M's office
taity
Posts: 702MI6 Agent
I was thinking, since Judi Dench has been appointed the new head of MI5 there has been a severe lack of Bond/M briefings in her office.
The two previous M's (ie, the once produced by Cubby) only had 4 movies where Bond didnt have a briefing scene (These being YOLT, DAF, LALD, LTK) occour in M's office.
Since then, only GoldenEye has had a traditional meeting with M in her office. TND didnt go to MI6. TWINE had a brief scene, however then relocated to Scotland. DAD came close with the Frost briefing, however Bond's was in the local tube station. Finally in CR it was in M's apartment.
I just wish for the next movie there would be a traditional briefing scene in M's office
The two previous M's (ie, the once produced by Cubby) only had 4 movies where Bond didnt have a briefing scene (These being YOLT, DAF, LALD, LTK) occour in M's office.
Since then, only GoldenEye has had a traditional meeting with M in her office. TND didnt go to MI6. TWINE had a brief scene, however then relocated to Scotland. DAD came close with the Frost briefing, however Bond's was in the local tube station. Finally in CR it was in M's apartment.
I just wish for the next movie there would be a traditional briefing scene in M's office
Comments
If this M would just stay in her office like her predecessor, then there'd probably be more briefings in her office.
Yes I find that kind of annoying. Iwonder how often Stella Rimington left the office and put herself in mortal peril. Not much I'll wager!
Granted, M was a friend of the King's in TWINE, but I feel the same way... M is supposed to be an anonomys figure, but with Judi it's "Oh, hey M! What's up?"
Hope this reboot will put that to rest, although she should not have gone to Jamaica in CR. What about the rest of her section? I guess the Chief of Staff was taking care of them..
-- YOLT - Hong Kong sub
-- TMWTGG - again Hong Kong, this time in the sunken ship
-- TSWLM - silly Cairo nonsense, and then later on the ship that rescues 007 and XXX
-- MR - first in Venice (with the Minister of Defence, no less!) and then in the ridiculous Brazilian ranch business
-- TLD - in the air transport over Gibraltar
-- LTK - Key West
Of these, I can live with LTK, because M's express purpose there was to confront Bond, and also YOLT because M at least explains his presence ("this is the big one...that's why I'm out here m'self"). The rest are patently absurd, the worst by far being the Gibraltar flight -- it's a training exercise!!!.
Of course, we could also argue the need for M to visit Bond's flat in LALD, but that would be nitpicking.
The real problem with Dench's M is that she's far too much of the story. Doesn't she have other operations and Double-0's to monitor? What happens if 005 needs a defib but no one can help him because M and her entire entourage are in the Bahamas to poke over Solange's body and inject Bond with a tracking chip?
This is my long-winded way of agreeing with taity that the simple office briefing would be a welcome return.
Great M, great acting, great presence.
BUT
Too greater actress to miss out on so they have to include her, otherwise it would feel wrong.
However, I dont actully mind it, I enjoy Bonds relationship with Judi, especially in TWINE and even more so in CR.
"Shadows stay in front or behind, never on top"
"Better make that two."
Think the guys from EON would be watching us?
But yeah, M needs to go back to her office job
The one thing I enjoyed about the original M's forays out of the office was that it always seemed done with a bit of reluctance. Lee and Brown's M (I'm going under the belief that they are indeed the same character) always struck me as the type who preferred consistency and disliked change. M's home Quarterdeck, for example, is laced with the trappings of the Admiral's life as a seaman. It seemed believable to me that, if he were to travel, then he would insist on retaining as much of a familiar work environment as possible. It's just the kind of quirk that I can see Messervy using his authority to satisfy. I can imagine that he would have had 'command centers' in a variety of places, including a sub, an air transport, various locations on the globe. I thought Tiger Tanaka's comment in YOLT was interesting when he assumed that M also had a private underground rail network, as if it was just the kind of thing Messervy would insist on (he was wrong, apparently) but if M did have such an arrangement, I'm sure it would be outfitted with similar office accoutrements.
Did Messervy need to be in all of those locations? I dunno. I did think M looked very out of place walking the streets of Venice in MR.
I don't have a problem with M leaving HQ and meeting Bond in the field. The only problem I had was when she dashed out to visit Elektra in TWINE...MI6 had already been breached by someone in Elecktra's circle, Bond was in the middle of trying to flush out the insider, and Tanner advised against it. It seemed strange that the the head of MI6 would allow personal feelings to drop all other matters of state.
As near as I can tell, the only place M gallivantes to in CR is to a member of the British Commonwealth: the Bahamas -- where the Queen is the head of state. Whether she actually needed to be there I don't know, but it made a lot more sense than some of the other places the MI6 chief has travelled over the years -- long before CR and Dench, as another poster noted.
I don't really care where Bond is briefed, or even if he's briefed onscreen or not -- let the writers decide for the sake of the script. If Bond was briefed in M's apartment, it's because the script wanted him to be there and it was plausible for him to be there (Bond, laying low after embassy snafu, needed info from MI6 computer and M's home would likely be easier to break into than MI6 headquarters).
The worst thing the writers can do is go back to the formula simply because it's the formula.
Agreed. As much as DAD is maligned, I enjoyed the clandestine meeting with Bond and M in the abandoned tube station under County Hall. It made sense to not be at MI6, as Bond was a bit of an anathema at that point, but it was still distinctly British and atmospheric.
"Better make that two."
I too, enjoy a good old fashion briefing scene.
BTW in regards to the topic at hand, I think that considering that M is superviser of multiple 00s it is rather illogical for her not to give Bond a briefing in her office. Would she go out in the field to provide a briefing for all her 00s? Unless Bond 22's plot specifically called for her not doing so, I would hope that she goes back to giving him a brief (and psychology-free) briefing within her office.
Best not to try and understand anything in that film!
Well there should only be three double-Os, so it seems fine to treat them all that way as they are so few and so special.
The key was simply a 'tradition' (if you can call it that) to tell the agent to go to a particular place (i.e the underground station) where the agent could meet with M (in this case Dench) outside the walls of Vauxhall Cross. I could imagine Robert Brown's M sending the very same key to Timothy Dalton after the LTK incident. It's the head of MI6's way of saying "I want to meet with you, but I don't want to be seen meeting you."
I also think that M would vist all her 00's in the field. there is only three anyway. and they are most likely not on assignment at the same time. it mentions in one of the books, possibly Moonraker that Bond was lucky to get on average 1 or 2 proper assignments a year. I doubt that all three double 0s are out in the field at the same time all the time. so I doubt the most that M has to visit at any given time is 1 or possibly 2 agents.