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That's how I felt at times, mainly with the Macau casino fight scene. It just seemed like Craig was taking it as a joke, and I never felt that he was in any serious danger.
Really? It all worked with the audience I watched it with! I thought the humour was great, not too much, not too cheasy.
Not many laughs at the showing i went to in the UK my friend
I've been one of those callimg for a bit more lighthearted tone so I have to say that I welcome the attempt at least to inject a bit of humour. However, while I did chuckle along in a couple of scenes, I don't think there was anything to stand up to the cutting dry wit of the Maibaum scripts. And like your audience, the one that I was in didn't laugh once throughout, not even at Silva. The audience were in fact completely subdued throughout, in a packed cinema.
Have to say that an audience can have a big influence on how you experience a film and if the vibe is flat the film is I suppose going to seem a bit flat. However, I am the kind of person who laughs out loud if I find something funny and that wasn't hapening with SF.
@006jeremy, a nicely measured review. I too agree that the film often looked great. However, like you imply, great cinematography does not a great Bond movie make. SF really does feel like a case of the emperors new clothes - underneath which is a weak plot and some poorly developed characters. I think that for me is the biggest disappointment. After all Mendes talk of really wanting a character driven story, this is a much much weaker story than CR and, like you say, a far less coherent piece of filmmaking than QoS even.
One of the unexpected consequences of SF is that its actually given me an even greater appreciation for CR and QoS. I thought the only way was up in the DC era but this has shown how tricky it actually is to make a decent Bond film. Although I'm majorly disappointed with SF as a film, I do respect the obvious effort that's gone into it. However, it rather confirms my theory that Bond does not actually need Oscar winning directors - the greatest films in the series are IMO those knocked out by the professional hack directors who were more grounded in the nuts and bolts of moviemaking. I seriously feel that Mendes thinks all these plot holes don't really matter and that you just ignore them because it's a Bond film, but all that comes across is a certain laziness and slopiness in script and direction. The best films of the classic era are much tauter in their direction - little is wasted in terms of plot development and there is a pacing to them that SF lacks. For all its faults, this is one of the reasons I rate QoS and feel that Forster understood Bond better than pretty much any director since Glen. The QoS story is actually pretty simple (if not a classic) and the film has a momentum that just carries you along, with some memorable scenes and some actually half decent dialogue along the way. I did actually feel after watching QoS that Bond had been on a personal journey. In SF Bond actually felt peripheral to the story - like someone said, this is an M movie, which appearances by 007.
Frankly, the more I think about it, the more the third act just seems utterly absurd. Bond taking M to some remote difficult to defend house and getting her killed. I mean, after this catastrophic failure on his part are we expecting that he'll walk back to MI6 with his head held high and everyone high-fiving him? 'Well done James, the b**** had it coming!' Not only is M utterly incompetent in this film, but so is Bond. I mean what happens in SF is actually M loses the names of all NATO agents, has her best agent shot, Q allows someone to effortlessly hack the entire MI6 system and then Bond manages to get his boss killed. Congratulations due all round really. I know they were trying to shake things up a bit with SF, but for me this really undermines the whole concept of Bond, M and MI6. It's not just that Britain is fighting against the fading of empire - it implies that Britain is actually totally useless at everything. The most beautiful image in the entire film is a 50 year old car - it's almost as if they want to underline the fact that Britain is so far past its prime that we can't even provide Bond with a decent modern car any more. I guess that's the post- Jimmy Saville austerity Britain that we live in. Hardly left me with the feel good factor though.
Something stranger has happened to me and I know Getafix won't be too impressed with this, but I have found myself appreciating the Brosnan films a bit more, and I don't think SF is any better than TWINE, both films best action scene is the PTS.
I watched all the Brosnan films shortly after SF and one thing hit me they all look like they had a far bigger budget SF just does not look like a 200m movie.
May be it's because I followed the making too closely, but it feels very studio bound. We know that Craig never got beyond Pinewood and Turkey. It's not a big deal, but the film IMO lacks the scale that it wants to project. It feels slightly cramped and claustrophobic. Doubtless that is partly because so much of it is set underground in tunnels and priest holes, and is full of images of drowning/sinking.
I don't mind TWINE but SF is leaps and bounds ahead of it direction-wise, cinematography-wise and acting wise.
I'm an avid GE defender but even I admit SF is better.
...and no, Getafix, you don't need to answer to this. Someone else will be capable of that.
Why do you read comments in here? The thread title is 'For those disappointed' - you clearly weren't disappointed and thus will only get wound up.
But you are right, of course.
There are two sides to everything though, right? There were people on this forum announcing that Skyfall was going to be the best Bond ever, weeks even months before release. These are the kind of people who were going to love it no matter what. For every 'hater' there is an equal and opposite 'lover'.
But liking is always more fun then disliking, no? Thakfully there are more lover here and elsewhere.
But yeah, to be fair, you have a point. Even though, I would think, that a 80% to 20% liking can't be down to just people, who decided to love it beforehand.
But its all yours. I won't stick my big, fat nose in here again and I tend to stay true to my word. Have fun...:)
I'm not going to get into this particular point that much, but Skyfall is my favorite Bond film ever and that's that (for now). It doesn't have to be your favorite and you shouldn't even have to like it (though how anyone can label Skyfall as one of the weaker Bond films is purely beyond me). There are a couple things of pure insanity that have been said in this discussion however, that I think needs a bit of answering. I'm not trying to be rude, but let's just go for the sake of debate here.
Firstly: Skyfall a less coherent piece of filmmaking than Quantum of Solace? I can't wrap my head around that one. QOS's structure was such a garbled mess that by film's end, nearly every character's actions made no sense. You wanna talk plot holes and things that defy all sense of logic? Talk about how Tanner knew Bond shot Haines's bodyguard a threw him off a roof. Talk about why M inexplicably sent out Fields (a woman who freaking "worked in an office") to arrest JAMES BOND. Talk about why the Perla de las Dunas is a hotel powered by C4 explosives (or why they were even there in the first place). Talk about the dreadful editing which made even the simplest actions a task for the mind. Quantum of Solace was a failure in big budget filmmaking, and it was painfully obvious that the whole movie was a first draft. If you want an example of quickly cashing in, Quantum of Solace would be a good place to start.
Second: The World Is Not Enough better than Skyfall? I'm not even going to get into that one, but jeez - think about what you're saying there.
As some of you have already pointed out, this is a place for the 'disappointed Skyfall viewers' so I'm going to spare you from a full fledged defense of Skyfall, but I hope we can all still remain civil in debating.
What I was disappointed in with SF were the gadgets. Nothing we haven't seen before. I was also expecting Patrice to be a return to the glory days of memorable henchman but he was just a generic hired assassin and he didn't really make an impact at all.
Spot on.
I've heard you say this before, but would you be saying that if we were still in the Dalton era?
It's easy for you to say "be positive" because you love DC and his films.
Aww...I liked that bit :( As a Londoner I thought it was funny.
I loved that part and so did apparently the rest of the room. It was not too silly and it was well performed.
I liked it too but Moore gets lots of flack on here for being too comedic and I reckon if that was in a Moore film people on here now would say it was too stupid.
Thanks. Yeah I agree too that this is mostly an M movie. That isn't really a bad thing either. I appreciate trying to do something different. I want each Bond movie to have it's own unquie feel. There are times I think that it does to a degree, although most of the movie also feels cookie-cutter. I know Mendes wanted to honor the 50 years of Bond and that's fine, but instead of rehashing and redressing tired movie mechanics it would have been more appreciated (by me at least) to present Bond references in a more reimagined way. That is what I feel ultimately what CR did. I too was hoping Mendes would focus more on a character driven story. In a general (not sure if that's the right word) way he did, but not enough. Some of the other flaws I believe wouldn't be as much of an issue if he just worked more on character development. I wanted to feel why Bond is the way he is from this story, but that never really happened. This was supposed to be a more personal story than QoS was and not enough time went into to making it that way.
And even though I can't articulate everything you addressed in the last part of your post as well as you, I certainly can say I do agree. I hate that this film tries to build tension from the utter failure of almost every character (except for the anatgonists). I can see that because fiction mirrors reality that this can work. Although, how it is done here does make MI6 feel incompetent. Not sure how this could have been done better though. Perhapse it was the ridiculousness of Silva that made thier failings stand out so much.
Thanks for the response.