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I agree that there will inevitably be some continuity between SP and SF, but as my main issue was with the story and plotting of SF, there is every opportunity for SP to be a big improvement.
I am making a big effort to avoid the SP threads - I want to go in knowing as little as possible this time. I knew way too much about SF. One of my main 'wishes' for SF had been for a trad Bond adventure with little or no M and MI6, so when I discovered that M was the main focus, I was inevitably disappointed, even before the film came out.
Well I do agree with some that it is ridiculous to say in a very black-and-white way that: The more money a movie earns, the better it is. It's not that simple.
But people do need to ask themselves the following question: Did "Skyfall" earn bucket loads of money ($1.1 Billion globally) because people disliked the film....because people were criticizing the film so heavily......because it has so many divided opinions?
Off course not. There are several reasons why "Skyfall" did so well at the box office. And one of them obviously is the fact that people liked it and that because of that it created strong word-of-mouth.
And liking a film is always an important benchmark for the Bond producers. Even more so than this ongoing discussion about "Skyfall" being good or bad. In the end the cinema visitors decide. And they obviously embraced "Skyfall" to such an extent that was unthinkable with the previous two films.
That's a fact that everyone in here could....should agree with.
If "Cubby" is an angel right now, and if he looks down on the current Bond producers, he would be playing his golden harp like a happy geek on acid ;-).
I think you're missing the point a bit @Gustav_Graves. I don't think any one on here has ever argued that Skyfall is not popular or that it hasn't been a smash hit with the general cinema going public. The discussion has mainly been about whether the film is as good as some people have made it out to be. It's also been about whether commercial success automatically equals quality. There have been a lot of good movies over the years that had only modest commercial success or even perhaps lost money. And there have been some mega hits that over time have been forgotten.
My view has never been that SF is rubbish - clearly it's not - just that it's not as good as I wanted it to be. I found it really disappointing and rank it in the bottom half of the table for enjoyment. I found the praise it received just bemusing and completely OTT. For me it's a second-tier Bond movie. Above the Brosnan era, but below most of the rest.
Also, as I've said before, it is an interesting movie. There's lots to talk about, which is a good thing. One of the main reasons I was actually so disappointed was because I liked a lot of the ideas in SF and what Mendes was trying to do, but thought it didn't work on screen. My expectations were set very high but not met. That's not unusual when there's a lot of hype around a movie though - it rarely lives up to the expectation.
Or maybe the fact that everyone wants to see the new Bond-film? QoS was also a huge financial success, grossing more than 580 mio$ worldwide. And adjusted for inflation, MR is still the highest grossing Bond-movie, IIRC.
For me, it's not as black and white, @GustavGraves. I like all Bond-movies. Even the ones that left me dissapointed. Like TMWTGG and SF.
I simply refuse to paint SF with either a good or a bad brush. My feelings towards it currently is just... indifference.
I think I'm not missing the point really. I'm bringing in a nuanced difference between the subjective aspect of quality and the more objective proof of people liking a film. I think popularity is merely a long(er)-term a result of liking a film. The more people like it, the more popular it gets.....and the more money it can cash.
With my post I wasn't implying anything about the popularity, nor was I focused on fuelling more divided opinions about the quality. Not at all. I wanted to inject this question about the likeability of a film.
On rewatching Gun the other day it was remarkable how much the first half in particular is the same as SF. It doesn't seem to be mentioned very often, but SF is presumably heavily based on the original novel (I assume as I haven't read it). I still enjoy Gun more though!
I agree with the notion that 'winning' and 'losing' is too Cowboys and Indians. The ambiguity in defining success is certainly a constant in the Craig era, exemplified best for me in the final scene of QoS. One of my favourite scenes from the last three films. That's why I find the final scene in London quite jarring. I understand it's intentions, but it undercuts the Scotland denouement, dramatically. It acts like a symbolic conclusion, or beginning, depending on which way you look at it, independent of the main narrative. It feels contrived. Undercutting the drama is something Mendes does a couple of times during the film, the 'deep water' line feels shoe-horned in, it eschews the drama in favour of cliche, in much the same way I feel the MP intro and M's office does the same.
Regards the Scotland scenes, there are several issues that become apparent even on first viewing, and more so after several. The symbolic nature of what Bond is doing is very apparent, that all checks out as you've demonstrated in your paragraph above re. Bond saving untold lives. It back refs the psych tests etc, which is all well and good if a little on the nose, but where it falls apart for me is in Mendes' refusal to add even a little meat to the bone in terms of the tech that services the films supposed logic. Or better still tone it down to tangible level. When a writer or director omits certain exposition it's in the knowledge that most if not all of their audience will either subconsciously fill in the gaps, or understand the processes that allow the story to flow from plot point A to plot point B. The difficulty SF faces is that leaps of logic rely on the viewers understanding of hacking and such. When Bond encourages Q to 'lay the breadcrumbs', most viewers don't know what this is, how this works, or even how it's implemented. It's just computer jiggery-pokery that first and foremost comes across as a particularly artificial way of allowing us to get to Scotland.
As a comparison let's take The Joker in TDK and Silva in SF. There are a lot of unavoidable similarities between these two characters and one huge difference, Silva embraces technology to perpetuate terrorism, whereas The Joker actively shuns it in favour of 'guns and gasoline'. I would suggest that the nature of The Joker's modus operandi in TDK is a more visceral experience for the audience, the logic is that the Joker does everything 'manually' so to speak. That's not a leap of faith for an audience. There are similar leaps of logic, but no contrivances that rely on a technological shortcut. When he busts out of jail, you could argue that everything worked like clockwork, but it does so in a way that relies on human interaction and a logical chain of events, however convenient they may seem. The Joker taunts the cop into attacking him, playing straight into his hands. Next time we see the Joker he has a knife to the cops throat. In SF we get the rather clunky 'He hacked us' line. Which leads the audience to consider, 'Ok, how does that work?' and before you know it Silva is gone via some undisclosed bit of computer trickery. He's then also managed to take down armed-officers on his way out. How? We don't even know he's a capable of such a thing at this point, and it's irrespective that he was once an agent, nothing about the character suggests he's physically capable, and nothing does later in the film. With The Joker, we've seen how vicious he is, it's not a stretch for the audience to assume how he handled the cop. It's a similar case in The Silence of the Lambs, we see the brutality of Hannibal Lecter before he escapes the cage (something the Silva scene clearly evokes) having Lecter merely disappear would leave people scratching their heads.
This leads me to my bugbear that Mendes tripped himself up with his yearning for symbolism. The Old vs. New, Tech vs. Old School. I still think this could have worked, and in places definitely did, but he didn't need to club us over the head with it at every turn. It could've been delivered in a more subtle, measured way. The first half of the film uses it well, the leaking of agents via YouTube is tangible, it's threatening, it's actually incredibly believable, menacing, everything you'd want from a Bond villain. But when the reliance on tech drifts into 'Q' plugging in a laptop and accidentally downloading a virus to MI6 it starts to undermine the earlier work. It's not necessary, it doesn't add anything to the symbolism, it merely starts to make it look trite. I think SF has heart to it, and if you go with the flow it will pull you along, but I genuinely think Mendes' need for everything to snugly fit into one big symbolic ball undermines the film at times.
Although I would easily admit that the sirloin steak is a top quality piece of meat, maybe I'll just prefer the lower quality hamburger...
Likewise, I think that the Lord of the Rings movies look like top quality film making, although I would never watch them, because they aren't my taste.
The same thing applies here. For me SF is a top quality movie. Great cast. Fantastic cinematography. A top production.
But at the end of the day, I'll rather rewatch MR, than SF ;-)
This is true. But call me a cynic...
It's 2015, not 1955. There is no more privacy. Any time I get on the internet I am being tracked. My purchases at the grocery store are being tracked. Any online store I visit knows it and then tracks me. My cell phone photos and texts are stored by Verizon wireless, available to anyone who works there. My house, my car, my backyard...all visible to anyone with Google Earth.
Believe me, as much as government may be spying on me, so is big business.
On a separate note, per Skyfall...one thing we are not taking into consideration with any of our faves, is the context within which we saw the movie. I think most of us can recall where/when we saw a film, what was going on in our lives at the time. I saw Skyfall in Las Vegas, while there for a conference. After the film, I got such a Bond high that I took a cab over to Circus Circus, where parts of DAF were filmed. Circus Circus is a trash heap, now, but much of the interior casino is the same as it was in the early 70s. I took a walk to the general area where Tiffany Case played the water gun arcade game and took it in for just a moment.
It was an odd, wonderful night and an odd weekend, for that matter, and one that will contain Skyfall. I can't separate my appreciation of SF from the where/when/and how I saw the film. Good times. This is the reason why, if I had to choose one double-feature, it would be SF and DAF, and most fans would be, "WTH?" But in my world, the two are interrelated. :-)
I'm with you on this. I'm all for the Snowdens of this world at the present time in our history for precisely this reason.
We are losing more and more of our privacy due to technological advances. These tecnhologies are being used more and more by the Govt. and the corporate elite (for data gathering, market analysis and security purposes). If these advances are being used to clandestinely monitor my activities, I want to know about it. Then I can ensure I do live a private life to the extent that I can.
I don't mind being monitored to serve/address some security concerns. I do mind being monitored for that purpose or for marketing purposes without being made explicitly aware of it.
Fascinating. This is where my literature background comes in. The breadcrumbs are a reference to Hansel and Gretel, who left breadcrumbs behind them so they would know their path to get back out of the forest. Of course, it didn't help: birds ate the crumbs and Hansel and Gretel became tragically lost in the woods.
In typing this, I now wonder if this antiquated expression is yet another illustration of SF's theme of old world/new world.
'Magic'? Well, that kind of enforces my point. I understand the idea of laying a trail of breadcrumbs, we'd all know how to do that in the real world if we wanted someone to follow us, we'd also know how to follow such a trail. My point is that Bond is apparently laying a trail of, presumably virtual, breadcrumbs that only Silva can follow. No one else in the world. This seems like a pretty big deal to me. I feel like I need some idea of what that entails, why it's so special, because otherwise it comes across as it does. A bit of deus ex nonsense. The other option, as I suggested in my post, is that Mendes find a more tangible chain of events and accept that he doesn't have to keep reinforcing the 'tech' angle at every opportunity.
This is no excuse for using 'magic' technology to propel the plot.
It is flippant. Not to mention patronising to the audience. Rather than making a solid rebuttal you're merely telling me what everyone else thinks, apparently. Plus the old, 'most of the other Bond's do it' argument. Hardly conclusive.
I just saw Blackhat this week. It's a Michael Mann movie that focuses on this. It was really boring though (not because of the subject - it was just boring in the way it was made).
Again you miss my point. I don't want a slew of boring tech related exposition, hence why I feel Mendes was hamstrung by his old-new yearnings. He backed himself into a corner and couldn't really explain how the whole breadcrumb scenario would play out, hence why we don't see it. As a scene itself, a pursuit towards SF lodge could have played out well, had it been conceived in a more tangible way. Instead we get a GF DB5 joke and then Bond is back at home ready and waiting for Silva to appear on cue.
The point is:
We're talking about a film franchise that includes a lotus that turns into a submarine, an invisible car, x-ray glasses, laser guns and shootouts in space, space capsules capable of swallowing other space capsules, a skydive freefall into a circus tent that doesn't result in death, a gondola that turns into a car...and in the midst of that, your problem with SF is its lack of realism because the breadcrumbs "magic technology" isn't explained? Am I reading this right? If you have a problem with reality being bent in SF, then you have a real problem with the other 22 films.
first off, it's Q that's laying the digital 'breadcumbs', not Bond, he's just driving up north in an untracable old car. Laying the trail is all the viewers need to know, it's part of the 'who's better at this, Q or Silva' struggle where Q up to that point evidently was the weaker party. A game normal people who need IT help as soon as installing an app goes wrong don't understand and mostly don't care. Just like modern-day car drivers haven't got a clue of what happens under the hood. It's also 'magic'albeit the feeling is stronger with phones which play movies, etc.
Yes, I know it's Q. When I said Bond, I was referring to the fact it's Bond who instigates it and it's implied Bond knows Q can lay said 'breadcrumbs' whatever they happen to be. For the record can anyone explain what such a breadcrumb would be? CCTV?
But as you say, the battle is between Q and Silva, so why you use the example of understanding modern day technology I don't really know. You're just emphasising the point that it is something not to be understood, or not to care about. So why is it in the film? It's not Q booking Bond on a flight. It's Q effectively beating Silva at his own game. That surely should merit some kind of pay-off? A pursuit to SF would have been quite an effective build to the final denouement.
I don't dislike SF, but it's redundant discussing these things with people who will defend something for reasons they can't explain. I'm simply putting forward an argument that the symbolism of SF hampered what could have been a better narrative.
The 'breadcrumbs magic technology' as you call it isn't comparable to any of things you mention above. It's supposed to be a key moment in the film, Q attempting to do what he previously couldn't, get one up on Silva and more importantly it's laying the groundwork for the final act. If Q had failed, Silva would have scarpered. So to just take it as red that Q did it, whatever 'it' was, feels lazy to me. I guess you could say I expected more from an Oscar winning director.
Indeed, hence my comment about SF having a heart that will pull you along if you let it. It doesn't mean it's shortcomings can't be discussed, though, especially given that it's director will be helming the subsequent film and it's reasonable to assume it may be executed in a similar fashion, narratively and dramatically.