"Did i overcomplicate the plot ?" - Skyfall Appreciation & Discussion

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  • Andi1996RueggAndi1996Ruegg Hello. It's me, Evelyn Tremble.
    Posts: 2,005
    Remington wrote: »
    I was only 16 in 2012 buddy, and in a community school anyway. No cinema, ever.

    I was only 15 in 2012. I think you, me, and @jamesbondkenya are the youngest members.

    Oh that's way cool, glad I'm not the only young guy here! We should form some sort of James Bond youth club. JBYC
    Studying the various (Bond) girls "in-depth" will be one of the main subjects.
  • 00Agent00Agent Any man who drinks Dom Perignon '52 can't be all bad.
    edited January 2018 Posts: 5,185
    Remington wrote: »
    I was only 16 in 2012 buddy, and in a community school anyway. No cinema, ever.

    I was only 15 in 2012. I think you, me, and @jamesbondkenya are the youngest members.

    Oh that's way cool, glad I'm not the only young guy here! We should form some sort of James Bond youth club. JBYC
    Studying the various (Bond) girls "in-depth" will be one of the main subjects.

    how about James Bond Juniors
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    The Topolino Club.
  • TripAcesTripAces Universal Exports
    Posts: 4,585
    SaintMark wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    @SaintMark SF was balistic at the box office and joe public are not pretencious. Why did they like it so much?

    Perhaps the Olympic bit with Craig and the Queen was just fantastic and the best ad they could ever make.
    The measure of box-office never woed me, I saw Blade Runner in its original release and it was not as loved as it is today. The reverse is also true if certain movie were released today they would bomb incredible at the box office..

    For me the popularity of a movie can be flash fire and is not determined by quality. CR is the far better made 007 movie and deserved a far better BO IMHO. The general audience is fickle mistress that makes little sense. Did not Mamma Mia outperform CR at the British BO?- If only Craig had sung the title song I would say. ;)

    A couple of years ago, we covered this. Somewhere, there are numbers that show that SF played HUGE with the 40+ film crowd. Older audiences went to this film en masse. And it makes sense, because Bond was being portrayed as too old, a dinosaur, a relic. This theme really hit home for those of us who are older.

    On a separate note, based on other posts by @SaintMark ...

    SF's brilliance can be pinpointed to three lines, all on the island:

    Severine: "It's amazing the panic you can cause with a single computer."
    Silva: "All the physical stuff. So dull, so dull. Chasing spies. So old fashioned. Your knees must be killing you.
    Silva: "Just point and click."

    Those three lines are the key to the film and the key to Silva, whose massive flaw is that while wanting to embarrass MI6 on his terms (pointing and clicking), he insists on defeating/killing M on hers (in the field, with all that dull physical stuff). And the latter is what sets him up for failure.

    Some say that Silva ended up winning. But he didn't. While M died, she did NOT die in the way that Silva wanted. He wanted the personal satisfaction of it; he needed to be close to her physically. This is where the deeper psychology comes in and how "mother" takes on a whole different dynamic.

    I could go on and on. SF is the only Bond film that allows such deeper readings.

  • Andi1996RueggAndi1996Ruegg Hello. It's me, Evelyn Tremble.
    edited January 2018 Posts: 2,005
    I was only 16 in 2012 buddy, and in a community school anyway. No cinema, ever.

    A muslim school or what?

    you are funny...religion has nothing to do with it...
  • edited January 2018 Posts: 4,617
    @TripAces "I could go on and on. SF is the only Bond film that allows such deeper readings."
    Some have called that pretentious. Others (including myself) would simply say that you are correct.

    These themes are repeated with Bond's conversation with Q in the art gallery. Q actually agrees with Silva.

    "Well, I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field. "

    Bond is being told from all sides that "the game is up". When Bond decides to "go back in time", he moves us to a location with no internet access, no 3G, no tech Etc etc.
    He deprives the bad guy of his advantages and helps evens the odds.

    "Sometimes the old ways " etc etc.

    Can people go back to other Bond movies and see themes running through them , as Kermode said during his review "like words through a stick of rock"?
  • Posts: 11,189
    bondsum wrote: »
    Ha ha @BAIN123. You accuse Haphazard of nitpicking when you do it continually yourself. I think your tongue might be firmly in your cheek when you made that comment, sir.

    I have to admit, I find Haphazard thoroughly entertaining and the majority of his observations mirror my own, so you'll get no complaints from me. For those of you that haven't watched any of Haphazard's previous videos, I suggest you catch up on them all. They're the best out of all the fan-analysis videos available on Youtube.

    Ha. I do know I'm guilty of that too.

    But even I didn't notice things like the change of sides regarding the steering wheel in the DB5 between CR and SF.
  • Posts: 3,333
    You might not have noticed whether the Aston was right or left-wheel drive, @BAIN123, but Haphazard's observation about the logic of it being tricked-out with Goldfinger's gadgets was glaringly obvious at the time.
  • Posts: 11,189
    The glove thing too. I admit I'd never noticed that before or read about the story.
  • WalecsWalecs On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    Posts: 3,157
    I was only 16 in 2012 buddy, and in a community school anyway. No cinema, ever.

    I was 16 as well. I can't believe so much time has passed.
  • Posts: 7,653
    TripAces wrote: »
    SaintMark wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    @SaintMark SF was balistic at the box office and joe public are not pretencious. Why did they like it so much?

    Perhaps the Olympic bit with Craig and the Queen was just fantastic and the best ad they could ever make.
    The measure of box-office never woed me, I saw Blade Runner in its original release and it was not as loved as it is today. The reverse is also true if certain movie were released today they would bomb incredible at the box office..

    For me the popularity of a movie can be flash fire and is not determined by quality. CR is the far better made 007 movie and deserved a far better BO IMHO. The general audience is fickle mistress that makes little sense. Did not Mamma Mia outperform CR at the British BO?- If only Craig had sung the title song I would say. ;)

    A couple of years ago, we covered this. Somewhere, there are numbers that show that SF played HUGE with the 40+ film crowd. Older audiences went to this film en masse. And it makes sense, because Bond was being portrayed as too old, a dinosaur, a relic. This theme really hit home for those of us who are older.

    On a separate note, based on other posts by @SaintMark ...

    SF's brilliance can be pinpointed to three lines, all on the island:

    Severine: "It's amazing the panic you can cause with a single computer."
    Silva: "All the physical stuff. So dull, so dull. Chasing spies. So old fashioned. Your knees must be killing you.
    Silva: "Just point and click."

    Those three lines are the key to the film and the key to Silva, whose massive flaw is that while wanting to embarrass MI6 on his terms (pointing and clicking), he insists on defeating/killing M on hers (in the field, with all that dull physical stuff). And the latter is what sets him up for failure.

    Some say that Silva ended up winning. But he didn't. While M died, she did NOT die in the way that Silva wanted. He wanted the personal satisfaction of it; he needed to be close to her physically. This is where the deeper psychology comes in and how "mother" takes on a whole different dynamic.

    I could go on and on. SF is the only Bond film that allows such deeper readings.

    Nice to know that we covered this years ago with a group of people who think Craig is god and the Craig movies are great. There are people that think differently I still have no clue what made SF so successful but it is just not a very good constructed movie when it comes to a realistic 007. Being a dinosaur has never really been that great a card since we heard it already in GE when M accused 007 of that particular sentiment. Must explain the succes then of GE and Brosnan and how that sounded to the +40 crowd at that time.

    While SF is beautifully filmed, as was Moonraker, the movie made no sense at all and was very poorly scripted as an action movie or even a thriller. James Bond never was anything else even in Flemings hands. It was an attempt to show the character of a deeper James Bond and he was essentially what he always was drink, women and shoot some bad guys Oh and in the proces get his boss killed. Had he stayed in the bar she would have been killed too. So what was really gained but a false sense of patriotism and getting a shedload of people killed.

    For me and many people I know that like to re watch this series ever so often it seems that we generally tend to watch the older 007 movies because they are better done by a team that seems to love the series and the character. With Craig and Mendes I feel that they want to do something to show how much he suffers under his job and then come up with story hooks that do the character favors. He loses a friend and treats him like garbage, kills his boss and finds out that the architect of all his pain is his foster brother Blofeld. Bond fans who like this should stop complaining about the Mark hamill role and TLJ. ;)
    For me the franchise is losing steam ever since CR which is easily Craigs high moment in the franchise. I do hope we get a fifth outing that is essentially 007 doing his job without any navel-gazing in a decent actioner and without his archenemy Blofeld, who makes very little sense sand TB, OHMSS & YOLT which are in essence the Blofeld trilogy.
    SF is a nice movie to look at but has so little content that makes sense at all, too many pretentious stuff with the poem and really stupid stuff like Silva being clairvoyent, flying war choppers through a very densely controlled piece of airspace and the Apocalypse now moment with M in essence being lead to her dead by an agent who did not qualify and oh what a surprise he effing failed. And then he gets reinstated for a failure. It does perhaps explain the governmental mess there is in the UK, in that case the movie was really a moment of the future.

    This movie frustrates because of the really poor performance we get from Mendes not in one but in two movies. People complain about Brosnan but the Craig era has a lot of bad stuff too.

    perhaps Barbara and Michael should pass on the reigns as they seem to have done poorly ever since they lost the big Broccoli himself. They have done both actors under their reign no real favors. I do hope the fifth Craig is a half decent movie because he does deserve it.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Five years is an eternity when you are a kid.
  • Posts: 11,425
    SaintMark wrote: »
    TripAces wrote: »
    SaintMark wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    @SaintMark SF was balistic at the box office and joe public are not pretencious. Why did they like it so much?

    Perhaps the Olympic bit with Craig and the Queen was just fantastic and the best ad they could ever make.
    The measure of box-office never woed me, I saw Blade Runner in its original release and it was not as loved as it is today. The reverse is also true if certain movie were released today they would bomb incredible at the box office..

    For me the popularity of a movie can be flash fire and is not determined by quality. CR is the far better made 007 movie and deserved a far better BO IMHO. The general audience is fickle mistress that makes little sense. Did not Mamma Mia outperform CR at the British BO?- If only Craig had sung the title song I would say. ;)

    A couple of years ago, we covered this. Somewhere, there are numbers that show that SF played HUGE with the 40+ film crowd. Older audiences went to this film en masse. And it makes sense, because Bond was being portrayed as too old, a dinosaur, a relic. This theme really hit home for those of us who are older.

    On a separate note, based on other posts by @SaintMark ...

    SF's brilliance can be pinpointed to three lines, all on the island:

    Severine: "It's amazing the panic you can cause with a single computer."
    Silva: "All the physical stuff. So dull, so dull. Chasing spies. So old fashioned. Your knees must be killing you.
    Silva: "Just point and click."

    Those three lines are the key to the film and the key to Silva, whose massive flaw is that while wanting to embarrass MI6 on his terms (pointing and clicking), he insists on defeating/killing M on hers (in the field, with all that dull physical stuff). And the latter is what sets him up for failure.

    Some say that Silva ended up winning. But he didn't. While M died, she did NOT die in the way that Silva wanted. He wanted the personal satisfaction of it; he needed to be close to her physically. This is where the deeper psychology comes in and how "mother" takes on a whole different dynamic.

    I could go on and on. SF is the only Bond film that allows such deeper readings.

    Nice to know that we covered this years ago with a group of people who think Craig is god and the Craig movies are great. There are people that think differently I still have no clue what made SF so successful but it is just not a very good constructed movie when it comes to a realistic 007. Being a dinosaur has never really been that great a card since we heard it already in GE when M accused 007 of that particular sentiment. Must explain the succes then of GE and Brosnan and how that sounded to the +40 crowd at that time.

    While SF is beautifully filmed, as was Moonraker, the movie made no sense at all and was very poorly scripted as an action movie or even a thriller. James Bond never was anything else even in Flemings hands. It was an attempt to show the character of a deeper James Bond and he was essentially what he always was drink, women and shoot some bad guys Oh and in the proces get his boss killed. Had he stayed in the bar she would have been killed too. So what was really gained but a false sense of patriotism and getting a shedload of people killed.

    For me and many people I know that like to re watch this series ever so often it seems that we generally tend to watch the older 007 movies because they are better done by a team that seems to love the series and the character. With Craig and Mendes I feel that they want to do something to show how much he suffers under his job and then come up with story hooks that do the character favors. He loses a friend and treats him like garbage, kills his boss and finds out that the architect of all his pain is his foster brother Blofeld. Bond fans who like this should stop complaining about the Mark hamill role and TLJ. ;)
    For me the franchise is losing steam ever since CR which is easily Craigs high moment in the franchise. I do hope we get a fifth outing that is essentially 007 doing his job without any navel-gazing in a decent actioner and without his archenemy Blofeld, who makes very little sense sand TB, OHMSS & YOLT which are in essence the Blofeld trilogy.
    SF is a nice movie to look at but has so little content that makes sense at all, too many pretentious stuff with the poem and really stupid stuff like Silva being clairvoyent, flying war choppers through a very densely controlled piece of airspace and the Apocalypse now moment with M in essence being lead to her dead by an agent who did not qualify and oh what a surprise he effing failed. And then he gets reinstated for a failure. It does perhaps explain the governmental mess there is in the UK, in that case the movie was really a moment of the future.

    This movie frustrates because of the really poor performance we get from Mendes not in one but in two movies. People complain about Brosnan but the Craig era has a lot of bad stuff too.

    perhaps Barbara and Michael should pass on the reigns as they seem to have done poorly ever since they lost the big Broccoli himself. They have done both actors under their reign no real favors. I do hope the fifth Craig is a half decent movie because he does deserve it.

    I agree with a lot of this. I like the connection to the current state of the UK as well. It has also struck me as well how there was something quite prescient about SF in tapping into that latent pathetic British sense of exceptionalism. As you say the film is actually rather shoddily written, poorly thought through and incoherent - the perfect cinematic metaphor for Brexit and today’s Britain. And just as with Brexit, Bond’s ‘strategy’ is sort of all bluff and bluster, with ultimate failure wrapped up as some glorious national triumph.
  • TripAcesTripAces Universal Exports
    edited January 2018 Posts: 4,585
    SaintMark wrote: »
    TripAces wrote: »
    SaintMark wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    @SaintMark SF was balistic at the box office and joe public are not pretencious. Why did they like it so much?

    Perhaps the Olympic bit with Craig and the Queen was just fantastic and the best ad they could ever make.
    The measure of box-office never woed me, I saw Blade Runner in its original release and it was not as loved as it is today. The reverse is also true if certain movie were released today they would bomb incredible at the box office..

    For me the popularity of a movie can be flash fire and is not determined by quality. CR is the far better made 007 movie and deserved a far better BO IMHO. The general audience is fickle mistress that makes little sense. Did not Mamma Mia outperform CR at the British BO?- If only Craig had sung the title song I would say. ;)

    A couple of years ago, we covered this. Somewhere, there are numbers that show that SF played HUGE with the 40+ film crowd. Older audiences went to this film en masse. And it makes sense, because Bond was being portrayed as too old, a dinosaur, a relic. This theme really hit home for those of us who are older.

    On a separate note, based on other posts by @SaintMark ...

    SF's brilliance can be pinpointed to three lines, all on the island:

    Severine: "It's amazing the panic you can cause with a single computer."
    Silva: "All the physical stuff. So dull, so dull. Chasing spies. So old fashioned. Your knees must be killing you.
    Silva: "Just point and click."

    Those three lines are the key to the film and the key to Silva, whose massive flaw is that while wanting to embarrass MI6 on his terms (pointing and clicking), he insists on defeating/killing M on hers (in the field, with all that dull physical stuff). And the latter is what sets him up for failure.

    Some say that Silva ended up winning. But he didn't. While M died, she did NOT die in the way that Silva wanted. He wanted the personal satisfaction of it; he needed to be close to her physically. This is where the deeper psychology comes in and how "mother" takes on a whole different dynamic.

    I could go on and on. SF is the only Bond film that allows such deeper readings.

    Nice to know that we covered this years ago with a group of people who think Craig is god and the Craig movies are great. There are people that think differently I still have no clue what made SF so successful but it is just not a very good constructed movie when it comes to a realistic 007. Being a dinosaur has never really been that great a card since we heard it already in GE when M accused 007 of that particular sentiment. Must explain the succes then of GE and Brosnan and how that sounded to the +40 crowd at that time.

    While SF is beautifully filmed, as was Moonraker, the movie made no sense at all and was very poorly scripted as an action movie or even a thriller. James Bond never was anything else even in Flemings hands. It was an attempt to show the character of a deeper James Bond and he was essentially what he always was drink, women and shoot some bad guys Oh and in the proces get his boss killed. Had he stayed in the bar she would have been killed too. So what was really gained but a false sense of patriotism and getting a shedload of people killed.

    For me and many people I know that like to re watch this series ever so often it seems that we generally tend to watch the older 007 movies because they are better done by a team that seems to love the series and the character. With Craig and Mendes I feel that they want to do something to show how much he suffers under his job and then come up with story hooks that do the character favors. He loses a friend and treats him like garbage, kills his boss and finds out that the architect of all his pain is his foster brother Blofeld. Bond fans who like this should stop complaining about the Mark hamill role and TLJ. ;)
    For me the franchise is losing steam ever since CR which is easily Craigs high moment in the franchise. I do hope we get a fifth outing that is essentially 007 doing his job without any navel-gazing in a decent actioner and without his archenemy Blofeld, who makes very little sense sand TB, OHMSS & YOLT which are in essence the Blofeld trilogy.
    SF is a nice movie to look at but has so little content that makes sense at all, too many pretentious stuff with the poem and really stupid stuff like Silva being clairvoyent, flying war choppers through a very densely controlled piece of airspace and the Apocalypse now moment with M in essence being lead to her dead by an agent who did not qualify and oh what a surprise he effing failed. And then he gets reinstated for a failure. It does perhaps explain the governmental mess there is in the UK, in that case the movie was really a moment of the future.

    This movie frustrates because of the really poor performance we get from Mendes not in one but in two movies. People complain about Brosnan but the Craig era has a lot of bad stuff too.

    perhaps Barbara and Michael should pass on the reigns as they seem to have done poorly ever since they lost the big Broccoli himself. They have done both actors under their reign no real favors. I do hope the fifth Craig is a half decent movie because he does deserve it.

    Well, first off, my preface about "a copule of years ago" was aimed at my recollection of box office numbers and not some sort of criticism of any stale conversation. Quite the opposite.

    But to your points about SF. If you go back to the key lines from the film, they explain away some of the complaints you have, including the choppers and the clairvoyance. With a "point and click," it's more than possible that Silva can make himself disappear, even to military radar. Read this for an example:

    https://www.wired.com/2007/10/how-israel-spoo/

    Again, Severine and Silva have already established that he can do just about anything with a "single computer." And this even includes making people afraid. That leads us to the clairvoyance, which likely doesn't exist. Silva couldn't tell the future; he could only make you Q and MI6 (and even audience members) think he could. That's just another example of the script's brilliance.

    --Did Silva know MI6 would head underground? Lilely.
    --Did Silva plan to get apprehended? Not until he knew Bond was on the Chimera.
    --Did Silva plan weeks in advance to hack into the MI6 network and free himself? Probably not.
    --Did Silva know for sure that Bond would follow him through the underground to that exact location where he set the charge? Probably not. (He likely had his henchmen set up boobytraps like that all over the place.) And like the explosion at MI6, he wasn't interested in causing death by explosion. He wanted the hand-to-hand kill. Instead, he was more interested in showing Bond how "clever" he was...remember his message to Q: "Not such a clever boy." Silva is obsessed with showing everyone how smart/brilliant he is, even in instances when it doesn't serve his best interests.

    More importantly, because fans love and appreciate SF doesn't mean they don't love and appreciate other Bond films from other eras. I love CR, along with GF, TB, FRWL, OHMSS, and so on. Heck, my guilty pleasures are DAF and LTK. I love em all. And that's the beauty of this franchise. It offers so many different tastes and moods. For instance, if it's 3 am and I can't sleep, I'd throw on YOLT.
  • Posts: 3,333
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    The glove thing too. I admit I'd never noticed that before or read about the story.
    Yes, that was news to me, too. It was very insightful. Even though Haphazard enjoyed the movie far more than I did, I must admit he did manage to give me a grudging respect for Skyfall that I hadn't felt up until now. I'm really looking forward to his analysis of Spectre.
  • edited January 2018 Posts: 11,189
    I've always really liked Skyfall and consider it one of those films where strong performances make up for a sometimes shaky script that asks us to suspend our disbelief a bit too much.

    I don't get the impression his review of SP will be a very positive one.
  • edited January 2018 Posts: 3,333
    I think you're right, he's going to plunge the knife into Spectre, especially brother-gate. My guess is he'll be positive about the PTS right up to the title song, then it'll be downhill all the way.

    I think Skyfall is a pretty good movie right up until the moment of Silva's capture, then it goes sideways and becomes annoying for me. I also agree that Bérénice Marlohe was sensational in her role. One of the best Bond girl performances up alongside Eva Green and Diana Rigg.
  • Posts: 11,189
    Sounds like I feel the same way about Spectre that you do about Skyfall. A good film up until a certain point (In Spectre's case it's after the train fight when things seem to go off the rails for me).
  • Posts: 3,333
    I think both movies have elements that I can enjoy, but as an overall package there's something missing from each of them. I guess I honestly don't like all the delving into Bond's past and his character being in constant turmoil. This is where I happen to share Haphazard's view that after Skyfall it should've been a straight forward mission and the personal stuff put aside.
  • Andi1996RueggAndi1996Ruegg Hello. It's me, Evelyn Tremble.
    edited January 2018 Posts: 2,005
    I guess like in my first Bondathon, SP will come last in the viewing order in my second Bondathon too.

    It'll be interesting for sure to see SP a second time. QoS has escaped the bottom of my ranking and who knows SP may end up to be my No 4 in the Craig Bondography.

    SF will never make it to the heights that CR has. CR simply blew my mind on so many levels.
    SF is the next best thing, a worthy lower Top 10 entry. Not more not less. For me that is.
  • edited January 2018 Posts: 11,189
    bondsum wrote: »
    I think both movies have elements that I can enjoy, but as an overall package there's something missing from each of them. I guess I honestly don't like all the delving into Bond's past and his character being in constant turmoil. This is where I happen to share Haphazard's view that after Skyfall it should've been a straight forward mission and the personal stuff put aside.

    People think it will make Bond more interesting by us finding out more about his past. The thing is I don't think Bond was ever meant to be that interesting. He was a fairly bland slightly enigmatic character. I agree that this backstory stuff is feeling more contrived with each film and you can sense that things are being made up as they go along.

    I'd forgotten about that clip of Mendes saying at the SF press conference that Skyfall "was its own story" rather than a continuation of Quantum. That's a big mark against SP in itself.
  • Posts: 3,333
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    I'd forgotten about that clip of Mendes saying at the SF press conference that Skyfall "was its own story" rather than a continuation of Quantum. That's a big mark against SP in itself.
    I have no doubt that said clip of Mendes will be used again and again in the Spectre analysis.
  • edited January 2018 Posts: 1,162
    TripAces wrote: »
    SaintMark wrote: »
    TripAces wrote: »
    SaintMark wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    @SaintMark SF was balistic at the box office and joe public are not pretencious. Why did they like it so much?

    Perhaps the Olympic bit with Craig and the Queen was just fantastic and the best ad they could ever make.
    The measure of box-office never woed me, I saw Blade Runner in its original release and it was not as loved as it is today. The reverse is also true if certain movie were released today they would bomb incredible at the box office..

    For me the popularity of a movie can be flash fire and is not determined by quality. CR is the far better made 007 movie and deserved a far better BO IMHO. The general audience is fickle mistress that makes little sense. Did not Mamma Mia outperform CR at the British BO?- If only Craig had sung the title song I would say. ;)

    A couple of years ago, we covered this. Somewhere, there are numbers that show that SF played HUGE with the 40+ film crowd. Older audiences went to this film en masse. And it makes sense, because Bond was being portrayed as too old, a dinosaur, a relic. This theme really hit home for those of us who are older.

    On a separate note, based on other posts by @SaintMark ...

    SF's brilliance can be pinpointed to three lines, all on the island:

    Severine: "It's amazing the panic you can cause with a single computer."
    Silva: "All the physical stuff. So dull, so dull. Chasing spies. So old fashioned. Your knees must be killing you.
    Silva: "Just point and click."

    Those three lines are the key to the film and the key to Silva, whose massive flaw is that while wanting to embarrass MI6 on his terms (pointing and clicking), he insists on defeating/killing M on hers (in the field, with all that dull physical stuff). And the latter is what sets him up for failure.

    Some say that Silva ended up winning. But he didn't. While M died, she did NOT die in the way that Silva wanted. He wanted the personal satisfaction of it; he needed to be close to her physically. This is where the deeper psychology comes in and how "mother" takes on a whole different dynamic.

    I could go on and on. SF is the only Bond film that allows such deeper readings.

    Nice to know that we covered this years ago with a group of people who think Craig is god and the Craig movies are great. There are people that think differently I still have no clue what made SF so successful but it is just not a very good constructed movie when it comes to a realistic 007. Being a dinosaur has never really been that great a card since we heard it already in GE when M accused 007 of that particular sentiment. Must explain the succes then of GE and Brosnan and how that sounded to the +40 crowd at that time.

    While SF is beautifully filmed, as was Moonraker, the movie made no sense at all and was very poorly scripted as an action movie or even a thriller. James Bond never was anything else even in Flemings hands. It was an attempt to show the character of a deeper James Bond and he was essentially what he always was drink, women and shoot some bad guys Oh and in the proces get his boss killed. Had he stayed in the bar she would have been killed too. So what was really gained but a false sense of patriotism and getting a shedload of people killed.

    For me and many people I know that like to re watch this series ever so often it seems that we generally tend to watch the older 007 movies because they are better done by a team that seems to love the series and the character. With Craig and Mendes I feel that they want to do something to show how much he suffers under his job and then come up with story hooks that do the character favors. He loses a friend and treats him like garbage, kills his boss and finds out that the architect of all his pain is his foster brother Blofeld. Bond fans who like this should stop complaining about the Mark hamill role and TLJ. ;)
    For me the franchise is losing steam ever since CR which is easily Craigs high moment in the franchise. I do hope we get a fifth outing that is essentially 007 doing his job without any navel-gazing in a decent actioner and without his archenemy Blofeld, who makes very little sense sand TB, OHMSS & YOLT which are in essence the Blofeld trilogy.
    SF is a nice movie to look at but has so little content that makes sense at all, too many pretentious stuff with the poem and really stupid stuff like Silva being clairvoyent, flying war choppers through a very densely controlled piece of airspace and the Apocalypse now moment with M in essence being lead to her dead by an agent who did not qualify and oh what a surprise he effing failed. And then he gets reinstated for a failure. It does perhaps explain the governmental mess there is in the UK, in that case the movie was really a moment of the future.

    This movie frustrates because of the really poor performance we get from Mendes not in one but in two movies. People complain about Brosnan but the Craig era has a lot of bad stuff too.

    perhaps Barbara and Michael should pass on the reigns as they seem to have done poorly ever since they lost the big Broccoli himself. They have done both actors under their reign no real favors. I do hope the fifth Craig is a half decent movie because he does deserve it.

    Well, first off, my preface about "a copule of years ago" was aimed at my recollection of box office numbers and not some sort of criticism of any stale conversation. Quite the opposite.

    But to your points about SF. If you go back to the key lines from the film, they explain away some of the complaints you have, including the choppers and the clairvoyance. With a "point and click," it's more than possible that Silva can make himself disappear, even to military radar. Read this for an example:

    https://www.wired.com/2007/10/how-israel-spoo/

    Again, Severine and Silva have already established that he can do just about anything with a "single computer." And this even includes making people afraid. That leads us to the clairvoyance, which likely doesn't exist. Silva couldn't tell the future; he could only make you Q and MI6 (and even audience members) think he could. That's just another example of the script's brilliance.

    --Did Silva know MI6 would head underground? Lilely.
    --Did Silva plan to get apprehended? Not until he knew Bond was on the Chimera.
    --Did Silva plan weeks in advance to hack into the MI6 network and free himself? Probably not.
    --Did Silva know for sure that Bond would follow him through the underground to that exact location where he set the charge? Probably not. (He likely had his henchmen set up boobytraps like that all over the place.) And like the explosion at MI6, he wasn't interested in causing death by explosion. He wanted the hand-to-hand kill. Instead, he was more interested in showing Bond how "clever" he was...remember his message to Q: "Not such a clever boy." Silva is obsessed with showing everyone how smart/brilliant he is, even in instances when it doesn't serve his best interests.

    More importantly, because fans love and appreciate SF doesn't mean they don't love and appreciate other Bond films from other eras. I love CR, along with GF, TB, FRWL, OHMSS, and so on. Heck, my guilty pleasures are DAF and LTK. I love em all. And that's the beauty of this franchise. It offers so many different tastes and moods. For instance, if it's 3 am and I can't sleep, I'd throw on YOLT.

    No matter how much time you spent to think it through ( or to fool yourself )or to what length you go to explain whatever away, there is absolutely nothing that can redeem Skyfall on the logical front. At the end it remains a mess whose storyline would insults a 12 year old, let alone an adult.
  • Posts: 1,917
    TripAces wrote: »
    A couple of years ago, we covered this. Somewhere, there are numbers that show that SF played HUGE with the 40+ film crowd. Older audiences went to this film en masse. And it makes sense, because Bond was being portrayed as too old, a dinosaur, a relic. This theme really hit home for those of us who are older.
    Not sure why SF would be such an exception here. I look around at the crowds I've seen new Bonds in the cinema with and they are always filled with that age group. Can you honestly say these people were drawn in by the Bond is older theme and not just because a new James Bond film is out?

    I'm in that age group and that theme didn't hit home with me. I go to James Bond films for escapism and a fun time, not to be reminded of such things, NSNA aside. Even when Moore was in his final adventures and I was a teen it wasn't about age, it was about James Bond, the character.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited January 2018 Posts: 23,883
    I don't think the themes were the key to SF's success either, even though it no doubt resonated with many. From the perspective of my family and friends it was a matter of the film being entertaining and beautiful to look at, Bardem being a throwback charismatic larger than life sort of villain, and the conflict between Silva and M resonating. Bond was actually secondary to them. The film was just entertaining for a lot of filmgoers and they insisted that their friends go and check it out. The word of mouth on it was infectious.

    I think SF captured the surface essence of Bond style better than any film since GE and that is why it was similarly successful and responsible for bringing new audiences into the fold. CR, despite all its qualities, didn't really do that.

    GE & SF are very different kinds of films but they both hit a nerve with the masses and were the right films for their time. They both were very clear about Bond's place in the world at the time they were made.
  • TripAcesTripAces Universal Exports
    Posts: 4,585
    BT3366 wrote: »
    TripAces wrote: »
    A couple of years ago, we covered this. Somewhere, there are numbers that show that SF played HUGE with the 40+ film crowd. Older audiences went to this film en masse. And it makes sense, because Bond was being portrayed as too old, a dinosaur, a relic. This theme really hit home for those of us who are older.
    Not sure why SF would be such an exception here. I look around at the crowds I've seen new Bonds in the cinema with and they are always filled with that age group. Can you honestly say these people were drawn in by the Bond is older theme and not just because a new James Bond film is out?

    I'm in that age group and that theme didn't hit home with me. I go to James Bond films for escapism and a fun time, not to be reminded of such things, NSNA aside. Even when Moore was in his final adventures and I was a teen it wasn't about age, it was about James Bond, the character.

    I don't know, either. I just remember that someone posted the BO numbers, and it was surprising. I do think the way the film was marketed, along with its storyline, somehow appealed to older audiences. I know my dad went to see it three times, and he hadn't been to a Bond film in a decade.
  • edited January 2018 Posts: 12,837
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    bondsum wrote: »
    I think both movies have elements that I can enjoy, but as an overall package there's something missing from each of them. I guess I honestly don't like all the delving into Bond's past and his character being in constant turmoil. This is where I happen to share Haphazard's view that after Skyfall it should've been a straight forward mission and the personal stuff put aside.

    People think it will make Bond more interesting by us finding out more about his past. The thing is I don't think Bond was ever meant to be that interesting. He was a fairly bland slightly enigmatic character. I agree that this backstory stuff is feeling more contrived with each film and you can sense that things are being made up as they go along.

    I'd forgotten about that clip of Mendes saying at the SF press conference that Skyfall "was its own story" rather than a continuation of Quantum. That's a big mark against SP in itself.

    Yeah the whole dramatic dead parents (I know he was an orphan in the books but it was never played up as a big origin story) angle and Brofeld don't really fit with the ordinary guy (well Bond should never be ordinary, he's James Bond, but I think the point is he's just a guy doing a job and it isn't usually about him) who has extraordinary things happen to him that Fleming described.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    I don t think Newman gets enough credit for how he elevated several scenes in the film with his suggestive, almost hypnotic music.
  • TripAcesTripAces Universal Exports
    Posts: 4,585
    TripAces wrote: »
    SaintMark wrote: »
    TripAces wrote: »
    SaintMark wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    @SaintMark SF was balistic at the box office and joe public are not pretencious. Why did they like it so much?

    Perhaps the Olympic bit with Craig and the Queen was just fantastic and the best ad they could ever make.
    The measure of box-office never woed me, I saw Blade Runner in its original release and it was not as loved as it is today. The reverse is also true if certain movie were released today they would bomb incredible at the box office..

    For me the popularity of a movie can be flash fire and is not determined by quality. CR is the far better made 007 movie and deserved a far better BO IMHO. The general audience is fickle mistress that makes little sense. Did not Mamma Mia outperform CR at the British BO?- If only Craig had sung the title song I would say. ;)

    A couple of years ago, we covered this. Somewhere, there are numbers that show that SF played HUGE with the 40+ film crowd. Older audiences went to this film en masse. And it makes sense, because Bond was being portrayed as too old, a dinosaur, a relic. This theme really hit home for those of us who are older.

    On a separate note, based on other posts by @SaintMark ...

    SF's brilliance can be pinpointed to three lines, all on the island:

    Severine: "It's amazing the panic you can cause with a single computer."
    Silva: "All the physical stuff. So dull, so dull. Chasing spies. So old fashioned. Your knees must be killing you.
    Silva: "Just point and click."

    Those three lines are the key to the film and the key to Silva, whose massive flaw is that while wanting to embarrass MI6 on his terms (pointing and clicking), he insists on defeating/killing M on hers (in the field, with all that dull physical stuff). And the latter is what sets him up for failure.

    Some say that Silva ended up winning. But he didn't. While M died, she did NOT die in the way that Silva wanted. He wanted the personal satisfaction of it; he needed to be close to her physically. This is where the deeper psychology comes in and how "mother" takes on a whole different dynamic.

    I could go on and on. SF is the only Bond film that allows such deeper readings.

    Nice to know that we covered this years ago with a group of people who think Craig is god and the Craig movies are great. There are people that think differently I still have no clue what made SF so successful but it is just not a very good constructed movie when it comes to a realistic 007. Being a dinosaur has never really been that great a card since we heard it already in GE when M accused 007 of that particular sentiment. Must explain the succes then of GE and Brosnan and how that sounded to the +40 crowd at that time.

    While SF is beautifully filmed, as was Moonraker, the movie made no sense at all and was very poorly scripted as an action movie or even a thriller. James Bond never was anything else even in Flemings hands. It was an attempt to show the character of a deeper James Bond and he was essentially what he always was drink, women and shoot some bad guys Oh and in the proces get his boss killed. Had he stayed in the bar she would have been killed too. So what was really gained but a false sense of patriotism and getting a shedload of people killed.

    For me and many people I know that like to re watch this series ever so often it seems that we generally tend to watch the older 007 movies because they are better done by a team that seems to love the series and the character. With Craig and Mendes I feel that they want to do something to show how much he suffers under his job and then come up with story hooks that do the character favors. He loses a friend and treats him like garbage, kills his boss and finds out that the architect of all his pain is his foster brother Blofeld. Bond fans who like this should stop complaining about the Mark hamill role and TLJ. ;)
    For me the franchise is losing steam ever since CR which is easily Craigs high moment in the franchise. I do hope we get a fifth outing that is essentially 007 doing his job without any navel-gazing in a decent actioner and without his archenemy Blofeld, who makes very little sense sand TB, OHMSS & YOLT which are in essence the Blofeld trilogy.
    SF is a nice movie to look at but has so little content that makes sense at all, too many pretentious stuff with the poem and really stupid stuff like Silva being clairvoyent, flying war choppers through a very densely controlled piece of airspace and the Apocalypse now moment with M in essence being lead to her dead by an agent who did not qualify and oh what a surprise he effing failed. And then he gets reinstated for a failure. It does perhaps explain the governmental mess there is in the UK, in that case the movie was really a moment of the future.

    This movie frustrates because of the really poor performance we get from Mendes not in one but in two movies. People complain about Brosnan but the Craig era has a lot of bad stuff too.

    perhaps Barbara and Michael should pass on the reigns as they seem to have done poorly ever since they lost the big Broccoli himself. They have done both actors under their reign no real favors. I do hope the fifth Craig is a half decent movie because he does deserve it.

    Well, first off, my preface about "a copule of years ago" was aimed at my recollection of box office numbers and not some sort of criticism of any stale conversation. Quite the opposite.

    But to your points about SF. If you go back to the key lines from the film, they explain away some of the complaints you have, including the choppers and the clairvoyance. With a "point and click," it's more than possible that Silva can make himself disappear, even to military radar. Read this for an example:

    https://www.wired.com/2007/10/how-israel-spoo/

    Again, Severine and Silva have already established that he can do just about anything with a "single computer." And this even includes making people afraid. That leads us to the clairvoyance, which likely doesn't exist. Silva couldn't tell the future; he could only make you Q and MI6 (and even audience members) think he could. That's just another example of the script's brilliance.

    --Did Silva know MI6 would head underground? Lilely.
    --Did Silva plan to get apprehended? Not until he knew Bond was on the Chimera.
    --Did Silva plan weeks in advance to hack into the MI6 network and free himself? Probably not.
    --Did Silva know for sure that Bond would follow him through the underground to that exact location where he set the charge? Probably not. (He likely had his henchmen set up boobytraps like that all over the place.) And like the explosion at MI6, he wasn't interested in causing death by explosion. He wanted the hand-to-hand kill. Instead, he was more interested in showing Bond how "clever" he was...remember his message to Q: "Not such a clever boy." Silva is obsessed with showing everyone how smart/brilliant he is, even in instances when it doesn't serve his best interests.

    More importantly, because fans love and appreciate SF doesn't mean they don't love and appreciate other Bond films from other eras. I love CR, along with GF, TB, FRWL, OHMSS, and so on. Heck, my guilty pleasures are DAF and LTK. I love em all. And that's the beauty of this franchise. It offers so many different tastes and moods. For instance, if it's 3 am and I can't sleep, I'd throw on YOLT.

    No matter how much time you spent to think it through ( or to fool yourself )or to what length you go to explain whatever away, there is absolutely nothing that can redeem Skyfall on the logical front. At the end it remains a mess whose storyline would insults a 12 year old, let alone an adult.

    We'll agree to disagree. Against all other Bond plotlines, SF comes out at or near the top in terms of plausibility.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited January 2018 Posts: 23,883
    I don t think Newman gets enough credit for how he elevated several scenes in the film with his suggestive, almost hypnotic music.
    I certainly agree. The score of SF is one of the highlights for me and was quite refreshing after more than a decade of Arnold.
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    bondsum wrote: »
    I think both movies have elements that I can enjoy, but as an overall package there's something missing from each of them. I guess I honestly don't like all the delving into Bond's past and his character being in constant turmoil. This is where I happen to share Haphazard's view that after Skyfall it should've been a straight forward mission and the personal stuff put aside.

    People think it will make Bond more interesting by us finding out more about his past. The thing is I don't think Bond was ever meant to be that interesting. He was a fairly bland slightly enigmatic character. I agree that this backstory stuff is feeling more contrived with each film and you can sense that things are being made up as they go along.

    I'd forgotten about that clip of Mendes saying at the SF press conference that Skyfall "was its own story" rather than a continuation of Quantum. That's a big mark against SP in itself.

    Yeah the whole dramatic dead parents (I know he was an orphan in the books but it was never played up as a big origin story) angle and Brofeld don't really fit with the ordinary guy (well Bond should never be ordinary, he's James Bond, but I think the point is he's just a guy doing a job and it isn't usually about him) who has extraordinary things happen to him that Fleming described.
    That's what I liked about the earlier films. Bond was an enigma, but we could glean certain aspects of his character through how he reacts over a series of films to the scenarios he is put in. Recently they've tried to play up the 'hero' aspects (understandable given what's all the rage) but to me it's a bit much.
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