Bringing Back Leiter

Do you want Felix Leiter to return in B24, and if so, how do you want the character to be used?

I'd like to see Felix given a more active role, out in the field - like in THUNDERBALL or the pre-titles of LICENSE TO KILL. A proper buddy of Bond's. Piloting helicopters, cars, trucks, and directing marines, DEA, special forces or the US coast guard. Leiter should be less of a shady career agent, and more of an American brother to Bond.

Wouldn't mind seeing the character taking a more active, ass-kicking role.

The one condition I have is that Wright doesn't return. Felix should be fun.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Do you want Felix Leiter to return in B24, and if so, how do you want the character to be used?

I'd like to see Felix given a more active role, out in the field - like in THUNDERBALL or the pre-titles of LICENSE TO KILL. A proper buddy of Bond's. Piloting helicopters, cars, trucks, and directing marines, DEA, special forces or the US coast guard. Leiter should be less of a shady career agent, and more of an American brother to Bond.

I agree I'd love to see him back. I like Wright in the role and I like that they have one guy returning now instead of a different face every time. I thought Leiter got a bad rap in QoS. The role is kind of crappy and there isn't much for him to do. I much preferred him in Casino Royale. But I'd love to see him back in a large, more important role.

Should be interesting to see what they do with Bond 24. I get the feeling they might ignore the whole Quantum storyline and cut their loses, but I don't think that should stop them from bring back Leiter.

I'd like to see Leiter back as well, but I think his appearance would depend on whether or not there is a place for him in the story. At the end of QUANTUM OF SOLACE, he was promoted to sector chief for South America, so there would have to be an explanation as to why he's suddenly decided to work alongside Bond, particularly if Bond doesn't go anywhere near the Americas. His reasoning wouldn't have to be crucial to the plot, but it shouldn't be a throwaway line of dialogue (ie "I got bored.").

If it were down to me, I'd probably play it like this: with MI6 running into trouble over the course of SKYFALL, the CIA sent Leiter to Raoul Silva's island base to oversee the clean-up operation. Whilst going over Silva's servers and the goldmine of intelligence they contained, Leiter could find (very sensitive) evidence of Quantum's existed. Silva was obviously very well-connected, and so it stands to reason that he would have encountered Quantum in some way; they may have even approached him to try and recruit him, only to conclude that he was mad and not the kind of person they wanted working for them. Leiter approaches Bond with his findings, since he knows Bond is the one man Quantum cannot corrupt. This would serve as a subplot throughout the film, and would end with Leiter's discovery of the man behind Quantum: Ernst Stavro Blofeld, which would set up BOND 25.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

...but I think his appearance would depend on whether or not there is a place for him in the story. .

:sleep:

I think that's a given.

As for me, I would like to see Leiter back in business, but it's time for another actor to take over. Wright's interpretation wasn't the most engaging.

You know what I mean - if Leiter is just shoehorned into the story for the sake of having him there, it's going to hurt the film.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

You know what I mean - if Leiter is just shoehorned into the story for the sake of having him there, it's going to hurt the film.

I know - why would any of us wish for Leiter to be in the film if it's going to hurt the film? It's a given. Of course we only want him there if there is reason.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

if Leiter is just shoehorned into the story for the sake of having him there, it's going to hurt the film.

Like it hurt all the other films where he popped up without a convoluted backstory? :suspect:

Let's break tradition. Let's put him in the titles sequence and have a silhouette of him dancing naked around Bond.

And that's it. He won't appear in the rest of the film.

I remember liking Wright in CR, but all I can remember now is Leiter the tired drunk in a bar in QOS.

Leiter's role in QOS was definitely disappointing. After a nice introduction in CR you'd expect to see Bond and Leiter's partnership grow in the following film, have them hang out at a cool locale, work on a mission, talk shop and grow into good friends. Instead they hang out at a bar for two minutes.

So yeah, I'm up for Leiter's return, but they definitely need to give him a more active role.

But Python! Leiter establishes the crucial theme of QOS that America is Satan! Pivotal stuff!

Largo's Shark wrote:

Do you want Felix Leiter to return in B24?

How about "No" you crazy Dutch bastard!

By all means bring back Leiter, and make him, as LS says, Bond's American brother, not far from Bond's equal. That's how Fleming drew him. But for Chrissake, find an actor who looks like Fleming's Leiter. Thin, sandy-haired, hatched-faced and sort of hawk-like. None of the previous Leiters have even come close, really. And as I've said before, Jimmy Dean in DAF was pretty much the spitting image of Fleming's Leiter.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

find an actor who looks like Fleming's Leiter. Thin, sandy-haired, hatched-faced and sort of hawk-like.

Okay, then. Mackenzie Crook it is:



Come on people! Only the sexy and good-looking should be allowed to be in a movie. I'm all for getting rid of Jeffrey Wright, but replacing him with someone just as objectionable is not an improvement.

Movie-Felix should be as physically fit as Daniel Craig, and as good-looking (if not more). I want to see what kind of avatar Jack Wade can make out of the two.

That would go against the post-Lord rule of casting non-alpha male Leiters, is EON willing to break that?

Leiter's been fairly badly handled by the franchise, IMHO ... if they could get the same actor to play Bond across consecutive movies (especially in Connery and Moore's cases), then why the hell couldn't they find someone prepared to do the same for his CIA buddy?

Hedison and Wright are the most memorable Leiters for me, simply because they're the only two to have played him more than once.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Leiter's been fairly badly handled by the franchise, IMHO ... if they could get the same actor to play Bond across consecutive movies (especially in Connery and Moore's cases), then why the hell couldn't they find someone prepared to do the same for his CIA buddy?

Hedison and Wright are the most memorable Leiters for me, simply because they're the only two to have played him more than once.

I liked Hedison, but he was horribly miscast in LICENSE REVOKED. The decision to hire him again was arbitrary and capricious, particularly in light of the fact that they had just brought back the character with John Terry. JT's Leiter was at least a contemporary of Dalton's Bond; Hedison's Leiter could have been Dalton's dad.....or Uncle that touched him inappropriately on some of those summer camping trips.

But to just bring Hedison back out of thin air? Ugh.

They wanted a familiar Leiter, and Terry hated working on TLD (you think the increased role compared to what he got in TLD would draw him in) so Henison was the next guy. Coulda cast someone new instead, but whatever.

Python wrote:

They wanted a familiar Leiter, and Terry hated working on TLD (you think the increased role compared to what he got in TLD would draw him in) so Henison was the next guy. Coulda cast someone new instead, but whatever.

Really? Because I never heard that. Of course I've never heard anyone associated with the series give the official reason why Terry didn't come back, but I do remember Dana (I believe) in one of the documentaries (probably for LICENSE REVOKED) stating how she or Cubby or Barbara had accidentally run into David when he was leaving a gym and Dana remarked about how good he still looked, how fit and tan he was, and that she, or Babs, recommended to Cubby that he should be brought back. And that was that.

It was probably Barbara that made that decision. She seems to think with her loins and not her mind.

I forget who, but a member at MI6forums got to see Terry at a non-related fan convention and he was the one who asked Terry about his work on TLD. Terry said something along the lines "I wish you hadn't asked me that" and saying the script was awful. He never elaborated further than that, but given the few scenes he got to work with ("START WORLD WAR THREEEEE??") that probably explains why he turned in such a half-assed performance in the film.

Python wrote:

I forget who, but a member at MI6forums got to see Terry at a non-related fan convention and he was the one who asked Terry about his work on TLD. Terry said something along the lines "I wish you hadn't asked me that" and saying the script was awful. He never elaborated further than that, but given the few scenes he got to work with ("START WORLD WAR THREEEEE??") that probably explains why he turned in such a half-assed performance in the film.

It's plausible, but I've never heard the slightest hint that he was unhappy on the film or that they were unhappy with him. Granted, it wasn't a great performance, but there was room for improvement. I think he could have improved by the next film. But if he thought TLD's script was bad (it wasn't), then he certainly dodged a bullet with LICENSE REVOKED, because that script was just plain awful.

I've never understood the hate for that line of dialogue about starting WW3.

Not really the line, just the way he delivered it. I suppose a lot hasn't been said about his appearance in Bond because he not only doesn't like talking about it but also because his role was probably the most inconsequential part in the film and that he never got any screentime beyond a minute and a half.

Leiter should be Asian.

After all, now that we have an African/African-American/African-Anglo Saxon Moneypenney....

Asians haven't been positively portrayed in the Bond movies.

Most of the time in the Bond films (except for Tiger and Wai Lin), Asian men are stereotyped as henchmen and assassins and criminals and Asian women as nothing more than Sexyful Peking Duck tasting Geisha Massage girls.

The one time the Bond films had an Asian C.I.A. agent, he was too dumb to check the backseat of his vehicle for safety before getting into it.

j7wild wrote:

After all, now that we have an African/African-American/African-Anglo Saxon Moneypenney....

She isn't American.