Home › Bond Movies › Skyfall
Reporting For Duty
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
Sebastian Faulks ridicules 'distasteful' Bond film 'Skyfall'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/jamesbond/9826812/Sebastian-Faulks-ridicules-distasteful-Bond-film-Skyfall.html
Apologies if this has already been posted. A new link would be good, if this is the case.
Faulks gets alot wrong about Fleming's Bond. I do agree with him concerning one thing though, regarding Naomi Harris. I don't think that she acted particularly well in Skyfall. I don't know if I'm that happy about having her play Moneypenny. I've felt this way since I first saw Skyfall.
Apologies if this has already been posted. A new link would be good, if this is the case.
Faulks gets alot wrong about Fleming's Bond. I do agree with him concerning one thing though, regarding Naomi Harris. I don't think that she acted particularly well in Skyfall. I don't know if I'm that happy about having her play Moneypenny. I've felt this way since I first saw Skyfall.
^ 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
You choose.
What does he means by that? Fleming's Bond, reflecting on Mexican he murdered at the begining of GF would be gay by his account? I'm sorry... but that only shows a crude sterotype. According to Faulks the only way Bond could show some introspection is by changing his sexual orientation... I'm glad I've never read his book as he demostrates no understanding of the character Fleming wrote.
"I found the last film pretty distasteful. One [of the Bond girls] couldn't act and the other had been previously exploited as a sex worker. And Bond walks into the shower and makes love to her. Casino Royale was much better," he told an audience at India's Jaipur Literature Festival.
And same with this bit. Fair comment I think.
"...he said both Skyfall and Quantum of Solace had made a error by attempting to portray the spy as a more human character with a richer inner life.
"The films' attempts to show a deeper and sensitive side to James Bond have not been successful because that's not how he works. He doesn't have much of an inner life and when you try to give him one the whole thing stalls," he said. "
I might add the whole thing stalls, when you try to do it on film. Bond's "inner life" such as it is, works better in the books IMHO of course. On film its a crashing bore and almost comes across as pretentious.
The charming but very focused and deadly agent on mission, sans issues, works best on film IMO, you know, like how that Connery guy used to play the character. Just sayin.
Zero understanding of Fleming's characters by Faulks. Look at Honey Ryder or even Domino.
In addition, I think that the literary Bond would have walked into a shower and made love to an ex sex worker too.
Harris isn't a great actress though. I wish they had have cast someone else as Moneypenny. I really do.
"I thought I would invest him with some serious thoughts. It didn't work. It was unconvincing. It made him look not thoughtful but slightly gay."
Since I haven´t read any of Faulks´ books I won´t say anything about his abilities as a writer. Otherwise I would say his above statement is more than anything else a display of his own limitations as a writer.
And no,. I don't agree with Faulks.
This...just the Harris part I partly agree with. She always looked too much like she was acting (which shouldn't be the case) and not as a natural character.
=)) Gee, I bet he's never heard that one. ;)
The film, Skyfall, had few silly moments but the average certainly means quality in the line of previous films, particularly Naomie Harris'es Moneypenny. A tasteful interpretation.
@Dragonpol I wonder if Barbara Broccoli found it to be distasteful since she complained about the past sexual exploits of Bond.
Yes, arrogance seems to be his main stock in trade. He has little to be arrogant about, though as his novel is well nigh unreadable. He did seem very blasé about the writing of Devil May Care "...as Ian Fleming" and this showed through in his parody of a Bond novel. Monkey's paw, indeed!
I do not know. Each to their own, I suppose. The literary James Bond used to visit prostitutes - one would have thought that he hardly needed to!
Writing in the Financial Times, Christopher Hitchens complained that although Faulks claimed to be writing 'as Fleming', it fell short of doing so: "This pot-boiler takes several times as long as most Bond classics. There is almost no sex until the very last pages. There is almost no torture – an absolute staple of a Bond narrative – until the very last pages."[7] Hitchens admitted that Faulks had referred to elements of Fleming's novels, so that "those who have a canonical attitude to Fleming will be able to collect their share of in-jokes and cross-references";[7] similarly, "wispy fragments of Vesper Lynd and Honey Ryder drift in and out of shot and memory in much the same way".[7] Hitchens concluded his review of the novel by considering that Bond had been "cheapened" in the novel
“Shaky, not stirring... Fleming himself used to claim that he marched the plot along fast enough to silence all the doubts about its credibility – a guileless yet brilliant tactic. But Faulks takes fatally too long to smuggle his own effort past the customs. Except for absurd coincidences that really do stretch one’s credulity, such as Bond running into the monkey-pawed villain just before being briefed about him, everything is laboriously spelled out.”
“Only inattention, after all, not haste, could make a writer of this stature describe a telephone call as having been put through ‘without demur’.”
I somewhat disagree with that statement. I believe we learn that Bond visited prostitutes prior to CR possibily in his youth, but I cannot recall where he engaged with prostitutes beyond that. He did visit the brothel in TMWTGG but did purchase services.
As for the rest; if I were you Seb I'd be very careful about bandying around criticism of the Bond universe. As the bloke who took a bigger dump on the character than Tamahori with The Phantom Menace of Bond books your opinion on matters Bondian is not even on a par with that of the Double Take Pigeon.
Always pleasant to read Hitchens. Glad he made.mince meat of Faulks.
http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/3487/skyfall-fans-reactions-guaranteed-spoilers/p74
May as well give it its own topic, though he said these remarks at the start of the year.
Yes, I thought they were familiar...we seem to catch up rather late here on MI6 Community.
Great post.
On Faulks: his was the first non-Fleming I read and it almost was my last. the only reason I tried Carte Blanche as well is that I knew it could not possibly be worse then TDMC.
The brothel that Bond and Tiger visited was shutdown. Tiger tells Bond that Prostitution was made illegal and that the "whore-house" was a national monument.
His audacity in criticising one of the top three Bond films of all time (FRWL, OHMSS, SF - put them in any order you like) beggars belief and as fare as the delectable Ms.Harris is concerned, he should simply keep his mouth shut. She is smoking and I love her as Moneypenny.