Wow, that’s an interesting list.
The DB5 is an easy choice, given how often I’ve complained about it here. It’s a cool car, but at this point it’s become a crutch, a security blanket, Eon hedging their bets by trading on sentiment rather than letting their new Bond sink or swim on his own merits. None of the other Bond actors got to “stack the deck” this way and it’s a disservice to Craig to have made him do it. Let the next Bond put on his big boy pants and work without the training wheels.
I was surprised to see M on the list until I realized we’ve actually HAD a Bond movie without M and I liked it: FYEO. But as M’s followed by Q and Moneypenny, I suspect you may be getting at the frequent criticism (from myself and many others) that Bond relies too much on the “Scooby Gang” talking into his earpiece and giving constant advice when he’s on missions. I would certainly like to see a permanent end to that, but moreover I think dropping the MI-6 scenes entirely could make for an interesting “hook” to a Bond film. Have the film begin in media res, with Bond already on a mission, already in danger and cut off from HQ. Then we need to piece together where he is and what he’s doing, and he needs to complete his mission using his wits, guile and training without being able to “call home” or rely on gadgets, either pre-issued or shipped to him. It could even end with Bond going off to make his report (which we never see happen). Of course the problem is that here in the 2020’s it’s become almost impossible to imagine a situation where “calling home” isn’t as easy as borrowing a smartphone or walking into a cyber cafe. But maybe they could write in a reason why he wouldn’t WANT to, like maybe a suspected conspiracy within MI-6 itself. If you want to be totally ballsy, do this with the next film and introduce the new Bond without ANY of the usual crutches. Let us figure out who he is by how cool he’s being, and not because everyone’s saying, “Good morning Bond” and “Here’s your mission.”
Moving on…Tanner can go because he already wasn’t in most of them and even when he is, it makes no real difference to anything (sorry, Bill).
Leiter was a no-show for most of the series, as well. Jeffrey’s Wright’s relative prominence in the latter series was thanks more to his personal charisma than anything. If someone else had played him in CR, there might have been little reason or incentive to bring him back.
They’ve monkeyed with the gunbarrel enough: they need to hold onto something to “brand” these things.
I’d be entirely fine with dropping “the name is Bond.” With a few memorable exceptions, it usually feels shoehorned into conversations as nearly a non-sequitur anyway, and seriously who goes around in real life introducing themselves that way (aside from Bond fans)? It treads a fine line between “big moment” and fourth-wall-breaking distraction. Maybe a solution would be to follow NTTD’s precedent and have other characters say it each film: “We got him on the security footage…there! But who is he?” Villain sets his jaw: “His name is Bond…James Bond.”