Who are your favourite Bond characters with a very limited screen time, that you kind of wish hung around a little longer (or made a return in a future movie)?
I’ll start with Paloma in NTTD - the Cuba scenes are the best part of the movie for me, and I love Paloma’s character from the start, with the customary “You’re late” to her fighting skills, drinking along with Bond, and the chemistry between the two characters. Wonderful stuff! She even suggests to Bond that he stay longer next time!
and Dr Kaufmann in TND. Great offbeat character, who is a expert pistol marksman but also enjoys torture and faking celebrity overdoses. He has great lines with Bond but then is gone all too soon.
Sometimes you wish they were in longer, but then maybe they wouldn’t be so memorable?
Which other briefly appearing characters do you enjoy?
With all seriousness…being a big fan of FRWL, Kerim Bey’s sons. The family business, but there’s some real pathos with them helping Bond with a sense of revenge at their father’s death.
If we’re including Mathis, then I’d add Wright’s Felix Leiter. I love his short appearances in CR and QoS, but I think he and Bond needed one more film before NTTD for their farewell to be more effective. In this additional film that I’d add in the middle of Craig’s tenure, Felix would be a major player in the plot and have numerous scenes with Bond.
CR works wonderfully because a) Hey! -it’s Felix! b) Wright’s a brilliant actor c) the short exchange on the stairwell is brilliantly written and played by the 2 actors.
But one of the few missed opportunities (there’s a loaded statement right there) of the DC-era is the failure to make real storyline-use of the chemistry and talent of both men. For me, I’d go as far as saying that I’d willingly swap some MI6-pages of screenplay for a little more Felix (and I love Dench and Fiennes, so not a knock on them).
It’s a perfect cameo appearance, and right now I’m leaning towards it being the best. It progresses the film’s story forward but also feels like a movie within a movie. Paloma’s comment for Bond to stay longer in the future also carries weight because we know there won’t be a next time.
Definitely Felix! I think thats the biggest (and maybe only, but massive) flaw from the Craig era: the one missing film in the middle where Bond is at the top of his game! And right there the missing scenes (where to see that they became good friends, like in the books) with Felix would fit in, too…
When Felix disagreed with something that are him in LTK, you really felt for the character.
His demise in NTTD did not move me at all really and bonds later line about him “being a brother” had little effect,as they had hardly anytime together on screen.
They have more screen time together than Hedison and Dalton do…Leiter was mostly ignored in terms of being an actual character post Connery, and in Connery’s run it was never even slightly consistent. He was a white American male, the similarities between the 4 actors begins and ends there.
In the case of Felix, it really isn’t. Even in a single actors run, the different Felix’s have nothing in common.
None of these people have even the slightest resemblance in either looks or performance. Wright and Craig gave the relationship a consistency that it never had before.
