April is the cruellest month: a day-by-day game (year 2)

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M needs to be there as someone like Bond will always need a boss to assign him the missions. Even if you eliminated the character you’d just end up with M by another name (or letter). Either that or a Bond who is perpetually in the field and never returns ‘home.’ It’s telling that the character’s only absence was FYEO and was done out of respect for the late Bernard Lee rather than any story or artistic reason.
Or perhaps the head of Mi6 could be like early Blofeld, a mysterious figure glimpsed but never shown?

They have experimented leaving out Q before but his presence is still felt. The watch from LALD and the medkit from Casino Royale must have come from Q-Branch after all. Q being gone works for the odd films but in the long term gadgets are an inseparable part of Bond. Even when absent from the early Craig films his return felt inevitable.

Which leaves Moneypenny and already she’s set apart by being a name rather than a title and thus lends herself less to reinvention. I feel that Skyfall did a valiant job redefining the character but she will forever be associated with the outdated trope of the ‘flirty secretary.’ The more we move forward the more distance we get from the original character.

So my answer is Moneypenny.

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I mean…Fleming’s Moneypenny IS gone. Eve has very little in common the woman sat outside M’s office taking notes.

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Moneypenny can easily go because the „but he needs to flirt“-element could easily be transferred to a female Q.

And it really is time for a female Q.

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April 21st
One of the three can be dropped, Moneypenny the obvious as I think the series will move back toward gadgets for the next incumbent. Ditch the car too let Moneypenny have the Aston as part of her severance package.

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Moneypenny. And yet when Q has been gone (OHMSS, LALD for example) I can’t say I’ve missed him. And while I agree with Vanya that a well-done gadget is an important feature of a Bond film, LALD is a prime example of separating the two. The watch screams “James Bond” and yet Q is not in the film.

I did appreciate the way SF “reintroduced” both Q and Moneypenny and therein is the issue for me. If Q means a Llewelyn tribute act (R!) then I’d happily show the character the door - we really have been there and done that. But ultimately Moneypenny is the easiest to bin.

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Q was in OHMSS…

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Of course he was “Electronic lint…”

Let me correct my statement. Films without “traditional” Q-ing around (copyright Plank)…

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A rehash of John Gardner’s “Qute”? Ann Reilly.

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I know this always gets mentioned when the idea of a female Q comes up.

But who knows Gardner‘s novels apart from a few fans?

And there are a million ways to make a female Q different from that.

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Connery: YOLT (I like it a lot but going from TB to DAF would have been all the more interesting. While detrimental to Lazenby.)

Moore: AVTAK (I have grown to like that film. But OP could have been a fantastic finale for him.)

Dalton: LTK (Good movie, interesting shades of grey for his portrayal, but it still lingers in the mind of the important mainstream audience as a failure).

Brosnan: DAD (Again, I do like it, but not having it would not have kept him from being sacked. I am aware that some are happy about that.)

Craig: Shock! I will say NTTD because SPECTRE had a happy ending, and NTTD, despite its qualities, is mainly fulfilling one purpose: kill off Bond. And I would have preferred to give him a Picard ending. Let’s not kid ourselves: despite having become fashionable in the last two decades to kill off popular characters for shock value and „realism“, we love these pulp fiction heroes because they are NOT that realistic. Reminding ourselves of our own end is not what they are there for.

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4 out of 5 are easy.

Connery: Diamonds are Forever. He didn’t really need to come back and it’s a weird follow up to OHMSS.
Moore: The Man With the Golden Gun. My least favourite of the series. A strong villain in Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga but overall a mess of a film and very nearly killed the series.
Brosnan: Die Another Day.
Craig: Surprisingly difficult. While QOS and SPECTRE are the weakest of his tenure they also feel necessary. Many found the shift in character from QOS to Skyfall abrupt which would be made worse by having nothing between CR and Skyfall. NTTD is a better film that SPECTRE but builds on what came before.
Settled on QOS in the end. There were some good ideas but it was let down by the execution. It;s script was hampered by the writer’s strike and Forster was probably the wrong man for the job.

So circling back to Dalton: There is no answer. Sorry for the cop out but for me TLD and LTK are among my favourites of the series and removing either one would be detrimental.

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Onward…

April 22: Of those Bonds who did more than one, you are tasked with disappearing one of their films without detrimental effect on their tenure (it might not improve things, but it won’t make it worse).

April 23: At a recent SPECTRE meeting, one of its Board members – not much longer for the World – harshly criticised the expansion into food establishments, including the cynicism of drumming up funeral catering work by causing the funerals in the first place. The objection was noted but dismissed, and then both the meeting and the objector were dissolved.

Adding to its roster of chains with suspiciously wipe-clean menus, SPECTRE has recently exercised its long-standing option to take the majority of shares in The Whyte House group of casinos and other dungholes, Willard Whyte having finally died where he appeared to spend most of his life, in the toilet. For reasons best kept to yourself, you are visiting one of these awful places and its flagship restaurant, Hergesheimer’s (motto: “Forget G-Section; you’ll need a C-Section”).

You will be seated at one of the tables below; don’t forget that the others will immediately be doused in prussic acid / house ranch dressing (essentially the same thing).

A: Albert R. Broccoli, slide-whistle, Rosie Carver, The James Bond theme
B: Moonraker (novel), BrosnanBond, Thomas Newman, You Only Live Twice (song)
C: BlissMoneypenny, The James Bond Bedside Companion, Guy Hamilton, Scaramanga (novel version)
D: Mr Kidd (but not Mr Wint), Sheriff JW Pepper, the 007 theme, Lulu
E: Dominic Greene, We have all the Time in the World, Dario, BMW 750
F: MoonrakerJaws, Vesper Lynd (2006 film), Chew Mee, Pussy Galore (film version)

April 24: On the 40th anniversay of the outbreak of World War 2, to produce a film where the plot is an eugenics-obsessive proposing to gas millions to death, establishes Moonraker as the film series at its most tasteless.

April 25: Goldfinger (novel) demonstrates that Bond is far more competent at admin than he is at spying. This is a good joke. Generally, throughout both book and film series, most of the suspense comes from him making stupid errors.

April 26: Continuing a theme, whilst often compared to Sherlock Holmes in terms of indelible impact as a character, the attraction of Holmes is his brilliance. The only valid comparison to Holmes is that both characters are glorification of a drug addict.

April 27: Tsunami surfing in Die Another Day is a good idea badly executed. It isn’t a bad idea badly executed, into which category would fall Hip’s nieces, Kananga’s death and Bibi Dahl.

April 28: Of those films which seem to be more faithful in adapting Fleming’s characters, most of the female leads have been miscast against what was on the page (Lois Maxwell excepted). This is not necessarily a bad thing, because what’s on the page is largely awful. Fleming doesn’t write women well.

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Connery: DAF. A fun film but if I really had to choose this is the one. It’s after his initial streak of films in the 60s, and the physical transition to Moore (the tone was already there) could’ve happened earlier.

Moore: AVTAK. It’s a film I’ve come to enjoy, but the vibe of ‘one too many’ does linger. OP being the better finale factors into my decision here.

Dalton: TLD. I nearly didn’t answer this one because it’s insanely difficult. I love both of his films. It came down to which film I prefer more.

Brosnan: TWINE. DAD gets a bad rap, but I enjoy it more than TWINE which can be a rather drab, melodramatic affair. With DAD Brosnan goes out with the last big extravaganza of the original timeline before the reboot. The last of its kind.

Craig: QoS. The production issues are well known and the while having interesting choices the overall product needed more work. If it wasn’t for QoS I would’ve chosen SPECTRE. If I had to be ruthless I’d whittle this era down to the essentials of CR, SF and NTTD.

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I guess I don’t have much to offer in the way of variety, because I find myself agreeing with what seems to be the consensus on these:

Connery: DAF. His “tenure” was already finished with YOLT and after that one there was nowhere to go but down, in terms of scope and sweep. M himself says YOLT is “the big one,” and it feels like Connery’s whole tenure has been leading up to it. His missions have had progressively larger stakes until YOLT which literally puts us within seconds of World War 3. That’s a good place to wrap it up. DAF should have gone to Lazenby so his Bond had a chance to settle the score for Tracy.

Moore: AVTAK. It has its moments, but it very much feels like one trip too many to the well. I am a huge Roger fan and he’s my favorite Bond, but even I found his usual schtick tired and forced in this one. So much about this film wants to appeal to a younger audience, and all of it is undone by putting Roger in the center ring. To me it feels the most formulaic and by-the-numbers entry in the series, which actually could have been a strength with a new lead actor, helping to ease us and him through the transition. With Roger on board, we’re just constantly reminded that we’ve seen it all before, and better.

Dalton: I’m not sure there is a way to drop one of his “without detrimental effect.” He’s already perceived by some as a “failure” for having done only two. Would that be helped by cutting him down to one? Anyway, my inclination would be to cut LTK since I like TLD better, but if we’re considering an alternate reality where he only got one, maybe it would make more sense to drop TLD and let LTK stick out like even more of a sore thumb than it already is. A lot of OHMSS’ mystique revolves around it being so hugely atypical of the other films; imagine if LTK was the “one and done” for Dalton. It would be that much more fascinating, controversial and obsessed-over in fan circles for its "Where the Hell did THAT come from? qualities.

Brosnan: Another hard one. DAD is well-nigh unwatchable, but TWINE is almost as nonsensical in its way and on top of that also ponderously pretentious. Together they delivered the one-two punch that convinced me to walk away from the series (well…until the unexpected reboot that followed). I guess I’d have to choose DAD because I’m not sure TWINE alone would have driven me quite to that point.

Craig: QOS. It was an interesting experiment to have an entry that’s not so much a sequel as an addendum to the previous film, but in my opinion the experiment failed. The “Quantum” organization ultimately comes to nothing once Eon gets the rights back to SPECTRE, and in the end there’s nothing in this film that’s necessary to any of the others. Plus it’s so short it’s got one foot in nonexistence already.

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I’d probably do the same, perhaps not TWINE, given it was the first Bond film I saw in a cinema, but forced to pick one of the 4, it’d probably be that one.

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There should be no debating YOLT’s status as the source of much of celluloid Bond’s iconography. Ken Adams at his most outrageous, more than a hint of sci-fi, Blofeld in a safari-suit. When the series is sent up (even by itself) then YOLT is the film that seems to provide the foundation (Austin Powers, anyone?).

Yet…for the more discerning fan (us) those are not our concerns. While I do have a soft spot for the film, it is kind of slow, flabby and slightly lifeless, not unlike its star, with more than a sense of “going through the motions.” So it’s YOLT than I’m sending down the (rather cool metallic) hidden chute. Rather than DAF, whose script is witty and quite clever, and in a throwaway way goes down very easily. And there can be no arguing a much more enthused performance by the lead - which within this series is alone something that can hide an awful lot of faults within a film.

By that standard - predictably enough I’m giving SP the chop. I’ve said before, it’s less entertaining than DAD, but from the lead (and I love DC as an actor and I love his era) a disinterested (let’s say 60%) performance that undermines what surrounds it. Intentionally or not, DC’s 60% reflects the rest of the film - a 60% car chase, a 60% henchmen, a 60% villain, a score which appears to only contain 60% original material.

From the other direction, it’s TMWTGG that gets the axe. For many it’s AVTAK that should go, but as I’ve stated in this thread on another day, Sir Rog’s performance is not the issue with the film so those efforts get rewarded. TMWTGG on the other hand, well, I’ve listed those reasons elsewhere too, and they undermine the performance of the lead still building his interpretation.

For Brozza? TND isn’t the worse film in his run, but remove it and what have we lost? While not done badly, we lose nothing that hasn’t been done better across the series. There has been a better car chase (though TND’s is fantastic), the villain is…well other’s have hammed it up better. Henchmen - yep, better ones. Perhaps Yeoh alone is a reason to keep the film, but from a distance, I’d offer that how one views Brozza’s tenure is neither elevated or dimmed by TND. So it goes…

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To all those who are advocating for DAF being dropped:

image

You are being watched.

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plankattack makes a good argument for (against?) TMWTGG. I still say AVTAK fails to stick the landing for Roger’s tenure and it’s hard to say goodbye on a sour note, but TMWTGG was a definite misfire at a very inopportune time, with nearly devastating consequences. No matter how strong or weak AVTAK ended up being, we all knew (1) it would be Roger’s last and (2) James Bond would go on. In 1974, the post-Connery success of the series was much less assured, so as disappointments go, GG was the more “important” – and threatening – one. If we’re rewriting history, it would sure look nice on Roger’s resume to go from the strong start of LALD to the career high of TSWLM without the stumble – if not quite faceplant – of TMWTGG in between.

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First time I saw TMWTGG I was severely disappointed.

But it really became a movie I revisited again and again to appreciate its otherness, the focusing of the story on Bond‘s evil twin, so to speak, played by Dracula, luring Bond to his „castle“. With all the nastiness Bond shows this time around, it actually fits this particular story.

AVTAK is actually making great use of an older Bond but I agree: it is a paint by numbers movie, therefore the lesser one.

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Weirdly, I would enjoy every one of these tables.

But I would foolishly never enter a restaurant called Hergesheimer‘s.

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