It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Eliot Carver meet M Skyfall style at 1.48
I certainly do, and I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I can't imagine this depth of theme in any of the earlier pre-Craig movies, especially when it alludes to sentiments expressed by such a revered source as Tennyson.
That is indeed a brilliant analysis, @ColonialLeo. I hope you return to our community here soon - we need posters like you! :)
BUT IMHO I think it could have been used to even better effect.
Bear with me for my alternative version.
On the way to the select committee meeting in the back of the car, we see M reading to herself a well thumbed book of poetry and highlighted by an asterisk or similar is this verse. Its a brief glimpse but it gives something for the clever fans to grab on to first viewing and something to review on second viewing if missed. We don't know if M is reading it to inspire her or she plans to include it within her presentation at the meeting but we see the book on the desk during the meeting. We don't see/hear her say the words. (of course the meeting is interrupted)
IMHO the use of her words and the significance is masked by the action going on and the music played over the words.
During the final scene, Moneypenny gives Bond the Bulldog AND the book (with bookmark still in place). Bond is left on his own with that now iconic scene looking over the rooftops of London with multiple Union Jacks fluttering in the breeze. He opens the book at the bookmarked page and smiles. We see the text for a couple of seconds. As the camera pulls out, we hear DC in an emotional voice over.
This would give more focus on the words and more meaning in that M was sending a message to Bond to "stand firm" plus it would mean that Bond was aware of the sentiment (he did not hear the words in SF).
We could see the book on Bond's shelf or desk in future movies
I believe such a foreshadowing scene was originally planned, but had to be dropped due to time constraints. Weighing in as a whopping 143 minutes, SF is a long movie by anyone's standards and Eon (and any other film production company) are always under strong commercial pressure to keep the movie within pre-agreed time limits.
I'm not sure of the nature of this Tennyson foreshadowing scene, but my money would be a continuation of the scene in M's house where Bond leaves to find a hotel and she picks up the Tennyson book, turns to "Ulysses" and looks away thoughtfully.
I had not heard that. That scene is too early IMHO to reference the piece. I like her reading it around the time of the committee meeting as it has the extra dimension of reflecting on her own personal position: being pressured by the committee and not yielding in running the dept how she wanted to,
very interesting, do you have a reference to that alternative use?
PS another option would have been to have J Dench do the voice over as, in Bond's head, he knows that it is M sending him the message so he imagines (with us) how M would say the words (from the grave). Immensely powerful IMHO, if SP gets anywhere near that intensity and depth I will be "well chuffed".
PPS Four Weddings and a Funeral did a similar trick in using a poem to introduce a level of depth, cleverness and meaning that none of the characters could have brought to the film in themselves.
Sadly no concrete reference, but I was chatting to someone involved in the production some years ago and, being a literary type, I mentioned the Tennyson quote and M's late husband (possibly the man we saw in bed with M briefly in CR). The reply was that it was a "scene that could have been better developed, but still works well in the time allowed". Whilst I can't argue with that, I've spent the intervening years wondering (like you) how I would have developed the Tennyson scene, maybe at the cost to a few seconds elsewhere in the movie.
"I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair."
PS My hero N Meyer used a similar trick in ST5 with Shakespeare although in a far more cheesy way but it does work. I can easily imagine a Bond villain who is a Shakespeare fan, lots of potential for quotes.
Bumping this thoughtful thread as related to recent discussion.