How I Would Recast The Role of James Bond’s Q…Ramble

SPOILER ALERTS CONTAINED

As I walked out of Spectre last night with two friends, we recast the movie. While we enjoyed different aspects, it became clear that while classic Bond in many ways, when setting up characters of the past in this current franchise, there was a lot to be desired.

I tried to shake my head of internal quips about the appearance of Grumpy Cat’s cousin popping up and ten other camp moments in the film. It’s Bond, but it was lacking intentional jokes in one key area, which always added charm to Bond’s character.

Q – a classic role, which always led to great, cheeky banter, looks laughable when standing next to Bond. The jokes fell flat- he orders Bond a detox drink, then doesn’t even get to stay in the scene while Bond tells the server to skip a step and throw it down the drain.

When Q is faced with two dangerous men from Spectre, an organization which encourages members to present their resumes by killing one another, Q evades them rather than engages them entirely. Previous Quartermasters were older, but all would have had to go through combat training. How about we stop with the stereotypical nerd who has to hide in a closet as he method of self preservation? Instead, add some diversity and gravity to the role by casting Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes; Covert Affairs).

It would be a lot more interesting if Q and Bond physically sparred with some of the cool toys (*quite devoid, due to the ‘department merger/cut’ battle faced as part of the plot line.) Let’s envision a boxing match between the two of them, Q chastising Bond about plummeting another car off a mountain/river/speedboat, etc. – now I’d really want to watch that. Q could have at least used his laptop to smack one of the bad guys in the head- mind over matter.

Let’s hope the next Bond film will “get the 007 program out of the Dark Ages,” the way the evil C (as in careless, not C*nt we were all thinking, come on now, M leaves the crud quips to Bond) intended by giving a little more meat to the supporting cast.

P.S. Applause to the wink-nod-homage to  ‘Jaws’ when Bond takes down the new Jaws character with four barrels. High five for that moment Sam Mendes.