msdistress:

hellotailor:

[made rebloggable for derekplaysviola] [I REALLY AM GOING TO BED NOW]

pretty sure this isn’t a “HelloTailor, why WAS the dark knight rises terrible??” question, but rather, “Please explain to me why you think the dark knight rises is terrible.”

The answer is: because it’s totally terrible. TDKR is a trifecta of bad ideas: nonsensical storytelling, pointlessly racist/sexist stubtext, and an apparent lack of respect for the film’s original source material.

out of these three problems, two fall pretty squarely in christopher nolan’s lap. while chris nolan can and does make really good blockbuster thrillers, he’s totally abysmal at writing a) women, and b) really any character who isn’t a tormented white male antihero in his 30s.

comicbook stuff

nolan has a pretty explicit dislike for most of the “comicbook” aspects of batman, which has generally been accepted by audiences because the tone of the Dark Knight trilogy has been so “gritty” (although in fact no more “realistic” than most superhero movies, bar the actual superpowered aspects). the problem is, the plot of TDKR is supported by exactly the kind of nonsensical comicbook concepts that christopher nolan’s batman universe was purposefully designed to reject.

plus, there are irritating details like the fact that he wanted to distance himself from the batman/robin concept (which is why he made Commissioner Gordon’s daughter into a non-character, and gave all the kid-dialogue to Gordon’s son)… but then gave it a condescending nod at the end of TDKR, which i thought came across as bizarre and cheesy — particularly since JGL’s character was kind of a Mary Sue throughout.

what are women? (we just don’t know)

anne hathaway made a good catwoman, but the representation of women in general in TDKR was atrocious — including catwoman’s inexplicable final scene with bruce wayne (WHAT? WHY? HOW?). in the universe of TDKR, women make up maybe 20% of the population, tops. and that’s including extras.

in christopher nolan movies, women are all one-dimensional love-interests or evil sexy vamps. for a guy who’s generally seen as a very “modern” filmmaker, his treatment of women is still solidly in the mid-20th century. ditto his attitude towards race, which is like… consistently bad? like, he whitewashes several main characters in the Batman series (ra’s and talia al ghul; maybe Bane as well), and took a gay latina character from the comics and made her evil before writing her out of the story entirely, and replacing her with a white guy.

but if you’re already rolling your eyes all like, “god, shut up with this SOCIAL JUSTICE TUMBLR BULLSHIT”, i have some bad news for you, because my bleeding heart internet liberalism isn’t the only reason why i didn’t enjoy TDKR. because as a heroic thriller story, it sucks balls.

shitty storytelling

the superhero story formula is not that complicated. guy fights stuff; guy gets knocked down; guy overcomes stuff and punches evil in the head. TDKR follows this basic formula, except with the inexplicable addition of a vast quantity of total bullshit. because… while i do think that most mainstream action/adventure movies require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, TDKR goes way beyond acceptable levels of “wait, that doesn’t make sense”. which is highly frustrating, because christopher nolan made Inception, which is the world’s #1 movie that makes no sense but is still really awesome to watch.

so, ok, there are three particular things that REALLY bug me about the totally nonsensical nature of TDKR. two of them are physical, and the third is more… thematic, i guess.

1. bruce wayne’s spine. HE HEALS HIS OWN SPINE INJURY THROUGH THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING, and then climbs a cliff and presumably breaks his spine again.
2. this one is connected to point 1, but HOW DOES HE GET BACK TO GOTHAM?? and how does he get to the prison?? Bane literally takes time out of his schedule to ship bruce wayne to a prison in India?? or “India”, since it’s just like, “nonspecific foreignland”?? but once bruce is there, he escapes, and then the next thing you know, he’s materialised back into Gotham NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE. if they’d just had some kind of connecter scene with bruce chartering a plane to the US or something, i might have bought it. but as is, we have: Bane sending Bruce overseas to a specially kitted-out prison, and then Bruce travelling across the world and then sneaking into the infamously besieged Gotham City. HOW. HOW. WHAT?
3. allllll the political crap. like, what were they even doing. sometimes it was like the common people were rebelling. sometimes it was like the evil guys were Occupy. either way, nobody could do anything until Bruce Wayne, Monarch of Capitalism showed up and personally saved them from the evils of Terrorism. bruce wayne comes across as an incredibly terrible example of a rich person. there’s probably a lot to discuss about the popularity of Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne among the IRL population of normal everyday poor people, but Tony Stark is an example of a cool money fantasy (albeit with its pitfalls), whereas the Bruce Wayne we see in TDKR is, if anything, more obnoxious and damaging than the fake playboy Bruce Wayne of the first two movies.

in TDKR, the entire city of gotham is completely infantilised. no one can do ANYTHING until batman saves them from their terrorist overlords. instead of the situation providing a stepping-stone for bruce wayne’s development as a character, the situation is really obviously written to have no purpose other than to provide bruce wayne with character development opportunities. rather than batman/bruce existing within the gotham universe, the entire gotham universe is a prop for batman’s story. it’s completely masturbatory.

and for a movie that supposedly respects the last cadres of non-crooked cops in Gotham, it sure doesn’t… really… respect them. as in, half of the city’s police force is trapped underground, in uniform, and CANNOT ESCAPE (?????) for six months until Batman comes back, at which point they all get out and are all still wearing their uniforms and look inexplicably clean shaven.

ALSO THERE ARE LIKE 10 OTHER REALLY ANNOYING THINGS IN TDKR, but it’s 1.30am and i’ve had an extremely long day. GOODNIGHT.

Yes, all of this.

Nolan’s idea of Occupy is a terrible mess. It’s the anarchists and criminals and communists who are holding the whole city hostage, while the decent people (read: white, middle-class) are hiding in their homes.

Originally I was so excited about the Occupy parallels in TDKR, because the way it was portrayed in the trailers seemed to echo both the French revolution and the Russian revolution. In both revolutions, the masses rose against the ruling class, because 1% of the people were controlling 95 % of the wealth, living in luxury while the 99% were starving, living in poverty.

If the Occupy movement in TDKR would have been a spontaneous, grassroots movement (like it is in the real world), they would have been morally justified in their actions, even if their means were illegal. However, because Bruce Wayne’s fortune is what enables Batman’s vigilanteism, if Batman sided with Occupy to tear down the existing social order and redistribute the wealth to the people, he would have destroyed himself in the process. Batman is the real person while Bruce Wayne is the mask, and if Bruce Wayne is not Batman, what is he?

However, TDKR sidestepped neatly all of this, instead opting for convoluted terrorist plot which didn’t even make sense. Think about it; Why did Miranda and Bane hold Gotham hostage? To show everyone how corrupted Gotham was? It didn’t really work, did it? The regular people were hiding in their homes while the criminals were ruling the streets. Sure, the elite was corrupt, but why punish the 99% by blowing them up? What did Bane and Miranda intend to achieve by all of this? It makes absolutely no sense.

So, flashy writing =/= good writing. Nolan should stay in the realms of fantasy/magic realism (Prestige, Inception), instead of trying to tackle real world problems, because that ends up as a terrible mess.

Also, considering that he’s married to a woman, I find it hard to understand how shallow all his female characters are. All his leading ladies are femme fatales that are mysteries at heart. The only exception to this are Ellie (Insomnia) and Ariadne (Inception), but they have no actual personality at all, and instead are just plot devices meant to enable the main character on his journey.

all the class stuff in TDKR is wayyyyy messed up. to begin with, all batman stories are gonna have some weird class stuff in there, because they rely on the concept that a rich vigilante is the only person capable of protecting the Common People from crime and evil. this usually works out OK in most Batman movies, because the audience doesn’t really have to think about it. bruce’s spoiled rich-kid persona is entertaining, and most of the storylines in previous Batman movies weren’t so explicitly political. but in TDKR, all the class/political stuff is so in-your-face (YET CONFUSING) that once you notice it, you can’t un-see it. what are you trying to say, TDKR???

TDKR reduces most gothamites to the status of helpless peasants, waiting confusedly for Batman to either save them or tell them what to do. it takes the medieval aspects of “the dark knight” to their stupidest possible extreme. and then at the end of the story, Bruce is rewarded with a rich-guy retirement and a hot girlfriend (WTF, catwoman?? what happened to your scorn for the rich and spoiled??) while everyone who lives in gotham… moves back into their cold, rain-damaged, possibly irradiated shithole apartments? and the crime problem really isn’t solved at all? i don’t even knowwwwwww.

and like you said, the allusions to Occupy etc managed to be both nonsensical and offensive. Bane’s revolution definitely comes across as a reference Occupy (either intentionally or unintentionally), but is explicitly portrayed as an evil terrorist organisation. so in general, TDKR does seem like it’s against the idea of the plebs rising up to defend themselves from oppression. but at the same time, “official” authority figures are not remotely portrayed in a positive light, because Gotham’s political/law-enforcement system is infamously corrupt, and the US government abandons Gotham to certain death. so basically, the message is: sit down, shut up, and wait for Batman to save you.

enemyofperfect:

hellotailor:

enemyofperfect:

glitchvoice:

[snipped]

Ugh, now I’m thinking about young(ish) John Reese, getting in too deep with Jessica because he doesn’t really know how relationships work.

Clearly, my work here is done!  :D

(No, but seriously, welcome to my world.  Sometime I’m going to have to write my ridiculously long meta arguing that compulsory masculinity ruined Reese’s life.  TL;DR version:  dudes are encouraged to be strong and discouraged from getting all sensitive, and Reese — being a sensitive dude, and eager to please — did his best to live up to that, with the result that despite experiencing FEELS with an intensity and frequency that would do a Tumblrite proud, he never did that great a job of figuring out what to do with them, and instead concentrated on learning how to kill lots of people very efficiently.  Spoiler:  I don’t think that worked out very well for him.)

This is causing me a lot of pain because it’s PERFECT CHARACTERISATION FOR REESE. I want to write Finch/Reese fic but it’s getting all caught up in my Reese feels, which then boomerang back to Jessica/Reese feels because John Reese is a monster who doesn’t know how to interact with adult humans in a functional capacity.

You’re so right: compulsory masculinity DID ruin Reese’s life…

[snipped]

…IN CONCLUSION, FINCH AND REESE ARE BOTH GIANT WEIRDOS.

OMG, I love this post so much.

I think the thing about Reese is that he’s seen way too much by this point to care about things that don’t matter (or sometimes to care about things that do, but never mind), and that he also on some basic level cannot help but be aware of other people’s humanity. So he doesn’t care about pride, and he doesn’t care about performing masculinity to anyone’s satisfaction, and he does care about suffering (and also about courage and resilience and love), and that means that when he’s going around saving lives, it isn’t about Being A Manly Impressive Hero, it’s about the fact that he hates letting people get hurt. I mean, not that his reasons don’t have everything to do with his own unique damage and psychological needs — he’s said approximately 90000 times that when Finch gave him a job he gave him a reason to live — but the particular way Reese happens to be configured, his victory condition isn’t acquiring a beautiful trophy to boost his macho cred, it’s helping another human being end up more happy and less dead than they would have otherwise. His goals are only met when the goals of the people he’s helping are, and that makes him so much less creeptastic than he would be otherwise.

Along with the fact that, as you point out, virtually everyone he meets is newborn-kitten-helpless compared to him, I think it also helps that at the same time he reduces his worth to his ability to put himself between bad guys and everyone else, he kind of thinks that violence is the worst thing ever. Not, obviously, in the sense that he avoids it — it’s kind of a love/hate relationship, I guess — but in the sense where he feels that his intimate knowledge of it has deeply damaged him, and whereas your typical lethal-yet-angsty hero might idolize/fetishize the innocence of people (especially women) who haven’t had bloodied their hands the way he has, I want to say that Reese genuinely admires people who know how to live in the world in a way that isn’t based on destruction. So even though he’s constantly riding to the rescue of frightened civilians and clearly has a chivalrous streak, I feel like there’s a slight twist to the way he thinks about it.

I adore adore adore your analysis of Finch and Reese’s responses to confrontation. Reese’s lack of interest in stereotypical male posturing is something I’ve loved about him since forever, but I hadn’t thought about that aspect of Finch’s reactions, and now that I am, it’s so fascinating. Off the top of my head I want to connect it with the way Finch so much lives in the world of ideas — like, Reese hates cruelty because it causes suffering, and obviously Finch cares about that side of things very much too, but I think it also just really bothers Finch that cruelty is so obviously incorrect. It is not the reasonable response to any situation! There is no problem anywhere that it solves! And yet people engage in it anyway, even though it makes less than no sense. So while Reese is very focused on outcomes, either acting to stop bad things from happening or biding his time until he can, Finch will rail against injustice even in the face of complete inevitability, because the actual reality of whatever is about to happen is almost secondary to the principles being violated.

They are just such interesting weirdos.

THIS THREAD WILL NEVER DIE. REBLOGGIN TILL EVERYONE HAS UNFOLLOWED ME IN DISGUST.

I really want some future episodes where we get so see more of Reese actively not caring about performing the masculine hero role. IDK if that’s actually likely to happen, but I like to think that it’s an intentional characterisation choice?

Re: Reese admiring people who haven’t lived a life of violence — there is SO MUCH TRUTH TO THAT. And I am v impressed with the way POI manages to portray this as something other than the boring old “idealising the pure damsel” trope you see in a lot of shows like this (even though, OK, I admit it — Jessica and Grace do suffer from this to a certain extent). I particularly like the way he relates to Harold as someone he has to physically protect, since Harold is someone for whom he already has immense respect as a dangerous/capable person in his own right. After Harold was kidnapped by Root, Reese reacted in what I can only describe as the healthiest way possible. As in, he is sensitive to Harold’s trauma, and tries to find solutions in a Harold-friendly way. Basically, John Reese is extremely terrible and feelings and emotions and people, unless it’s feelings and emotions which are directly related to Reese’s are of expertise, ie horrible violence.

For Reese, the ultimate sign of success is that the person he’s helping doesn’t need him any more. Which dovetails neatly with his (not unsubstantiated) belief that he’s a danger to be around, and that the best way to protect the people he loves is to stay as far away as possible. Working with the Machine is ideal, because he can be used as a long-distance weapon to help and save people, and there’s an outside force that obligates him to detach afterwards, leaving the people he’s saved to live safe and happy lives without him. 

(Source: stoppretendingthereisaplot)

Interviewer: The relationship between Finch and Reese has evolved throughout this season. Would you call them friends now?

Michael: I think the writers are careful to not let it get too collegial, because then it would rob it of some of its edge. Since they do get along in their own fashion, sometimes it’s even humorous, but at the end of the day, they are both on a suicide mission, I think. It’s tricky to walk that fine line of comfort and…despair.

Jim: What’s so great about it—when I—just a level of subconscious, work being done. I’m not fully aware of what I’m doing. And I don’t know if this character I play can fully trust anybody ever. He’s almost like a predatorial [sic] animal that seeks to destroy whatever he feels is in the way of those people that are going to, you know—bullies that aim to do people harm, and that is what he is dead set at going after. […] It’s an odd couple situation here, but not one where I think he over-analyses anything. People have to come to that conclusion themselves.

[x]

nothing is more amazing to me than john reese being described as a predatory animal, because yes.

and YES IT’S TOTALLY A SUICIDE MISSION. this is what makes the finch/reese relationship so uniquely horrifying & compelling. there are any number of tv shows and movies about characters who heroically save people — i mean, hello Leverage, Burn Notice, every superhero ever — but with POI you know that finch and reese a) have no other purpose in life, and b) know that if they both die, no one else will be taking over from them. thematically it’s very similar to a superhero story because they’re so secretive, but the difference is that they have no secret identities or personal lives on the side. like most characterisation details in POI, the finch/reese partnership boils down to functionality. they know that they have no choice about working together — for the rest of their lives — so they work together. they don’t really have the option of not trusting each other, so they go all-in.

it’s kind of desperate and horrifying, really. Reese is 100% willing to silently die to keep Finch and the Machine a secret, and will also put up with any amount of physical punishment in the name of their mission, because what other choice does he have? no one else is going to do it. but by this point, finch has realised that reese is pretty much indispensible. he’s attached to reese now, not to mention the fact that he is vanishingly unlikely to ever find a fitting replacement for reese, who is unique in his skillset and very specific levels of fucked-upness. it’s kind of the ultimate “from death do us part”.

i suspect that if POI runs for a few more seasons, there will be a multi-episode run where either finch or reese is MIA, and their partner has to find a way to go on without them. this is pure fanfic speculation at this point, but it would be 100% delicious agony to have finch (or reese) captured or otherwise forced to fake their own death/appear to be dead, and have reese (or finch) have to go out there and try and find a replacement.

i think with reese, he’d probably deal better with the ongoing mission because although he doesn’t have finch’s surveillance skills, he has the backup of Carter and Fusco, as well as the ability to make other people do what he wants. but OTOH, he’d be emotionally obliterated by finch’s death. whereas finch would probably deal better with the death of reese, but would have way more pressing concerns with regards to the mission. he’d have to find a replacement for Reese pretty quickly, because for all that Carter and Fusco can help him out, the legwork on assisting a Number is pretty much a full-time job. so i can definitely see Finch roping in a series of sub-par operatives to do reese’s job, and having them all either die, or fuck up, or turn out to be untrustworthy. and even if one of them did turn out to be OK, he’d still keep them at arms length because of what happened with reese.

(Source: stoppretendingthereisaplot, via mr-finch)

mikeys-den:

hellotailor:

authormichals:

minim-calibre:

hellotailor:

synekdokee:

sweetlyenchains:

Judi Dench’s M was in the job from 1995 until the present day, making her 77 years old at the time of her decision to do battle with cyberterrorist Javier Bardem using home-made nail bombs and a sawn-off shotgun. If you don’t agree that this is the best thing ever then you’re clearly a slug, because, well… do you know how many old ladies you see in roles like this? The list pretty much begins and ends with Helen Mirren in RED. And before you all rush in with your Favourite Old Ladies Who Get Shit Done (although obviously I would very much appreciate that list), remember that for every fifty Dumbledores in popular culture, we get maybe one or two Professor McGonagalls. — Skyfall: the new Bond Girls.

using home-made nail bombs and a sawn-off shotgun

YES.

No actually I don’t agree, because if you’ll remember, she’s not the one using the sawn-off shotgun - in fact, this lady apparently can’t even shoot. Am I really the only on who was sorely disappointed by the way she was treated?

http://synekdokee.tumblr.com/post/34978568997/issues-i-had-with-skyfall

It seems in your post that a lot of the issues you have with the treatment of M and Eve are to do with the way they aren’t as physically tough as Bond — although Eve comes damn close to it. You say that Eve is “reduced to secretary status”, but I didn’t see it that way at all. I think it’s very clear from the get-go that Eve is an extremely confidant field agent who can hold her own in dangerous situations, but her problems arise when it comes to outright assassination. The reason why Bond is good at his job is because he has very few moral qualms about murdering people in cold blood, whereas Eve does, and she’s rattled by the fact that she (unavoidably) missed a shot and almost killed Bond. But despite this, for most of the film she’s still planning on going back into the field once she’s been cleared for duty.

At the end, her decision to take an office job fits in very well with one of the main themes of the movie: the blurring of the lines between “dangerous” field work and “safe” desk jobs. Silva’s attack neatly illustrates that MI6 headquarters are no longer a safe-haven, and Eve’s battle-readiness comes in very useful during the attack on the government enquiry. M probably would have been killed right then were it not for the experience and abilities of Mallory and Eve, the two characters who were “reduced” from fieldwork to desk jobs.

This isn’t a situation where Eve has been demoted to a lesser role or sent back to the office where she’ll be “safe”; she’s just seen the damage that can be done at the heart of MI6 and knows that it’s important for the agents close to M to be just as competent in a firefight as they are in the office. Unlike Bond, whose skills run mostly towards steely nerves and headbutting people in the face, Eve has a wider skillset and is just as comfortable at the office as in the field. You seem to think that working alongside M is somehow less important than being a 00-agent, but throughout the film we’ve seen that Bond is a tool of MI6 while people like Q, Tanner and M are the ones who are truly informed about the dangers they’re facing, and are bearing the brunt of those dangers back home in the UK.

Also, from a storytelling perspective Daniel Craig (and a lot of Bond fans) was keen for Moneypenny to return to the series, but obviously an old-school Moneypenny was out of the question. The idea of a secretary who answers calls all day and flirts hopelessly with Bond whenever he’s there to visit M is gross and dated and, to be honest, not really in-keeping with the tone of the newer films. Whereas this way, we get a Moneypenny with an actual backstory, who is demonstrably awesome and has a history with Bond that doesn’t make her seem like an embarassing stereotype, and a solid indication that working alongside M every day is a dangerous and interesting job, not just that of a “secretary”. Mallory knows Eve’s value and she knows his; you can be certain that her job won’t be to forward telephone calls all day.

With M, I guess my opinion runs pretty much along the same lines? M isn’t a field agent, and if she (at 77, and visibly infirm at times) was suddenly toting a machine-gun then it’d seem comical and out-of-character. From her first appearance in 1995, Judi Dench’s M has been calculating, cool, and good at playing the odds — which is already more characterisation than the rather one-note old male Ms received in the past. The fact is that M knows more about espionage than Bond will ever hear about. Bond is basically an extremely capable thug, whereas M is in charge of the whole of MI6 and has other people to shoot her guns for her. I can’t remember if the male Ms ever had cause to shoot someone onscreen, but if they did it was probably because they received their military training in World War II. I thought M’s method of defending herself (building nail bombs from scratch) was awesome and totally in-character, because it required ingenuity and showed that she knew her capabilities as a fighter — ie, she was completely OK with killing people without remorse, but as a 77-year-old woman she was aware that she couldn’t fight mercenaries in close-combat.

One final thing: the Bond films are about Bond. If every other character was an action-hero, then his character would serve no purpose. While he does do some intelligence-gathering, Bond’s primary role is to kill people who are a danger to MI6/Britain, and this was emphasised even more in Skyfall than it was in other recent movies. His particular brand of ultra-violence is balanced out by the more cerebral types of modern espionage that are represented by M, Q, and Silva. Silva has his own army of faceless mercenaries to do his fighting for him, whereas M has the 00-branch. As for Q, he’s simultaneously one of the most important assets MI6 has in its arsenal, and the “weakest”, which is why he’s holed up in a bunker for 90% of the movie.

I understand the knee-jerk desire for female characters to be more badass, because “badass” is the way most action/adventure movies show a character’s value. But the fact is that a) Q and M — and probably Eve, now she’s been promoted to M’s personal aide — are more powerful than Bond, and b) if every character is a badass then Bond would seem weaker by comparison and the stakes would seem lower, thus making the movie way less interesting to watch. The way things are now, the Bond franchise seems to have hit a perfect balance between old-school touches like the presence of Moneypenny, and tangible proof that “office” characters are the brain of MI6 while Bond is just the hand holding the gun.

One point I’d like to add is that, while M claims she’s a rubbish shot, she’s using it as misdirection: M’s been shot, knows it’s not a minor injury, and needs to keep Bond from finding out so that he can get the job done. She, more than anyone, knows his weaknesses, and knows that the James Bond who hesitated because one of his fellow agents was bleeding out (as we see in the beginning of the movie) would have difficulty pushing aside sentiment and letting her go.

This is all very wonderful and if I may add - the “old” Moneypenny was hardly “just a secretary”. Most pointedly Lois Maxwell’s Moneypenny held more power than most other characters - especially Q (you could even consider her above Q since they’re from different branches and Moneypenny works directly under M). Moneypenny always knows exactly everything M knows (and various other ministers and whatnot), and a ton more, and has access to literally everything, she routinely orchestrated things from her end of the MI6 to make sure James got the intel and leg-ups he needed. She went behind M’s back, and James’s, all the time for the better, most notably so James could keep his job in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. James is at the end of it all, just a tool for MI6, what makes him special is that he’s James Bond and is rebellious and smug and everything that makes the character special, but Moneypenny is the eyes and ears of the MI6.

So I would hardly call going from being just a field agent to M’s assistant a demotion. Just because this Moneypenny has some field background shouldn’t mean she’s somehow so much more capable than the past ones. 

NO WAIT I NEED TO ADD TO THIS IT’LL BE QUICK I PROMISE: OKAY so also also also please note the whole point of Moneypenny from the beginning was that James had someone who was essentially his equal in terms of wit - Moneypenny was the only one he couldn’t completely trump and Moneypenny was the only one who could cut James down and was the only woman Bond never slept with. So, yeah, uhm, of the entire series, Moneypenny is really the only one who could be considered his equal (don’t give me bad guys, bad guys get fucking murdered in the end, Moneypenny’s still going strong). 

REBLOGGING FOR MORE COMMENTARY!!!

And to add: M is TOTALLY a bad-ass. What she did making home-made nail bombs is right out of a guerrilla warfare manual. She was M by 1995 but that means she was probably working in the field all the way through the 60s and 70s (if she was born circa 1935) and probably didn’t hit a desk job until the mid-80s.

Does anyone really think she didn’t know Che Guevara personally? That she wasn’t liaising with Mossad concerning the Munich Massacre? That she hasn’t been in and out of the Middle East dozens of times under different names? That she didn’t have Pol Pot in her sights that one time but was ordered not to take the shot?

You don’t learn how to make home-made light-socket nail bombs just by being well read. We’re seeing M at the end of her career, and the hints we get of what she knows and what she’s done I think qualifies her for action-hero, super-bad-ass status by any measure.