Do you think Bond should have fought Frost instead of Graves?

ironpony wrote:

But that's just it though, why is there this rule that in order for two people to fight in a climax, there has to be an exchange of words.  I don't think that rule has to follow every time.

Because it's not a dramatically interesting climax if there's no conflict between Graves and Jinx beyond doing fisticuffs. I'm sure that's perfectly fine for a B-movie Gerard Butler actioner, but not for Bond.

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For example, in Casino Royale, Bond fights the villain at the end, with the eye patch sunglasses, and they literally just met, and this is the climax.  So I am not bothered by that.

That's a false equivalence. The whole crux of the climax isn't Bond defeating Gettler, it's getting to Vesper. Gettler is just a henchman that Bond has to fight in order to get to Vesper.

That said, I'm not really a big fan of the sinking house climax. I would have preferred if the film actually stuck closer to the novel where there was no action climax, but I don't blame EON for playing to audiences that expect action climaxes in Bond films. It would have been pretty daring to have the last 20 minutes just be the relationship between Bond and Vesper deteriorating and then the suicide. As it is, the inclusion of an action climax feels like a diversion from what's going on with Vesper.

Jinx fighting Graves has no story strength and as pointed out she has little personal connection to Graves. Ultimately she would be knocked out and then Bond would have to stop Graves before she dies from some peril etc.
Which reminds me...thank heavens the Jinx solo film never was made...oh wait...that would have been preferable to what happened afterwards...

Oh dear...that sinking house episode...it truly is tacked on and felt so in the theater. The staging and placement of the sequence really doesn't work and is yet another moment the film fails to live up to its source material. While a traditional series entry builds to an action climax and is supposed to give audiences an upbeat exit cue-this was supposedly the gritty reinvention that should at least have kept Fleming's end or something akin to it intact. Thus with the actionized demise of Vesper (I truly hate the staging of the elevator underwater moment. It makes Vesper seem so pathetic and not to mention generating audience disgust-plus it reeks of Bourne Supremacy as does the entire film.) you get another climax with a bit of a downer that suddenly gets the upbeat redeeming closing tag that is not only inconsistent but incredibly frustrating.
They didn't have the courage to end with the proper line and instead threw it away.

I actually felt the ending with Bond capturing Mr. White was pretty good visual adaptation of Bond's internal declaration of attacking "the arm that held the whip and the gun". I don't think ending with Bond just saying "the bitch is dead" would have been as satisfying an ending on film as it was on the page.

But then QOS had to backtrack that. Ugh.