Dame Judi Dench is the only actor who wasn't recast when the James Bond movies rebooted with Casino Royale in 2006. While there is no official reason given by the producers for why Dench was invited to return as M, 007's spymaster, Dench's popularity is a major factor as to why she reprised the role after the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies ran their course.
Dench's tenure in the James Bond franchise is truly impressive; she has appeared in eight movies (including a video cameo in Spectre), which means the award-winning actress has played M more times than any James Bond actor has played 007. Further, Dench played M for 20 years from 1995's GoldenEye to 2015's Spectre, which far surpasses even Daniel Craig's record-setting 14-year run as James Bond. There is also a rumor Dench will cameo in No Time To Die, which would further add to her impressive record. Dench was the first and only woman to portray M, although Dench herself shot down the belief that her casting was a nod to the real-life nomination of Stella Rimington as the head of MI5.
From her inaugural appearance as M in GoldenEye, Dench won over audiences as James Bond's hard-nosed boss, especially when she asserted Brosnan's 007 as "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War whose boyish charms [are] wasted on me." It's not surprising that the runaway success of Dench's M was something Bond's producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, wanted to maintain, especially given the initial controversy over Daniel Craig being cast as 007 in Casino Royale. Considering the uncertainty of whether audiences would accept not just the new Bond but a total reboot of the films, Bond's producers and Casino Royale's director, Martin Campbell, wisely decided not also replace someone as talented and beloved as Judi Dench. They correctly gambled that the popular M's familiar face would help fans accept the new Bond.
In the Brosnan 007 movies, Dench's M struck fear into her subordinates and was derisively known as "the evil queen of numbers." Yet M was also a wife and parent; she was compassionate almost to a fault, which Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) used against her in The World Is Not Enough. However, just as Craig's Bond is a different incarnation of 007 than his predecessors - every actor from Sean Connery's original to Pierce Brosnan portrayed the same 007 - Dench actually played two versions of M between the Brosnan films and the rebooted Craig continuity.
The M that Daniel Craig's younger James Bond took his orders from had no prior history with (or disdain for) the new 007, and their relationship was very different. M behaved more like a "surrogate mother" to Craig's Bond, and that respect and affection was mutual; in Skyfall, Bond took it upon himself to personally protect M from the villainous Silva (Javier Bardem), and he was crushed when M died at the end of the film, which also made Dench the only M to be killed in a Bond movie. When M posthumously left Bond her porcelain Union Jack bulldog, it was revealed that her name was Olivia Mansfield, whereas in the screenplay and novelization for GoldenEye, M's name was Barbara Mawdsley.
Ralph Fiennes became the new M at the conclusion of Skyfall, but for an entire generation of James Bond fans, Judi Dench's M is the gold standard and is dearly missed as 007's boss. There's no denying that Dench's M is a vital part of the Bond franchise. In hindsight, the Bond producers' retaining Judi Dench's services in Casino Royale was an ingenious decision and her M proved to be the bridge that helped ensure a smooth transition between the original 007 continuity and the even greater success enjoyed by Daniel Craig as James Bond.
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