Sam Mendes’ “Skyfall” is both the most successful Bond at the box-office, and considered one of the long-running series’ best entries.
Mendes’ second go around, “Spectre,” wasn’t so well regarded. From its awkward attempts to retcon multiple elements of the three previous Daniel Craig films into a single connected narrative, to its complete mess of an unnecessary Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) reveal, the film contains some serious missteps.
One element that didn’t click was a subplot about C (Andrew Scott), a British intelligence wunderkind who ends up being a mole for Blofeld. That storyline saw Ralph Fiennes’ M taking on and ultimately stopping C – permanently.
However, speaking with Josh Horowitz on his podcast Happy Sad Confused recently, Fiennes revealed the surprising news that Mendes wanted to turn M into a villain in that outing:
“I think I can say now that I had to fight off an attempt by Sam in ‘Spectre’ to make M – I said ‘I don’t want to play M and then you turn around and make him the bad guy. M is never the bad guy.’ So I had to have some pretty intense discussions with Sam saying, ‘This is not flying with me…’
Asked if M would have been working for Blofeld, Fiennes replied: “He was Blofeld or something, but that was a red line.” It’s not clear how far into the film’s development the decision was made to avoid an “M gone bad,” but from the interview it seems Fiennes made his point and there are no hard feelings.
Ultimately “No Time to Die” saw M painted in less than complementary colors, with a break-in at a secret weapons development facility he set up serving as the kick starter of the film’s plot. That film is potentially Fiennes’ last outing as ‘M’ as the series is likely to undergo a hard reset with the next entry.
