This training scene from Die Another Day (2002) was pretty sweet. Not often do we get insight into 007’s training regimen, but here the audience is immersed in it perfectly. I remember thinking this was a dream sequence when I saw it in the theater, and aside from the jarring image of a dead Moneypenny at her desk with a gunshot wound to the head, I knew it was a farce when Bond’s bullet hit M’s hostage-taker’s arm and did no damage.
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Michaela Clavell as Penelope Smallbone and Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny in Octopussy (1983)
Brosnan Bond’s first interaction with Moneypenny in GoldenEye (1995) was…interesting. Aside from Craig’s Bond’s tryst with Moneypenny, Brosnan’s Bond always had the most sexual tension and blatant innuendos with Moneypenny during his tenure. This of course after the long portrayal of the character by Lois Maxwell from the series start until the late 1980’s – in which the Bond/Moneypenny relationship was a lot more playful and tame. It continued with a naive and relatively forgettable Moneypenny (Caroline Bliss) that served with Timothy Dalton’s Bond but then took the hard turn to Brosnan’s Moneypenny we see here.
But I digress – it’s true that GoldenEye‘s Moneypenny could hold her own in spite of Brosnan’s advances and we see it in this scene, but some of his remarks elicit eye rolls at best and at worst add fuel to the misogynist 007 stereotype. I’d say that this scene wouldn’t be written in today’s post-“#metoo” era. Regardless, it was neat to see M and others scramble from their personal lives (with Moneypenny in a highly formal dress from a date) to the office to assess the issues at Severnaya.
Q (Ben Whishaw) errs on the side of caution this time when handling a USB drive in No Time To Die (2021). The last time he flippantly connected one to a computer, a worm infected and spread into MI6’s computer network with disastrous effects in Skyfall (2012).
So this time around, Q ensures that he first attempts to access the unknown-origin USB via his “sandbox” computer – one that is completely isolated from his network and not connected to the outside world.
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Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) shaves James Bond (Daniel Craig) with a straight razor in Skyfall (2012)
…the amount of sexual tension between Moneypenny and 007 after this tryst in Shanghai in Skyfall (2012).
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