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It was better (if more imminently self-destructive) than Drax's. :))
It's almost as if people want to find fault. But again, that couldn't be. Could it?
Oh, of course not. Most of this thread is just purposeful nit-picking with the agenda to find as many faults as possible (plausible or not) in this film. I just laugh it off some days when people find this film's plot and certain events contrived when we've had films where Bond supposedly gets rid of freaking RADIATION by being washed with some water and "special" soap or something and lives on in good health, Jaws falls from thousands of feet and somehow manages not to die on impact, the villain's lair is literally INSIDE a volcano, 007 goes undercover in Japan in the worst disguise imaginable and nobody notices, makes a woman change her sexuality in just one barn romp just in time to recruit her and stumbles on a nuclear plot just by being at a damn health clinic.
Come on people, Skyfall is Spock compared to previous films and is a very smart film that has depth and meaning. All Bond films are head-scratchers at times, but why this film was and still is revered is because it tackles human issues and concerns that are both timeless and topical at present. It's one of the deepest, most artful Bond films ever brought to us, and some people treat it like a bargain bin knock-off.
If Silva hadnt shot her i think i might have ....
I've said from the very start that I admired Mendes's ambition with SF. I can see what he was aiming for and appreciate some of the thematic strands running through the film. However, a bit of subtext doesn't automatically make it a superior Bond movie. I was disappointed with SF not because of its scope and ambition, but because I don't think that overall it's nearly as good as the hype suggests, and the interesting thematic elements are undermined by a weak plot. As a Bond movie I didn't find it satisfying, and I didn't especially enjoy it on some middle-brow artisitc level either. In my view it falls between two stools - not really doing anything it sets out to achieve particularly well.
In terms of the nit-picking about the plot, you make it sound like this occurs with all Bond movies. And yet it doesn't. If you look at any forum where SF is discussed anywhere on the web you will find exactly the same issues being raised about the plot. Now, I don't really care ultimately whether others see the plot issues as a problem or not. It's possible to 'explain' them, but that's not really the point - the fact is that many people watching the film were left scratching their heads while watching the movie because they found large parts of the film didn't make a lot of sense.
When we see him again after having killed Silva its obvious how he got out, so we dont need to see it.
Roger Moore skiing off a cliff is totally different, as its completely unexpected, its certain death, until.... that parachute.
With The frozen Loch, how else could Bond have got out? A man climbing out of a hole in some ice is not necessary.
You know - how did bond get back to England after the avalanche in OHMSS - we never saw him get on a plane and fly back? What happened to Blofeld after his neck got caught. Why didnt Bond go back and kill him he was only 40 yards back up the Bob sleigh track. Actaully, that one is a bit stupid...!
Skyfall rules. Its in my top 5, maybe top three. Bond is on the back foot / wrong foot the whole way though.
I thought it was worth pointing out that the 'ice dilemna' actually started with @DarthDimi's comment above. I responded because I had thought exactly the same thing when watching the film - i.e. a little nagging 'how did he escape that'? @Matt007, as I explained at length, if this had been the only instance in the film, it probably wouldn't have bothered me. The reason this scene stood out for me personally is because it echoes the much more glaring miraculous and unexplained survival after the shooting and bridge fall into water at the start (which, despite what others seem to think, looked like it would kill a man, IMO). The two sequences are deliberate, thematic book-ends about death and re-birth in the film, so you are actually positively invited to connect them by the director. So, for myself at least, there were a series of plot holes/unexplained occurances that really took me out of the film, and it was as if Mendes was actually drawing attention to them on purpose.
Point made. That's it. There's not really much more to say. I.e. - two members of this forum independently made the same observation about the film not explaining something, and saying it bugged us. RC7 and co can keep on throwing out their counterfactuals as long as they want, the historical FACT (in the sense that it occured and is recorded on there very pages) is that I and others perceived plot holes and poor exposition in SF that detracted from our enjoyment of the film. It's not really something that's open to debate. You can disagree about whether it's poor/lazy film making, but you can't tell me or any one else that we actually understood the film another way, because we didn't.
If these so-called unexplained or implausible occurrences of the very plausible nature take you out of films I have no idea how you watch the other films, especially the more campy entries with anything other than an eye-roll. When making a film, as I'm sure you understand, editing and therefore cutting must occur to scenes so that the film is at a reasonable length once it is deemed finished. Mendes and co. had a lot to feature in the film that took up a lot of time, especially in regards to portraying Bond's ascendance back to MI6, M's struggles, Silva's revenge motivations and more, so sorry that he didn't take the time to storyboard and film Bond coming back up out of the water just to show you how he did it, even though it is already perfectly clear as a crystal in the final film.
The only reason the ice scene differs from other escapes is because conventionally in films, when you fall through ice, it's the getting out of the ice that is the challenge. When I see someone go through the ice in a movie, I always think of the Omen 2. SF complicates this by throwing in a henchman for extra measure, but then fails to explain the escape from the ice. Apologies that my brain works in this way, but when I saw him go through the ice I was thinking - 'how's he going to escape the ice' and not 'how's he going to kill the henchman'. The henchman was the immediate but, to my mind, a secondary danger. Had this been the only instance of this happening in the film, I would barely have batted an eye lid. Like DarthDimi, I also think it was perhaps a missed opportunity to show that Bond was back on top form. In and off itself, no biggy, but seen in the context of the rest of the film, just sympomatic of what I see as one of its biggest flaws.
When logic is applied, how he escaped is obvious, though. Plus, not showing us saves film/time and also creates suspense as we shift from the ice back to Silva and M at the chapel, where you aren't sure if Bond is going to arrive in time to stop him. By showing Bond getting out of the ice and running to the chapel, you lose that element of suspense. I'm sorry, but I stand by Mendes and his team, and think that the scene is perfect the way it is for the suspense and uncertainty in creates as Silva confronts M for the final time.
For me, seeing Bond defeat the henchman and then struggling to escape the ice and get back to the shore provided an opportunity to heighten the tension and suspense, not reduce it. Meanwhile we would have been cutting to Silva approaching the chapel, going inside and confronting M.
While I loved the idea of the whole final confrontation at Skyfall, and the echoes of John Buchan/Richard Hannah, I was disappointed by how it was done. For me it was just a bit flat. Too many machine guns and explosions perhaps and not enough hand to hand combat. There is a balletic and irresistable flow to many of the best Bond fights and battles, something that I just felt was lacking here. Mendes is new to action, so it is not totally surprising, but I just thought he'd have done a lot of things differently, with a greater focus on Bond's precision and intelligence, and less on the pyrotechnics. As it was, I felt it was just a bit generic. Lots of people have mentioned Home Alone and Straw Dogs. But it's always hard to give these things a fresh spin.
I was actually thinking of the original Assault on Precinct 13 when I saw it, and thinking how the SF attack lacks the menace and remourseless sense of threat/danger that Carpenter created in Precinct 13.
That's because QoS doesn't have the worldwide acclaim Skyfall has, meaning the contention between the proponents and dissenters are much more severe.
May be it's becuase they are clearly two very different ways of making films. QoS is unashamedly a jumpy movie with lots of jerky editing, that makes no pretence of showing everything - quite the contrary. And SF asserts itself as an old-fashioned 'classic' piece of film-making. With the latter style of film, you expect more to be made self evident.
Having said that, I would argue the simple plot of QoS actually makes more sense than SF. There are scenes - like the fight in the safe house in Sienna - that make no visual sense (it's impossible to work out what's going on and what happens to M), but at no point am I left thinking someone just got killed only to find that they reappear right as rain a few scenes later. Even if that someone is Bond, it still needs some explanation.
There are clearly issues with both movies and QoS is definitely not a fine example of plot or storytelling.
Well, I agree with you, but did not want to get into a QoS vs SF discussion based on plotlines, as neither is on a very strong footing.
The way you describe QoS is how I desperately want it to be. Desperately. Every time I watch I get a buzz during the PTS that gradually fades across the course of the film. The end scene, ironically, is the best.
If you follow the strict definition of a tragedy, fair point. But what about Vesper?
(And what about the whole Brosnan era? That was tragic! ;) )
Ow !!
[-(
DAD was definitely something of a tragedy by the end.
Vesper until SF was the one true tragic character, even more than Tracy. But this can also apply to M in SF.
DAD was a farce, not a tragedy.
It was a tragedy that this farce was released.