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That works both ways. To assume he is Sir Miles is also 'fan interpretation' based on zero evidence. :)
All the MI6 scenes were actually shot in November. Lee did show up to Pinewood to shoot his scenes but it was quickly apparent he wasn't doing very well on set and had to go home. Quickly adding the "on leave" bit was supposed to be a cute meta reference to the fact that Lee really was on leave and expected to return in the future. He never did, of course.
"Take a look at M in the pretitles of TLD. On his shoulder is his Royal Navy rank--one thick gold bar and one thin bar with a loop. M is a Rear Admiral.
Now take a look at Admiral Hargreaves sleeve in TSWLM: one thick bar, a thin bar, and another thin bar with a loop. Hargreaves is a Vice Admiral.
So now unless Hargreaves was demoted--highly unlikely given that he is now trusted to run the Secret Intelligence Service--Hargreaves cannot be the same man."
Seems open and shut to me!
And Messervy held the rank of Rear Admiral, so it was no accident than Robert Brown retained that rank in TLD.
But until Dench there was only one character identified as M, being Fleming’s Sir Miles Messervey.
I take your point. 👍 But, The reason M was called M was a reference to the first head of the secret service, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, who used to sign his name “C”. Ian Fleming decided to take this a step further and actually make M the official title of the head of MI6 in his books (M being Admiral Sir Miles Messervy, as is revealed in The Man With The Golden Gun) and the film TSWLM.
So how how does ‘Hargreaves’ work if it isn’t implicitly revealed in OP? He would have been called ‘H’ if so would he not??
She was a fantastic character, but a little far fetched in a film that was (reasonably) grounded. I think we got just the right amount of her. Any more would have been too much.
Assuming that she would be unchanged in terms of characterisation if she were to be expanded, I agree that it would have been too much. She certainly is a great character, all the same. I would have perhaps liked if she had been the Jaws of the Brosnan era, but they likely would have ballsed that up so maybe giving her the squeeze was for the best.
I had never noticed that. :-? That does put a dent in my theory.
I still think people are being harsh on Brown, though. If he had done and impression of Lee, would you be happy, or complain that he is impersonating Lee's M? For better or worse, he doesn't act like the same M last seen during MR. So as much as I possibly could, I would rather think of him as 'the next M'.
Brown gave his take on Sir Miles Messervey.
Just as Dalton had his take on Bond when he took over from Roger.
Also, to expand on the above, the reason M was called M was a reference to the first head of the secret service, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, who used to sign his name “C”. Ian Fleming decided to take this a step further and actually make M the official title of the head of MI6 in his books (M being Admiral Sir Miles Messervy, as is revealed in The Man With The Golden Gun) and the film TSWLM.
So how how does ‘Hargreaves’ work if it isn’t implicitly revealed in OP? He would have been called ‘H’ if so would he not??
I love Robert Brown! I think EON has never made a wrong step with casting the MI6 staff. Every M, Q, and Moneypenny has been good.
R, however, is a different situation. But John Cleese was great as Q in DAD.
I liked Brown’s M too.
I hated John Cleese as Q though. IMO he made a mockery of the part like a ‘Carry On’ character. Pastiche.
It’s better, but the script entails giving Bond an invisible car and having Rosa Klebb’s boot in the workshop. Still pastiche.
Those have nothing to do with his performance though.
True, it was better. But IMO the script makes his Q very poor indeed. His performance can’t rescue the pastiche script.
The rank does put a dent in the theory, i'll admit to that. Still, it could be a fluke on behalf of the producers. It's not really a time when they did take as much care as now. As I understand in Dr. No Bond is holding a completely different gun than he set out with.
I always assumed M was a random letter, much like Bond in CR.
Robert Brown was always just...blah to me. Even the replacement 'M' in FYEO: "You were supposed to question Gonzalez, not let Miss Havelock perforate him" leaves a more memorable impression than Brown in OP-LTK.
Now if they had made Frederick Gray M in FYEO and OP, that I could get behind. His irascibility never failed to amuse me.
The OP script went through radical changes. At one point I think Octopussy was the villain, an agent of SPECTRE (despite the PTS of FYEO). It's interesting that Broccoli could never quite quit SPECTRE.
That would have meant a demotion for him.
The Taschen Bond book discusses the earliest version of Octopussy:
"Blofeld returns as the primary antagonist, locked in a war with a group of bullion smugglers who carry out low level espionage work and are led by Octopussy. Blofeld plans to remove M from control of MI6 and replace him with his mole Villiers, M's chief of staff, which would allow him to manipulate the West's secret services. M is assassinated, thus leading to Moneypenny's being fired and replaced, and Bond is framed as a double agent. On the run and eager to clear his name, Bond works with Octopussy and Kamal Khan, an old school friend of Bond's working with the Afghan resistance, to defeat Blofeld and his army chief, Smythe."
An article also claimed that "McClory’s continuing legal claims to the character of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and the SPECTRE organisation scuppered Broccoli’s early plans for the plot of Octopussy. The eponymous character was originally conceived as a villain using research into the death of Tracy Bond to manipulate Bond into joining her vendetta against SPECTRE."
Not per sé, if governments change, Ministers have to go back to other work and 'going back' to a former (military) posting is something that used to be quite common for politicians.
Very interesting. I have never heard this before. Would certainly have made an interesting Bond plot, had it come to pass.
The Craig era has derived its emotional stakes, generally speaking, from killing off central characters: Vesper in CR, Mathis in QOS, M in SF, and . . . whatever SP was. Despite a few weak efforts there's really never been a 'ticking clock' nail-biter on par with, say, OP.
a) One could argue that it's in the interests of grounding the plots, but I think you could just as well argue that it's lazy.
b) If patterns continue, who's going to get killed in NTTD?
And that's okay with me. We've had enough of that and the MI series resorts to that with every entry and it's one of that series' flaws. CR and QoS ending with Bond confronting villains and the classic Bond feel of ending in MI6 in SF were so much better than ticking bombs/save-the-world and a clinch between Bond and the girl and the cheap one-liner to end on a happy note.