I guess you’re right. But even that is a forced and makes no sense: Madeleine is a doctor and rather hated her father, with no real relationship for years. Bond suddenly becoming majorly protective and empathetic is out of character for him.
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Disagree, and I wouldn’t call his emotion sudden either. Bond developed feelings for Madeleine, especially during the sequences on the train. Bond feels protective of his women once a connection is made, especially if they’re in the Vesper and Tracy mould. And by all accounts Madeleine is designed to be in a similar mould. You do make good points as to how SPECTRE could’ve been improved, but I still don’t equate the finished film to a dumpster fire.
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Indeed! Obviously they wanted to illustrate Bond’s blossoming emotions for Maddy with, as you’ve pointed out, this sudden, inexplicable act of chivalry. The dialogue in this scene is ok and the performances are excellent, but the motivations are indeed a little fudged and contrived.
It seems to be an effort to turn this emotional corner for Bond without increasing the high page count by crowbarring it into the meeting with Blofeld; kill two birds with one stone, or just scare them both away? Opinions seem to be divided, which means it wasn’t a particularly successful scripting gambit.
If the page count wasn’t already so high, then perhaps what was needed was a scene beforehand which turned this corner, then the chivalry makes sense. It’s alluded to with a glance in Whites hidden info den and developed on the train, but not really enough.
Imho the train dinner chat should’ve taken them to bed etc. which was where Hinx would show up. Then, with the sexual tension relieved - Bond’s feelings for Maddy confirmed, there’s far more verisimilitude and emotional resonance in Bond’s chivalrous reaction to White’s snuff video in Blofed’s lair.
Perhaps another reason for not doing this, as well as the high page count, was that they were afraid of repeating similar train compartment scenes from TSWLM and FRWL. In hindsight i think they might’ve been better off risking that comparison.
Manipulating characters to achieve plot points, or emotional arcs are treacherous waters that need to be trodden carefully, rather than wading through while updating your facebook status at the same time with…
"Found big bad's lair! turns out he's actually my step brother Hans Oberhauser who's now called Earnst Stavros Blofeld and has a mole in Mi6 and their Nine-Eyes internationally interconnected security database system is really his Nine-Eyes internationally interconnected security database system and he's just put a video of the father of the woman i just met (and almost got killed and am falling in love with) shooting himself on the tv, which makes me sad so i'm going to protest and get walloped a bit to show i'm really sorry :( "
It’s rather a lot to take in for one scene 
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Oberfeld was out to manipulate Madeline by making her watch her father shoot himself while Bond (onscreen) sits and does nothing. Bond tells her to look away - to look at him - in order to thwart that manipulation.
No heavy page count there; just leave the inference to the individual audience member.
He’s also sparing her the trauma of having to watch a part of the film Spectre. He is a kind man.
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That was my point.
You make some good points.
The Bond-Madeleine relationship doesn’t work for me at least so far as in what the filmmakers are trying to make it out to be. They are trying to put Madeleine up there with Tracy and Vesper and nowhere in the film do I see it or feel it. She is just another Bond girl to me. Maybe if the script had been different or better emphasized certain aspects, I’d have another opinion, but to me Madeleine is no different than Domino Derval, Octopussy Smythe, Kara Milovy, or Natalya Simonova.
And besides, Craig already had his big love–Vesper.
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Yes, very good idea!
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As long as we’re talking about ideas to improve SPECTRE…
The whole Denby subplot never gelled for me (shock!) at all. Casting “Moriarty” didn’t help either since Scott did not really do something different (in contrast to Bardem who re-invented his approach to playing villains in SKYFALL brillantly).
Obviously, the whole Denby arch was put in the script to give M, Moneypenny and Q more scenes.
I would have preferred… wait for it… Madeleine do what Denby does in the film. If she had been that kind of politician instead of a psychologist (something the film doesn’t use after that introductory scene), actually working for SPECTRE, Bond could have influenced her to work with him, exposing Nine Eyes.
It would have helped the Madeleine character, her relationship with Bond and the whole plot.
What do you guys think?
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Sure they do. After the needles go into Bond’s brain, he imagines Oberhauser is really “Ernst Stavro Blofeld,” then fantasizes a ridiculous sequence where he single-handedly fights off an entire army that took shooting lessons from Emperial Stormtroopers, followed by a fantasized return to London where he shoots a helicopter out of the sky with a handgun (!) only to decide to turn the other cheek and adopt a new life of pacifism, driving off into the sunset with the least interesting girl in the series, in a car that just a couple days earlier was still in about 200 pieces scattered around Q’s workshop.
Obviously those needles destroyed his higher brain function and sent him spiraling into a nonsensical dream state before expiring.
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Was SP 3D? Cos this is how I felt when I stumbled out of the multiplex… 
So it WAS Terry Gilliam who rewrote the last act.
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But then Madeleine becomes Pussy Galore II–a female engaged in criminal activity won over by Bond to change sides.
With a father like Mr. White, making her a psychologist makes sense–she is establishing her own identity and apartness. Having her become a politician who follows in her father’s mold only to be redeemed by Bond hacks away at Madeleine’s autonomy. In the version we have, Bond changes because of the woman rather than the woman changing because of him–Robot Bond abandons his (societally-sanctioned) criminal ways.
Why killing off Nine Eyes in one film? Let Madeleine influence Bond to lobby for it, show him what incredible possibilities come with it, exposing some ultra-secret terrorist mafia with a krake for a club symbol, averting in the last second various dreadful attacks on nations around the globe - and after everybody was convinced what a brilliant tool this thingy is (turn it into Compound Eyes) and Bond got a medal for valiantly defending the realm, Madeleine guts him with a knife. Cue end titles…
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Successfully covering up being a murderess, she lobbies to follow the practice in the United States of wives being appointed to serve the remainder of their deceased husband’s elected terms (the movie’s centerpiece is the Bond/Swann nuptials), and Madeleine becomes the next 007.
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Actually, she had plans to become the first Mrs Blofeld.
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Which causes Irma Bunt to come out of hiding, and we get the greatest catfights since Alexis and Krystle, which–along with intimations of unacknowledged lesbian desire between Madeleine and Irma–attracts queer viewers in the millions and makes BOND 25 the highest grossing entry in the series.
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I’ve always liked this little piece of dialogue from Craig:
“Not much more than a voyeur, are you? Too scared to join in. You set cities on fire and watch innocent people burn, so you can convince governments to join an intelligence network you’ve paid for. Not that complicated.”
It reminds me of Brosnan’s words to Alec in Goldeneye:
“You break into the Bank of England via computer and then transfer the money electronically…just seconds before you set off the Goldeneye, which erases any record of the transactions. Ingenious. But it still boils down to petty theft. In the end, you’re just a bank robber. Nothing more than a common thief.”
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I always felt that dialogue was stolen from Die Hard.
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