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I don't understand how you come to that. SKYFALL's is fairly simplistic: Bond goes after a man who's targeting M.
Like I said: CR has not aged well at all. It is still a solid top 5 for me, but man are there scenes/shots in this film that just look bad, now. You allude to another one with the plane. To make matters worse, Campbell stays on the plane for nearly 30 seconds, with those horns blaring. as though it's Godzilla rising from the depths. Ugh
As for SF and Bond's past; I think the film does a good job of giving us a taste of Bond's past without over-explaining it. We all know what happened to his parents. We don't really learn anything new beyond what his house looked like. It just colours in the plot and gives it an extra bit of extra edge. It's not something I'd like to see become common, but for a once off, SF was all good in my book. SP changed that, of course, but I still try my best to mentally view SF as a standalone story.
I hadn't looked at this thread until very recently, but I think @Pierce2Daniel makes good points here.
They're really working hard to make a big airplane look extremely impressive. :P
I wonder if it would have been better if Dimitrios had just said "I'll do it myself" and he tried to sneak a bomb in the back way, when the plane was still in the facility rather than have this whole "introduce Carlos, drive big trucks towards the plane" scene. I don't think we needed another big action set piece in the first act after Madagascar, and maybe some Bondian espionage here would have been more effective. Who knows.
Reading this just reinforces what several other posts have said already. SF is the most pretentious and one of the dullest Bond films. Describing it as a TWINE remake is spot on.
Because something has depth doesn't mean it's pretentious.
The idea that because Fleming didn't dive into Bond's past doesn't mean the films can't. The films have been sidestepping Fleming for decades. I am pretty sure Fleming didn't write about pigeons doing double takes and Bond yelling like Tarzan.
Nostalgia alone is not enough to drive the series forward. Cinematic Bond has always been dependent on taking risks and evolve with the times. Cubby Broccoli would be the first to admit that.
Don't gey me wrong, I am very much into existential art films. SF though, in its desperate attempts to be exactly that, forgets to be a Bond film while it also fails as the former.
Mendes might give its audience many hints that he is saying something important but exactly by doing that it comes off as pretentious and when you look at it up closely there isn't much beneath that surface.
I'd watch Michelangelo Antonioni's trilogy L'avventura, La notte and L'eclisse any day over SF. I prefer these kinds of films when they don't spoon-feed its audience with things like obvious psychological word games or 'I always hated this place'. Please let me think for myself.
A great Bond film for me is either an excellent atmospherical spy thriller like FRWL or TLD, or it, unpretentiously, makes 007 a bit more human like in OHMSS or CR.
If I'm looking for more of a thinking man's film I will gladly sit down for some Antonioni or Ingmar Bergman.
Yeah I think it’s great: and it’s nice that it’s a turning point in the plot for the entire film.
And I enjoy Bond cartwheeling in through the windscreen every time :)
The plane reveal is a bit silly though, yeah. And I can never not look at all of the tiny people and imagining them filming their little bits against green screen on their own :) “Imagine there’s a big plane there! Point at it!”
Agreed. Unfortunately, Craig's tenure has been plagued by the idea of Bond being emotionally damaged or traumatised by his former years. It seems like every film following Casino Royale they made a point of telling the audience that Craig's Bond is suffering some form of trauma. In Quantum it's understandable, but in Skyfall we've gone from Craig portraying a Bond at the start of his career, to one that is killed and when he returns everyone reminding him that he is a ruin, unstable and that he should retire. The whole word association scene really doesn't wash with me, implying again that Bond has suffered some unresolved childhood trauma and hinting that he must return to this place in order to resolve said issues. Blah! These reminders continue in Spectre too.
It's not really nitpicking? The reality is that Skyfall expects us to believe that it's main villain had planned to be captured only so that he could escape and have Bond chase him through the Tube with explosives going off that had been laid months in advance? Come on. The writing is lazy and expects us to buy into all this exposition, IMO. They killed Bond off in the opening of the film which was huge as if I recall correctly it hadn't been done since You Only Live Twice, but he's brought back too early before any real struggle is felt by MI6. There's no real tension built up as a result. The supposed "list" of agents is posted on YouTube? I thought that was really stupid. I agree that the video does make fun of things like the people's reactions on the train and turning Bond to the other side, but on the whole it does make some valid observations that I have always felt about this movie.
The best scene in the entire film is the closing where Bond enters the classic M office and Fiennes is introduced as M before finishing to the Bond theme for the closing credits. I think that coupled with Bond's fashion are the best attributes of SF, IMO. I personally think Casino Royale will always remain the best Craig Bond film by a wide margin. Yes, NTTD looks promising, but it's ties to SP may stop it from becoming a classic, IMO.
The Craig era has gone way too far. Casino Royale would be largely seen as the best Craig film if not the best Bond film. It's a pure modern take on Fleming source material. If you look how The Living Daylights takes an element of a Fleming short story and expands that into a larger world, that's what a Bond film should do, IMO.
No real struggle? They blew up! :D
No one died? We never see anyone injured? Yes, there was an explosion, but I don't feel any real struggle or threat from it, personally.
Come on. Criticising the villain's plot takes up, what, 30 seconds of the video. Don't try to pretend that it is the main point being adressed. The rest is more or less trivial comedy based on frowning, landscape shots, Silva being gay and looking like Gollum, whatever etc, etc... Making fun of the fact that Bond's gadgets are old school and dated is amusing but especially badly adressed from a movie critic point of view. That was the very intention of the film makers! I agree that this, Silva's plan being very far fetched and depending on far too much circumstance, is Skyfall's biggest problem, but that is not what is being mainly adressed in the video. The rest is indeed nitpicking, if even that.
I agree that a good recipe for the Bond films is to expand on Fleming's source material. I think almost no one on these boards would disagree. However my point stands; the series would grow stale if Bond's character is never tested or explored on an emotional level. TLD, although a good film, doesn't really do that, at least not to a sufficient extent.
Fleming himself knew this. Bond couldn't just be an indestructable postcard hero with no human vulnerabilities. Fleming in fact did some extremely radical and risky things with the character to the point of making him a depressed wreck and having him brainwashed into attacking his own boss. And the emotional layers in Skyfall are not far attached from Fleming. In fact by stating that Bond was made an orphan from a tragic accident, he made the basis for Bond's trauma. Nobody tragically loses their parents as a child without it affecting them in some way. Unless Bond was an emotionless machine or just a "glorified stuntman", it would obviously have had a traumatic effect on him.
It's funny because I've watched Skyfall a fair amount and I don't recall this scene. I guess it demonstrates how unmemorable I find this film. Nonetheless, I still feel this film is overrated and that it's a film which never fully elevates to where I would've liked to have seen it.
The plot is simple if you take the surface level but it's extremely complex at the human/emotional level. That IMHO makes it a really great movie.
I don't really think it's fair to criticise it for things you've missed or not paid attention to.
Yeah definitely: it's massively flawed as a plot (because it makes no sense! There's even a bit where Bond talks to Q about how their comms have been compromised- over the radio! :D) but it succeeds because the drama connects so well: you care for the characters. When all of MI6 suddenly come together as a team in the inquiry . and you realise Mallory is a good guy, or when Silva makes his big entrance, or when Bond's home is destroyed, or when Bond is running down the street to save M and you're desperate for him to get there, or the pure excitement of when Bond is riding a bike over the Grand Bazaar, or when M later dies in Bond's arms, the weaknesses in exactly what Silva's plan was or how it could possibly work don't matter at all- and that just shows how strong it is to overcome its massive plot flaws! :)
I've watched this film 10+ times and I definitely have paid attention. It's just not memorable and therefore doesn't have a lasting impact like it would if I felt genuine concern for these characters. It just doesn't wash with me as the plot is flawed as you've mentioned in your previous post and unfortunately for me that's the crux of any film. We'll have to agree to disagree when it comes to all things Skyfall, but that being said it does have moments I like as mentioned. I also love the reintroduction of the classic DB5 after fleeing with M. That's a great moment!
The DB5 is a great moment, most definitely. Another one that doesn't make a huge amount of sense (in that it had been reintroduced in only the film before last) but the emotional punch of how it is delivered is enough to overcome that.
That's true. I really see CR and SF cut from the same cloth. CR just had the added benefit of being an actual Fleming adaption.
SF always felt to me in tone like a Fleming adaption even if it added a lot of it's own. The dark and somber, self reflective tone is all there in Fleming.
I think it would've had more impact if we had seen ambulances or people being evacuated from the building, IMO. You don't see people being harmed, it's merely implied. It's like when Silva attacks M at the hearing, you see people being shot and those who are wounded in the background and the threat feels more real. You then hear and see ambulances and police approaching the building as Bond drives off. The attack on MI6, you see the explosion and then M's face reacting without any horror or shock and then it cuts to Bond in some far reach of the earth. To me the attack at the hearing has a lot more suspense and impact then the explosion at MI6.
Correct, but I don't see the films as having any relation, personally. I've always felt that the so called timeline of the Bond films has never existed unless explicitly mentioned like Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace for example.
I think if a building -which I've seen full of people only a few minutes previously- explodes; and I'm then later told that six people died and many are injured as I watch emergency services and helicopters circling the building; and then I actually see their coffins: it doesn't take too much for me to connect the dots.
I don't want to labour the point but I'm not sure that trying to say they didn't tell the story really holds water. And M doesn't react?
You do mention a side issue I've wondered about for years though: where is that beach Bond is on? :D
This is Dench's expression throughout the entire film. It does not change.
The Dame does not overact.
Personally, I find Judi’s performance to be terrific. She’s supposed to be cold and professional. However, you can see the mask slipping and she really does look her age (which helps with the character’s arc). Essentially, the chickens come home to roost and M has to bear the weight of her sins.
M has that stiff British upper-lip. She doesn’t want to let you know that she’s weak and vulnerable. But she is certainly coming undone in the film.
Arguably it’s the best acting that has appeared in a Bond film. Especially, the Tennyson speech. She was rightfully nominated for a BAFTA and should have got the Oscar nomination.