Yes, as with Lucia it is baffling why Mr.Hinx gets built up and then isn’t used in the second half of the film anymore.
I have found many things I like about SPECTRE as a whole - but it really is like a stew that has wonderful ingredients which were used much too sparsely, resulting in a dish which is tasty but could have been a real gourmet joy.
To really hammer this excellent analogy, rather than taking a stew ingredients and making a bloody good stew, someone decided to take stew ingredients and attempt to get a Michelin star, with (for me) unfortunately predictable results.
To stay somewhat on thread, it’s why I always get angry with SP (rather than just embarrassed by DAD) - there was some great stuff there (of which Bellucci is one) which never came together for me. Lest we forget, Andrew Scott is in the film too, who, along with Bellucci, Waltz, combine as a contender for “Best ever Bond Cast.” And yet, I will be forever underwhelmed.
Easy one. Wanted more Bellucci, didn’t even want as much Madonna as we got.
Expected so little of Madonna that it was near impossible for her to underwhelm me – even though she tried hard.
Has to be Belucci. The biggest wasted opportunity since the Ekranoplan in Devil May Care 
September 30
A curious month, with its digression into cannibalism, although that could well happen again now that you have a taste for it.
It might prove solace for other unfulfilled desires that were promised to you by the Bond films.
Last swipe of the side for September then; which of these was ultimately completely unnecessary and probably did their film more harm than good?
Not DNA but DOA
JW had me mostly thinking “um…why?”
Bringing back Blofeld was good in theory, mostly weakened by a rushed execution.
Jaws never loses the child asking “why can’t he be a goodie and a baddie” but the films tone generally makes that ok.
Zukovsky works mostly on the charm of Robbie Coltrane.
So JW wins as it seemed pointless from idea to execution.
Brofeld, actually he’s only there for exposition we already knew - and Bond, too. Because if not it’s depicting Bond as the most useless stupid idiot ever employed by her Majesty’s. And that’s saying something. Brofeld’s return is supposed to improve on the bizarre SPECTRE. But it’s still playing the stupid cuckoo game.
The more time passes since NTTD the more I feel it might have been the better film had it concentrated either on Safin - or Blofeld’s revenge in a Nobody Lives for Ever headhunt plot.
Have to say: Pepper.
Too obviously put in again as a gag, sagging the already saggy boat chase and draining the tension out of it.
Jaws‘ second act was a master class in narrative efficacy in comparison: showing his survival at the end of the previous film and giving him an arc towards redemption, even adding a clownesque dimension to his scariness. Hey, I wouldn’t have minded him coming back for a third time!
Zukowsky: liked him the first time, but the second time he became too much of a buffoon, despite the important life-saving function at his end. Still, Coltrane.
Brofeld: I agree with @dustin that NTTD could have been better focusing only on Safin, but I would add it could have been even better focusing only on Blofeld. He really was built up to be the master of all Bondian pain - so why not give him (Flemmmming!) the poison garden and a fitting end of taking Bond with him.
However, he works for me in NTTD, and diminishing him to a mastermind outmasterminded by someone else does have a nice irony.
Pepper, it is then. (Funny, I just completed a rewatch of „Modern Family“, featuring Nathan Lane in the role of Pepper Saltzman. Coincidence? Sure. But fun.)
What? No Jack Wade?!?!?
Waltz Blofeld had a reason for being there. Once he was arrested I couldn’t imagine a plausible escape attempt from a facility that secure. Still being in communication with SPECTRE was a fair compromise, but nonetheless, he couldn’t be the leader again in the same way.
As a finale, I like how NTTD gives the Bond world a clean plate by having his main threat eradicated by an upstart rival. Someone not confined by prison and having full autonomy over a new operation. Who then also gets taken down himself.
Jaws has a function as a mercenary with a character arc, and I think his return makes TSWLM-MR duology the memorable Moore era high point that it is. Valentin factors into the plot and has one of the better final scenes of an ally inside Maiden’s Tower. But JW Pepper is a random convenience that adds nothing. It’s the weakest stretch of TMWTGG.
Beautifully put, and you have helped me realize another reason why I like the film–the restraint (which you characterize as sparseness) with which the tale is told. SP is free of the bombast–visual and otherwise–that can take over a Bond film (in fact, all action films), where the gospel of “more is more” is never questioned. An appropriate aesthetic for a ghost story.
Except the biggest explosion on film… or the Day of the Dead festival over which a helicopter does a double looping… or a chase between a Range Rover and a plane that loses its wings… 
Mere trifles 
Those have never struck me as bombast–big, but not bombastic. When I watch the desert base blow up, my reception is of something both enormous and distanced. Same with the SPECTRE meeting–a huge room and table, but mixed with an emptiness that works against any sense of bombast that the largeness might nod toward, or with an elaborate chase sequence set in deserted streets. Similarly, Monica Bellucci and Andrew Scott are used enough without becoming overused.
For me, an instance of bombast would be the Undergound scene or family home destruction in SF.
Sheriff Pepper is out of place in TMWTGG. Just the idea of a racist Southern sheriff choosing to vacation in Hong Kong strains credulity, but going car shopping while he’s there takes us well past the breaking point. We didn’t need him in the car to work in that corkscrew jump. Ordinarily, he’d have gotten my vote.
But alas, Brofeld is on another plane entirely: first SP retroactively shoehorns him into Bond’s childhood and movie history, showing up out of nowhere to declare that he’s responsible for all the events of the previous three films and, oh yeah by the way he’s done it by means of a global organization of eeeevil that we forgot to mention until now (forget that “Quantum” stuff; this one’s bigger and badder). In this lazy way we cleverly impart instant “gravitas” on a character and organization via exposition rather than actually earning it through effective storytelling. Then comes NTTD and Brofeld shows up just long enough to get killed, with his entire organization undone in a twinkling so as to impart instant gravitas and unearned “cred” to yet another limp noodle of a villain. (If we were never convinced Spectre was a big deal just because the filmmakers “said so,” then why should we be impressed when some schmuck takes it down?)
SP introduces Brofeld with the (unconvincing) claim he’s “the author of all Bond’s pain and the arch nemesis who will haunt him all his days.” The audience responds incredulously, “Oh, really?” and NTTD answers sheepishly, “Nevermind, he’s dead. But hey, check out this new guy with even worse skin! Is he eeeevil or what?”
It takes two films for Madeleine to make much of an impact. Brofeld never manages to at all.
Thank you this last month’s Deathmatches and Sideswipes, Jim.
Much appreciated.
A treat as ever.
Why did that month end so fast? When will Sideswipes return? Where´s Deathmatch now?
How does December sound?
It sounds like screaming. The screaming of the many for the pleasure of the few. Or the pleasure just of the me.
December 1
The Man with the Golden Gun: Lt Hip is played by a Korean actor. The character is based in Hong Kong. The character has nieces in Thailand, one of whom is played by a Chinese actor., and appear to be represented to us as Thai.
Hmm.
Proper - people move about, y’know. They were the best (or indeed, only) actors for the roles.
Slopper - basically casual racism, “they all look the same”, etc.
I can absolutely buy the argument that people move about, that you’ll find some Nipponese/Chinese/Tai/Cambodian/Vietnamese characters basically everywhere in Asia, especially with wars and killing fields. People do move about and we can’t blame them for not wanting to be butchered.
But then again, I don’t buy the argument these were the only fitting actors for the production. With Hong Kong‘s booming industry churning out films by the dozen there ought to have been a perfectly good way to cast whatever nationality the script demands - or simply adapt the script to who they decided to cast. So this one is slopper.