6. M Dies - Skyfall
To be fair, there were enough clues that M was probably going to bite it at the end of Skyfall, given the wide tabloid reports that Judi Dench's eyesight was beginning to fail. M was always either going to die or retire, yet in spite of the M-centred narrative - in which Javier Bardem's Raoul Silva wants to get revenge on her for past transgressions - we hoped that perhaps she'd be spared death. Nevertheless, the movie ends with M being mortally wounded during the exhilarating shoot-out at Bond's family abode, Skyfall, dying in Bond's arms in the penultimate scene. So likeable was M through her banter with Bond that we didn't want it to happen even if it was absolutely suited to the story being told, and was a supremely affecting moment without being overly sentimental. Did it need to happen? Probably. Did it make our inner fanboy scream "Noooo!"? Absolutely.