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Comments
That’s mental!!!
No humiliation?? On MI6´s watch a dangerous prisoner escapes and wreaks havoc in London killing many innocent people and storming a judicial hearing? How is that not humiliating?
Of course Silva´s plan was not entirely succesful. The plan was to kill M. Would that have been humiliating enough for you?
It may well be, but we never see the repercussions of that or it expressed: we don't see anyone feeling the humiliation. No Freddie Gray walking in and saying "we're the laughing stock of the intelligence community" :D
Some things are often best left to the imagination ;)
PS It's not co-incIdence that this is pretty clearly laid out when we first meet Silva. It's a scene where you clearly see he has "lost it". ("back then, I was her favourite"). It's wonderful script writing IMHO
And their no. 2, Dr. No, can't count up to three as he calls Terrorism, Extortion and Revenge the four cornerstones of power. 🙃
I also think that the humiliation of MI6, M, Q and Bond is sufficiently expressed in Silva's escape. The scene with Silva approaching while M gives her speech is my favourite part of the movie - except for the train sequence -, because of the great music score.
Yes i don't like it when they try to spoon feed everything. For example when Bond tells severine "What we're you 12,13? ".
At that moment we knew Silva has done some really bad things in the past, a subtle nod is enough for me.
The point is never made: I don't consider it to be a big humiliating moment because no-one expresses it.
Maybe everyone is actually really understanding about it: we have no idea.
It's not 'dumbing down' or 'spoon feeding' to be given reactions to events in films: that's what drama is. Otherwise you could say it was spoon feeding to show us Bond crying over Tracy's body at the end of OHMSS: we could have figured out for ourselves that he'd be sad, why not just end the film with the gunshot? etc.
Sorry to those that have already seen it multiple times, but I'm still really proud of it :)
/list]
It also has some weaknesses:
Skyfall will be the first Bond movie I will be sitting out of in my life. It looks like some overdone artsy drama. That camerawork alone looks like they are begging for a Oscar nod for cinematography. Seriously doesn't even look like Bond anymore. Sad. He can't leave soon enough for my tastes.
My top three:
OHMSS
FRWL
CR/SF
SF was already top ten since I saw it. Quickly climbed into top 5 Bond films. And then chipped away-- every time I re-watched it, it continued to elevate...
I saw it with a live orchestra this past February and that's when it started its death-match with CR.
I'm surprised when I hear that others felt there was no humour. When I saw this in February, a sold-out audience seem to revel in the fun and humour that the film depicted.
OTOH, I severely disliked QOS first time out, but it has since become one of my favourites.
At least I own SF on DVD (MR is the only Bond I don't own).
It’s excellent. Single best Bond film? Not quite for me, but it’s right up there, and counts as a worthy contender in my eyes. There is so much I love about it:
-Craig’s Bond performance. While I don’t rank it ahead of his excellent turns in CR and QOS, he does an amazing job once again, completing a turkey as one would say in bowling. He find a little bit more lightness for his Bond while still staying true to his grittier, harsher take on the character (before going overboard on the silly in SP).
-Judi Dench’s M gets her best turn last. So many great scenes in her time with Brosnan and Craig, but everything in SF done with her stands out the most to me.
-Silva is Craig’s best Bond villain and one of the series’ overall best villains. He is creepy, unhinged, and grabs my attention every second every time.
-Really solid action. A very good PTS, awesome sequence in Shanghai, and explosive finale in Scotland are my personal highlights.
-Roger Deakins doing what he does.
-Thomas Newman’s solid score. It’s not very well-liked around here, but I dig it. It only got old in SP when so much got reused.
-Adele’s title song is an instant classic, and one of the series’ best.
-A great balance of old and new. The film balances a more modern action/drama flavor with classic Bond material, which includes a great new Q and Moneypenny. SP goes too far with it and forgets what plays most to Craig’s strengths.
Sure he could, With predictive analytics and the right algorithm, all Silva needed to do was program the correct code and computers would have made the decisions based on every conceivable circumstance. If you don't think this is possible, then go to your basic computer game in which you are playing against the computer. It makes thousands (or millions) of decisions in response to what you do.
I don't find anything that Silva does inconceivable if we concede his computer brilliance.
That's the exact argument I've been using for years ;) After all, it's his area of expertise, isn't it? A bit like a quantum computer algorithms predicting the future in the short term. Perfectly doable.
Oh, we do, at least in my case. LOL Being such a DC fan, I will cry like a baby at the credits, no matter what happens at the end of the film. It will be a curtain closing on his tenure.
I don't know, I think SF's trajectory may go downward. Will future generations really be drawn to it? OHMSS is an emotional experience and resistance to Lazenby is what set so many off on it and its perception as a failure. But it never fails to get me in the end.
Can't say so about SF. I felt no more emotional attachment than I do in other Bond films. CR got me much more as it was fulfilling great source material for the screen and bringing it into the modern day. In SF, a lot seems to hinge on one's feelings for Dench's M and I've never been a fan. M seems to be the star of SF, not so much Bond.
And no, SF is not the best movie of the series. FRWL stands in the way, permanently. But SF keeps being my No. 2. (Close contenders in that group: CR and GF. All others are next-tier.)
For a film that attempts a does of realism and arty pretentiousness, the flaws in the plot holes are pretty evident (as many have mentioned before), and is also highly unrealistic.
The tube suddenly appearing, as though Silva knew exactly that it would come through the tunnel, at the same time he knew Bond would be exactly in the same spot, as Silva was in exactly the right spot where he could escape. It really is taking it too far.
And Bond falling from such a high height off a bridge in the PTS that he would be dead instantly on impact.
Both these moments alone overshadow the unrealistic eras of both Moore and Brosnan, which don't really pretend to be anything other than escapist entertaining action flicks.
I don't like a lot of the whispery dialogue between Bond and Moneypenny, the fact that this is ageing Bond at the end of his career, washed up, yet only 2 films earlier this is Bond at the very beginning of his career (with the follow up QoS as part 2), so this is really the next instalment right after Bond Begins, and yet he is already seemingly nearing the end of his career, burnt up and mojo lost.
I also don't like the direction, or the way Craig looks in this film. The grey skinhead look is light years away from the Fleming Bond, and light years away from the cinematic Bond. Newman's soundtrack is pretty crap and lazy in many parts, and there is too much of a wannabee Nolan Batman feel throughout, particularly Silva as a poor mans Joker.
The more I think about it, the more I despise both SF and SP, and Mendes has to take a lot of the blame for that.
I see this get brought up a lot among fans, but I think it's a false fan narrative. It's never stated that Silva actually planned for Bond to chase him all the way up to the very spot a train was about to crash into. If you want to make sense of why Silva would have had a train crash there at all, the reason is very simple: Creating a diversion for the authorities while heads over to M's position to attack.
The only thing that Silva had planned out was a route of escape, for his goons to be in key areas to assist, and the detonation of a bomb causing a major crash. There's nothing suggested that Silva planned for Bond to chase him, because there doesn't appear to be any purpose for that. It was just happenstance that Bond was standing right under the site of a oncoming crash, and you can see Silva being highly amused knowing that.