MovieChat Forums > GoldenEye (1995) Discussion > Why didn’t they just bring back Robert B...

Why didn’t they just bring back Robert Brown as M?


He was alive all throughout the Pierce Brosnan tenure.

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They wanted to refresh the franchise after the long gap. Bringing in Dench was also a way to counter those that complained about the misogyny of the franchise. Brown was Moore's friend who basically was brought in as a favor to Moore, and with the plan to make M more a part of the story, it was wise to bring in someone with more talent and gravitas.

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See I don’t care for that, the misogyny was part of the character, it is consistent with the source material. And I didn’t care for Dench’s performance in Goldeneye and I thought Brown did a fine job.

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Exactly, and it was a very clever way of dealing with the character's intrinsic misogyny. Yes, Bond is going to continue to use women and toss them aside for all time, but... In this M, Bond not only had to deal with one woman who wouldn't take any shit from him, who was immune to his sex appeal, and who would see through all his charming little tricks, he had to take orders from her! She was always on to him and she never succumbed to his charm, the casting changed his relationship with both the female sex and the authority figures at MI6.

It was SO much more effective than having that girl rant at him about being sexist!

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Let’s be honest though, Bond’s misogyny saved the world multiple times such as in Goldfinger, Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, The Man With The Golden Gun, Octopussy, etc.

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That's the thing about bringing Dench on board, it didn't stop Bond being Bond, it just meant that he wasn't quite as free to be a bastard as he had been. And I don't just mean in terms of sexism, he wasn't as free to break the rules and be a ruthless SOB as he had been with his old boss, she brought the hammer down when he stepped out of line in a way that never happened during the Connery or Moore eras, then the Bond franchise was all about the fantasy of getting away with everything real people can't get away with.

So having an M who woulnd't take the least bit of shit from Bond mirrored a change in the zeitgeist, both in terms of reducing the franchise's sexism, and in reducing the amount of unethical behavior Bond was permitted. By the 1990s, people were just more concerned about ethical behavior and collateral damage, than they had been in the free-wheeling sixties.

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Why do people assume Bond just tosses them aside? In From Russia With Love, he is seen with Sylvia Trench at the start of the movie. Clearly, didn´t toss her aside. The movies never make that explicit at all. It takes two people to tango. If a woman decides to engage in fornication with Bond, why is he suddenly a "misogynist"? The definition of misogyny is hatred and contempt for women. He wasn´t virtuous by any stretch being a serial fornicator and sometimes adulterer but I never got the vibe that Bond hated the women he slept with, in fact, he seemed to enjoy their company.

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BECAUSE HE IS THE FRANCHISE CHARACTER,FLESHED OUT AND FRONT AND CENTER AS THE HERO...THE WOMEN ARE PROPS.

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Some you could call mere "props", but many Bond girls also have strong characters, Fiona Volpe, Vesper, Tracy Bond, Pussy, come to mind.

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LMAO...THERE HASN'T BEEN ONE SOLID FEMALE CHARACTER IN ANY BOND FILM UNTIL DENCH...EVEN THE ONES WHO WERE GIVEN MORE TO DO THAN JUST BOND ARE JUST GLORIFIED EYE CANDY.

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Ummmmm Diana Rigg begs to differ

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"Why do people assume Bond just tosses them aside?"

They're never around in the next film, are they? And if I recall correctly, they were never even mentioned again until the more realistic Craig era!

And those are the ones Bond develops feelings for, the rest are ditched or more likely, killed during the movie. Seriously, it seems like most of the Bond films feature some girl screwing Bond and ending up dead as a result, it's been a franchise tradition since that gilded corpse wowed everyone in "Goldfinger". Or was there a dead girl in "Dr. No" I've forgotten about?


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Silvia Trench appeared in Dr No and From Russia with Love as the same character. Them dying doesn´t really implicate Bond as being "misogynist". The only Bond girls he had a hand in killing were villains and even that was a very rare event in the franchise.

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Bond didn't kill even the bad girls unless it was self-defense, but in every film that I can recall in any detail... there's a woman he gets killed. He usually starts his campaign against the villain by showing an interest in some woman who has a connection to the villain, and she's killed before the movie is half over. There's the iconic golden girl, of course, Maud Adamas when she was a villain's girlfriend and not a villain in her own right, Teri Hatcher as a villain's wife, that gal in "Skyfall" who got the William Tell treatment, Monica Bellucci, etc. Of course there may be exceptions, because damned if I can keep all the thousands of Bond Girls straight, but it's definitely a trend.

You'd think Bond would learn, you know? Find some way to get info on his enemies that wouldn't get people killed, maybe? Because he's been getting hot girls killed since 1964!

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If films were made about unrelated events in my life, then girlfriends (or even friends) from one film probably wouldn't be mentioned as they had no role in that event. This is especially true in the pre-Craig films as little to no continuity existed between the films. Recurring characters were often played by different actors and the same actors playing different characters, but not continuity .

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True, a guy like Bond has a LOT of girlfriends, as many as he wants, and his job doesn't allow him to stay in touch with them.

It's just that he gets these women killed in every film, and having their deaths dismissed with a quip is beginning to get on my nerves. They're still human beings.

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I have a feeling in No Time To Die, Bond is going to be lectured to and talked down to frequently by Lashona Lynch.

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GOOD...HE NEEDS IT.

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Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm OK

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IF BOND WAS REAL...HE WOULD BE ONE HELL OF AN EGOMANIACAL SHITHEAD.

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And yet you didn´t seem to mind his "ego"/"misogyny" when you watched all the Bond films. lol

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I ONLY WATCHED THE CONNERY AND CRAIG FILMS...CRAIG IS THE SECOND BEST TO CONNERY...I RENTED OTHERS WHEN I WAS YOUNGER AND HATED THEM...I BARELY TOLERATE THE CONNERY AND CRAIG OUTINGS...OUTDATED GENRE AND CHARACTER.


THESE DAYS BOND AND HIS FILMS SEEM MORE LIKE A BATTLEGROUND...BETWEEN THE SEXIST BOYS WHO WANT BOND TO STAY A WHITE MANWHORE FOREVER AND THOSE WHO WANT BOND TO GROW AS A HUMAN.

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Good ol Kowalski fighting the "righteous" fight.

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You mean being a troll...

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I heard that a major inspiration for making M a woman was Stella Rimington becoming the head of MI5 (which is roughly, the British equivalent to the National Security Agency in the United States) in the UK in 1992. In fact, if you look at photos of Stella Rimington, she actually kind of resembles Judi Dench.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Rimington

https://www.google.com/search?q=stella+rimington&sxsrf=AOaemvLv3ouU7KAjKT8dgNA7P62VlCP8og:1633843798261&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihrdq5jr_zAhUimuAKHX0bCtcQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1600&bih=789&dpr=1

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They had to make Judi Dench famous SOMEHOW.

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I think Shakespeare in Love accomplished that goal but whatever

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Really now?

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She won an Oscar for it, that's why they started giving her a much much much bigger role starting with The World Is Not Enough.

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I thought we were talking about why she got the role in Goldeneye?

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You said she got the role to make her famous, why would they pick her out and give her these roles for that purpose? Wouldn’t she have already had to have proven herself to be a great actress? What made her famous was Shakespeare In love. Before 1998 she was barely in Goldeneye or Tomorrow never dies, they expanded her role because she won an Oscar and that’s what made her famous

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Did she get Shakespeare In Love because she was in Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies?

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No idea, doubtful

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Right.

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It appears that Robert Brown was all but retired from on-screen performing come GoldenEye? Licence to Kill from 1989 was actually his final feature film role. And his last acting gig was a good ten years prior to his death in 2003.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0114533/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Brown_(British_actor)

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