Dench.
It did with DAD. TWINE was just boring.
BAIN, you're right. She does have gravitas. I just think for some viewers she was always that old bird from the sitcom though because that's how you pictured her. She is a goood actress and likeable. I just hated the way her part ended up being written. The characterisation meandered all over the place. Trust issues, mysogynist dinosaur, then more trust issues. It just became tiresome. I found it more interesting and believable when she just allowed Bond to get on and do his job. The idea that this character - Bond - reaches where he is and is constantly undermined and doubted by his superiors struck a wrong note to me. Who knows, may be that made it all that bit more authentically Fleming. But they did it so many times it just became tedious.
Am hoping Mallory lets our man get on with the job and stays behind his desk.
See, that's why I need to read the books - so I can throw all that 'this is what Fleming would have done' nonsense back at the book obsessives. The main reason I've never completely warmed to LTK is that from the first time I watched it I never for one moment believed that Bond would act the way does in front of M at Hemmingway's house. And that kind of stuff has just become more and more common in the post Dalton era, to the extent that none of the key characters seem to trust each other any more. Frankly, SF made everyone seem so incompetent - M, Moneypenny, Bond - that you can't blame them either.
If what you're saying is true then I think it goes some way to explaining why I'm so disappointed by this film. The fact that M does not trust Bond to get Patrice at the start of the film just hits a completely bum note. These characters are not M or Bond - they are weird distortions created by Purvis and Wade that just happen to carry their names.
Those weird scenes of Bond moping around on the beach reminded me of the second Bourne movie and just seemed so out of character for Bond. The whole film seems out of character, but that's just me.
I'll always recommend reading the books! :)
One of the things I believe they did do a good job of translating from the books to the screen was the relationship between Dench and Craig, and how Bond looked at M as being a parental figure.
For me, and this goes back to something I was talking about in another thread, I've always felt the sense that the creative team have either willingly or unwillingly had pressure put on them to include as much of Dench as they could muster. I imagine when sitting down to write they had the notion of including 'M' hanging over them like the sword of damacles. As much as P+W are roundly trounced on here I refuse to believe they'd have willingly written two films so heavily reliant on the personal issues of the main protagonist's boss.
I don't know who was doing the perpetuating but somebody behind the scenes clearly felt obliged to give Dench as much screen time as possible. She's been an ever present figure in the Brosnan/Craig films to the point where I can only conclude they did so because of her status as British acting royalty and not because it was an interesting creative decision to explore her character. I'm glad the whole thing is concluded now and I hope and pray Fiennes adopts a Lee-esque role for the next couple. I want to see 'new' characters not re-imaginings of the staple ones.
I'm not holding my breath.
Of course, that doesn't really square with the next film adaptation I'd enjoy seeing: Colonel Sun.
:\">
He's a fairly big actor so they'll probably give him lots of screentime like they did with Dench. I sort of wish they'd gone for a smaller name so we could have a normal M.
He does seem more entertaining than Dench though so maybe I won't mind M being used more if it's him.
It's odd. I never really got that with Dench. I found her quite interfering and matronly - rather cold and distant - but never motherly. There never seemed to be much warmth between her and Bond apart from perhaps in the early Brosnan era. From DAD onwards she seemed to be constantly back-stabbing Bond or undermining him. That's why the whole 'mummy' issues theme in SF fell so flat for me. I just didn't buy this supposedly close relationship. It was not close. It was purely professional. She didn't trust Bond and ultimately Bond was willing to sacrifice her in order to take out Silva.
What makes it even odder though is that in the context of the film M and Kinkade are obviously supposed to represent Bond's absent parents and so you'd expect Bond to do everything to avoid their deaths (again). At least, that would have made a bit of sense to me. But he doesn't seem that bothered as he almost goes out of his way to put them both in danger (what has poor old Kinkade done to deserve being put through this little warzone?). Within the symbolism-laden context of the plot, it makes very little sense.