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I'm not lecturing you, I am just debating with you. If you don't want engaged in the debates, don't post.
He has dance only at TB and he has some favorite hobbies other than dancing.
NO, it seems a common answer to me. It is the first word that comes to mind, so that was his. Plus, this isn't Connery's Bond.
But I have a question, the bit of music that plays when Q is scanning trough the CCTVs and sees Silva entering the train does seem to not appear on the soundtrack. How come, and is there any way to find it?
I wouldn't say that it's the first answer that comes to mind, but it shows that Bond is, at his heart, a bit of a romantic. Nice nod to Fleming's Bond IMHO.
What is the reason behind Bond's reaction to the cue "Skyfall" in the association game?
If that was his home with his parents, prior to their death, would it not be full of good memories? Even if he had witnessed his parent's death at Skyfall, would the good memories of the time before not dominate? I do not get why the association game had to end with Bond storming out of the room after he was annoyed about being asked about Skyfall. Any suggestions?
They probably thought it looked cool, even if it makes no sense in the movie.
I think it was obvious. Bond was orphaned by the event, it left him feeling very angry and alone. Since then he's joined the navy before being recruited by mi6 and selected to become a 00. He's never spoken about his parents to anyone and the whole thing has left him very hard and cold. He's never resolved these childhood traumas, this is something mi6 have noticed and manipulated by making him into their own personal killing machine. Vesper describes it beautifully when dressing down Bond on the train in Casino Royale.
During the word association game it's clear that Bond is treating the whole thing as a joke. It's just a bit of lark for him, but he notices that the tide in the questions is beginning to change, they have become less general and more specific about Bond's personal life. Bond doesn't want to get involved in these silly mind-games so he calls the thing off - the last thing he wants to do is think about his parents or give the psychiatrist the reaction he wants.
It also plants the seed for Bond to go to Skyfall at the end to essentially protect his Mother.
Oh no, it makes perfect sense.
Craig's Bond is extra protective of his past and everything involved in it, and as such Skyfall is a big part of his childhood and something he wishes to forget. This isn't to say he had a horribly bad childhood in the whole, but he did have to grow up in an undesirable location in what some would call an undesirable home. But, the heart of it is in his parents death, which devastated him beyond reason. For him the home could symbolize a place where his innocence was lost, though it did contribute to making him a "man", to making him a hardened shell. For him the house represents why he has his chosen career. As M said, orphans are the best recruits, and it was at Skyfall in it's priest hole where he barricaded himself and realized that he was no longer with mother and father in life, a hard thing to deal with for anyone, especially a small boy who hadn't known much more before then. It is a place of isolation, a place that can mirror who Bond is, more hidden, more alone in the grand scheme of things than he would like to admit. He can love, but when he does his heart gets crushed and his guard gets thrown up yet again. He has allies, but they are few and far between, and he has had more people die in his wake (and arms) that imaginable for one person. There are few in his life that he trusts, and so his own isolated life in this spy world is connected in a way to his past at Skyfall where he first knew what isolation and the feeling of loss was (again his parents' deaths). This harsher setting, his pain over the death of his parents, and the moment he first realized he was orphaned and was forced to grow up in that priest hole all contribute to who he became: a government spy who tries his hardest not to show vulnerability or feeling in a job where it is a game of eavesdropping and paranoia, where hardly anyone can be trusted. Taking all this into account, Bond doesn't wish for people to know this past about him. He likes to keep things simple, to not complicate things, and those that know about his childhood at Skyfall would know that he doesn't have such a hard shell, that he is breakable. And so, Bond drives M to Skyfall, the one person he can trust more than anyone in his world, and probably fully realizes that the home will not make it through the next few days as Silva and co. are led to it. It is with great pride as he stares at it, in flame and rigged to blow that Bond both literally and figuratively burns to the ground his past, and in many ways begins anew, not dragged down by this past and the negatives the structure of Skyfall itself stood for.
So, the mention of "Skyfall" in the word association test is meant to shake up Bond. It is the big shocker after all the rest of the "easy words" that he gave smart aleck answers to. Words like "M", "Gun", "Moonlight" and so on where words M knew Bond would joke about, but she hid "Skyfall in there as well, which instantly and visibly brought Bond back down a few notches. Even Vesper knew Bond was an orphan (and it visibly gets to him when she mentions it on the train as well), and she just surmised it without a fancy government file on him. It is on the train to Montenegro that Bond realized that his whole being and past could be picked apart by just one clever person who knew what to look for in him, to pick up on his ticks and insecurities. So, when Bond hears "Skyfall" during the word association test it is in that moment that he realizes more than ever that M knows EVERYTHING, and his response, or lack thereof is telling of that discovery. As he says while looking over the foggy Scottish landscape with her, she knows the "whole story" about him. With the knowledge that she knows all this about him, and purposely chose him because he was an orphan connects him to his troubled time at Skyfall when he realized at such a tender age that he was now parentless, and that same event led to all he knows now, that led to his career at MI6 and changed everything about him forever. Whether or not he likes to admit it, Bond was born by Skyfall, was hardened by Skyfall, and at the end of the film, has grown from Skyfall as he let that past go in a handful of ashes.
Personally, I didn't much care for the whole Bond Manor backstory psychobabble in Bond 23 as it felt freshly lifted from the pages of The Gotham Times. Yes, I know it made a shed load of money at the BO but I honestly felt this whole episode was a step backwards after the outstanding CR and its pulse induced sequel.
I'll get my bullet-proof vest on for your replies. :)>-
You are right about the literary facts, but it does work on film.
And it´s strange that people wouldn´t stop criticising QOS for ripping off Bourne, but keep on praising SF even though it rips off Nolan-Batman at least as much.
It does work on film if one really disliked QOS so much that one decides to erase it out of one´s memory. If QOS is counted, then Bond again having personal problems turns him into pretty much of an emotional wreck, something which makes sense neither on the basis of the film legacy, nor on the basis of Fleming´s novels.
Also, it´s much cooler if a secret agent is a life-loving scoundrel rather than an emotional amputee.
I do understand that post.
There was a definite Nolan-infused element to the finale. But personally I thought the ending was much more Sam Mendes-y than anything else.
As for Bond not growing up at Skyfall? I personally don't think he actually spent a lot of time at the home. It was merely his father's ancestral home, passed down the generations. I think Bond spent a lot of time with his family travelling becasue of his father's work (though we do know he was there when the news came that his parents had died). I think he came to resent Skyfall mainly for what it represented: the past.
If we aren't barking at QoS with lazy arguments about how it "rips off" Bourne, then we're trying to compare Skyfall and Nolan, a comparison I don't see. Not only are Bruce and James completely different on almost every conceivable level, I see no dramatic comparisons to Nolan's films and Skyfall at all, and I know them backwards and forwards.
Please. Here we go again. What is with all the Nolan/Batman obsession some posters have on this site? Nolan wasn't the first one to develop the idea of a flawed hero/anti-hero. He wasn't the first one make his hero an orphan. He wasn't even the one who came up with the idea of making Bruce Wayne an orphan, or that his parents were killed by muggers. Making Bruce Wayne an orphan who's parents were killed by criminals did not come from Nolan at all - it's the original story of Batman.
Geesh, the idea of a hero having a fatal flaw in his character, even a flaw that stemmed from childhood, can be traced back to Shakspeare and beyond.
So can we stop with trying to explain everything in Bond & Skyfall to Nolan (or Bourne, for that matter - there were movies and heros before 2002, you know).
Thank you for injecting some much needed sense here, @Quarrel. I don't get the comparisons either.
The Batman/Skyfall comparisons I don't agree with entirely but I can see where people are coming from. I think this article does a good job of explaining it.
http://www.cracked.com/cracked-64-top-8-everything-of-2012/Movie_p2/
The truth is he got over it, and quickly. So quickly that none of the previous 20 movies even bothered to mention it... nor did the original books.
I thought it was a nice touch in CR and it worked because Bond was trying to gain the upper hand with Vesper, but she showed that she was also skilled in the art of outdoing or showing up a rival by slightly unscrupulous means. It worked as a requital as well as a bit of unlocked subtext. Did we need to learn more? No, the dialogue worked beautifully and so did the mystery behind it.
Also, @Brady, I don't know why you get so heated when someone dares to mention that Mendes capitalized on the popularity of The Dark Knight. The only thing that's "lazy" was the producers and writers tenacity to build a story around Bond's childhood because it happened to work with Nolan's Batman. I know some like it, but let's not split hairs here... the writers would never have explored Bond's childhood if not for the success of Batman.
The idea was first thought of for The Living Daylights but has only now made it to the screen.
Somewhere on this site Mendes was quoted in connection with the idea of Nolan as Bond director, saying that with SF they already did something similar to TDK, dark and gritty. Not that I give a lot about director´s talk, but I can see the similarity.
Or that it was first thought of many years ago. Had it not been, would it have been reused today? I don't think the current team are clever enough to think of this as a new idea. Thank God for Richard Maibaum.
Funny how much of Dalton's era has found it's way into SF. Shame none of this ended up in any of his films. God I wish he'd done a 3rd film.
You make me laugh. If you think Nolan was the only one who did anything interesting or lauded with Batman's origin/childhood then you really need to do your research. That whole origin has been touched on for 70 years, and most extremely in the masterpiece of Batman comics in the 80s from Frank Miller and Denny O'Neil, 1989's Batman that explored that very dark moment and in the other masterpiece, the 90s Batman Animated series and films. Nolan did nothing new with the shooting of Thomas and Martha, and it was done better and more severely way before he ever got involved with the character. That is not to say he failed, as he gets the character and the way he connected the deaths of Thomas and Martha to the themes of Batman and his fight for crime is masterful. My point is just that Nolan is only one new hand in a pie that has been touched for decades upon decades. The so-called "lazy" Michael, Barbara, Sam and John Logan handled Bond's childhood story brilliantly, didn't rely on Fleming and did their own thing magnificently. They showed us Bond and what led to him being the agent we know now without showing us too much that would ruin the mystery the character always has. We know a little more of Bond, but he is still that wonderful enigma trapped in a riddle, wrapped in a question and signed with a question mark. That isn't lazy, that's called skillful storytelling.
Not only do Bond and Batman have little in common, but how they grew up, what they came to be and what they fight for is also exclusive to their respective characters and very little shared in between. Bond is an orphan who learns to grow up when he has to survive for himself parentless, and because he is an orphan he is picked to be in MI6, where he gets his licence to kill, and grows from a reckless rookie to a competent agent who has an impeccable ability to survive, showing limitless commitment and loyalty to England and M in his journey to protect the realm from all enemies both foreign and domestic. Batman is a rich kid spoiled with a lavish and privileged upbringing whose world crashes down on him after his parents are killed upon which time he embarks on a lifelong journey to rid Gotham City of the crime that took their lives using skills he has gained and nurtured over years of dedication, including combat, criminology, science and more, using his brains equally with his brawn and refuses to use weapons or take human lives in his fight to protect his city. More than a tad different, aren't they?
I think to suggest SF is in no way influenced by TDK trilogy is nonsense. I don't think anyone can claim SF is a direct result of Nolan's work, but it's impact can certainly be felt, especially tonally and thematically. It's understandable. It's something that has happened throughout the ages. A certain tone strikes a chord, which then embeds itself in the subconscious and becomes symbolic of the era. SF, much like QoS and to a lesser extent CR (both of which were a response to Bourne's growing influence, this is undeniable) is influenced by the mood of the era.
In the same way SW influenced the franchise to it's most successful film pre-95 with MR, TDK or unusually and more specifically Nolan, has redefined the modern blockbuster. I'm sure we'd all rather it were Bond redefining cinema, but that is a task that is almost insurmountable. We had our days in the sun in 64/65 and the sole focus of the franchise these days should be to make the best picture possible.
Every Bond film is influenced by it's era and it's competitors, some much more than others. For me SF can't escape comparisons, simply because TDK casts such an enviable shadow. It's not the first and it certainly won't be the last. I just hope that with Bond 24 they deliver something that feels unmistakably Bond - with not so much as a whiff of unnecessary melodrama.
'Dark' cinema has hopefully reached critical mass. With every leading man wallowing in his own self pity and critics clamouring to make love to the so called 'gritty' (what a horribly misused word) and 'real' (there's another) new blockbusters, Bond has the ability to break free from this mould.
To be clear, character does not need to be sacrificed. I think some people immediately assume that the only way to inject character is to up the brooding, the pounting, the 100 yard stares etc. Character is about light and shade and I genuinely think Bond needs to step into the light. It's still missing a certain 'joie de vivre', which for all some people's conjecture, is abundant in Fleming. The books were such a joy because for every cold-blooded hit, there are lashings of the high-life. Maybe it's Craig, he does the brooding exceptionally but I never really see the sparkle of Connery. I don't want my Bond to climb up his own arse, he's not a real man and he's not a real spy. Ground him, yes. But don't rip the soul out of him to satisfy the whims of the capricious cinema-going public .
What about them? They are just as different as James and Batman can be.