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What does "Skyfall" mean in British culture?

13

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  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    edited March 2012 Posts: 14,584
    JWESTBROOK wrote:
    WVPoef wrote:
    Maybe the villain is using some sort of device to catapult meteorites to earth and Bond need to stop Him/it from happening before the sky fall... That's why I go with it being an operation like TB a mission to stop the sky falling.

    How on Earth would any human be able to that?

    A moon-based HAARP facility. I'm currently using this kind of 'death ray' weapon in my Bond story, except it's only Earth-based as I'm trying to avoid outer space plots!
  • WVPoefWVPoef
    Posts: 147
    WVPoef wrote:
    Maybe the villain is using some sort of device to catapult meteorites to earth and Bond need to stop Him/it from happening before the sky fall... That's why I go with it being an operation like TB a mission to stop the sky falling.
    QBranch wrote:
    JWESTBROOK wrote:
    WVPoef wrote:
    Maybe the villain is using some sort of device to catapult meteorites to earth and Bond need to stop Him/it from happening before the sky fall... That's why I go with it being an operation like TB a mission to stop the sky falling.

    How on Earth would any human be able to that?

    A moon-based HAARP facility. I'm currently using this kind of 'death ray' weapon in my Bond story, except it's only Earth-based as I'm trying to avoid outer space plots!

    This is why I love Bond! Anything is possible in the world of Bond. The one thing about Bond movies is that they can make the unbelievable believable.
  • WVPoefWVPoef
    Posts: 147
    WVPoef wrote:
    Maybe the villain is using some sort of device to catapult meteorites to earth and Bond need to stop Him/it from happening before the sky fall... That's why I go with it being an operation like TB a mission to stop the sky falling.
    QBranch wrote:
    JWESTBROOK wrote:
    WVPoef wrote:
    Maybe the villain is using some sort of device to catapult meteorites to earth and Bond need to stop Him/it from happening before the sky fall... That's why I go with it being an operation like TB a mission to stop the sky falling.

    How on Earth would any human be able to that?

    A moon-based HAARP facility. I'm currently using this kind of 'death ray' weapon in my Bond story, except it's only Earth-based as I'm trying to avoid outer space plots!

    This is why I love Bond! Anything is possible in the world of Bond. The one thing about Bond movies is that they can make the unbelievable believable.
  • bobyboby
    edited May 2012 Posts: 75
    I have a theory about the emotional significance of SkyFall :
    And if it was Bond's fall "from the sky" at the end of the train sequence, before the main credits ?

    The audience and the MI6 thought at the beginning he died and then he came back from the dead, but he is must more "shaked" because he nearly dies this time. He had some kind of "revelation", just like Samuel L. Jacks'on's character at the end of Pul Fiction.

    MI6 forced him to have a psychological test and we see in the trailer that Bon missed his target twice in the training room (3rd and 4th pictures of the teaser). Maybe the fall in slow-motion in the Shangai sequence reminds Bond his own fall (like in "Vertigo"). And all the idea of the movie is that Bond must be no more this "physical wreck" (Silva calls him this way in the underground sequence) but the "true" James Bond again.
  • GetafixGetafix
    Posts: 11,425
    fanbond123 wrote:
    If you think about it, Skyfall sounds similar to Thunderball and this may not be a coincidence. Fall - ball. Thunderball was the name of that mission. Codename Thunderball : Bond trying to stop nuclear missiles being used by SPECTRE. Perhaps Skyfall is a 21st century variation on that plot?

    A title like Skyfall suggests the sky will fall - if you take it literally, of course! And if the rumour about Blofeld returning is accurate - Blofeld, sky falling, Skyfall sounding like Thunderball - these seem reasonably clues the plot will involve something major and world threatening. It makes sense to up the ante for Craig's third Bond film so Bond vs a nuclear threat (albeit done in a different way to Thunderball) could be the inspiration behind Bond 23's title.

    I think it is going to have multiple meanings on several different levels. There is also going to be a recurring motif of falling and ceilings crashing in.
    We suspect Bond falls from the bridge in the PTS into the river below (hence shot of man in water from below. We can see that someone falls from a Shanghai skyscraper (see trailer) and we know that Silva detonates a device in he Tube to make the train crash through the ceiling. We can speculate that it might have personal significance for Bond as well - the name of his ancestral home in Scotland (I think we saw the proof of this months back). Perhaps the Skyfall mission therefore relates to the death of Bond's parents - an incident of which M has some knowledge.
  • GetafixGetafix
    Posts: 11,425
    boby wrote:
    I have a theory about the emotional significance of SkyFall :
    And if it was Bond's fall "from the sky" at the end of the train sequence, before the main credits ?

    The audience and the MI6 thought at the beginning he died and then he came back from the dead, but he is must more "shaked" because he nearly dies this time. He had some kind of "revelation", just like Samuel L. Jacks'on's character at the end of Pul Fiction.

    MI6 forced him to have a psychological test and we see in the trailer that Bon missed his target twice in the training room (3rd and 4th pictures of the teaser). Maybe the fall in slow-motion in the Shangai sequence reminds Bond his own fall (like in "Vertigo"). And all the idea of the movie is that Bond must be no more this "physical wreck" (Silva calls him this way in the underground sequence) but the "true" James Bond again.
    I like the idea of the fall triggering some kind of flashback a la Vertigo.
  • bobyboby
    edited May 2012 Posts: 75
    I must add something that I've just found. If my theory is correct, the thing to know is
    why Bond suddenly react to the fact he almost die (it happened more than a few times to him in "fifty" years). The fact that he seems shaken by his fall (psychological test, missing his target, his beard, maybe a flaskback a la Vertico in Shangai...) comes maybe from the fact he realized he almost die like his parents.

    SkyFall would be the movie of the fall of Bond, symbolically and physically speaking. And the purpose of the movie is to permit Bond to rise again (that's why he comes back "from the dead" : he resurrects and tries to become again the spy and hero he was before the fall)

    I think the last scene we have heard of is on a roof, with Bond over London. He is no more in tunnels, underground, "bunker". He succeeds to rise.
  • battleshipgreygtbattleshipgreygt
    Posts: 1,220
    boby wrote:
    I must add something that I've just found. If my theory is correct, the thing to know is
    why Bond suddenly react to the fact he almost die (it happened more than a few times to him in "fifty" years). The fact that he seems shaken by his fall (psychological test, missing his target, his beard, maybe a flaskback a la Vertico in Shangai...) comes maybe from the fact he realized he almost die like his parents.

    SkyFall would be the movie of the fall of Bond, symbolically and physically speaking. And the purpose of the movie is to permit Bond to rise again (that's why he comes back "from the dead" : he resurrects and tries to become again the spy and hero he was before the fall)

    I think the last scene we have heard of is on a roof, with Bond over London. He is no more in tunnels, underground, "bunker". He succeeds to rise.

    It's funny that you mention that, I posted something very similar in another thread.
  • darren_blacksmithdarren_blacksmith
    Posts: 678
    There is also the fact that
    he is severely injured by the shot, fall and going through the rocks on the waterfall and it was M herself who ordered Eve to shoot, taking the risk that Bond would be hit.
  • bondrocks14bondrocks14
    Posts: 25
    I'm thinking that maybe the reason Bond is so taken aback (in the trailer) by the mention of 'skyfall' is because he's shocked and confused as to why his family estate is being used as a word association. But of course this reaction could be trailer-only, with Bond's surprised reaction in the movie not actually being a response to the word 'skyfall,' but to something else. Or it could indeed be a reference to a traumatic operation he was involved in, as the trailer suggests.
  • GetafixGetafix
    Posts: 11,425
    May be that scene was shot after they'd wrapped the movie - hence the "Done!"
  • battleshipgreygtbattleshipgreygt
    Posts: 1,220
    darren_blacksmith wrote:
    There is also the fact that
    he is severely injured by the shot, fall and going through the rocks on the waterfall and it was M herself who ordered Eve to shoot, taking the risk that Bond would be hit.
    So Bond gets shot? Is that what causes the fall from the bridge?
  • Samuel001Samuel001 Moderator
    Posts: 13,355
    battleshipgreygt wrote:
    darren_blacksmith wrote:
    There is also the fact that
    he is severely injured by the shot, fall and going through the rocks on the waterfall and it was M herself who ordered Eve to shoot, taking the risk that Bond would be hit.
    So Bond gets shot? Is that what causes the fall from the bridge?
    Yes.
  • peggypeggy
    Posts: 2
    "Skyfall": maybe a bit far from original meaning, but could be the sky in fall ;-)
  • forgotmyusernameforgotmyusername
    Posts: 2,782
    Skyfall=brilliant
  • RogueAgentRogueAgent
    Posts: 12,526
    Once you have seen the film? It will become alot clearer?
  • badjezusbadjezus
    Posts: 1
    i think that it symbolizes the total blackout in december 2012, the same one that NASA predicted. nasa said that people need to be prepared for the "end of ther world"or the "skyfall". The predictors said that the people with the dark soul or people who had betrayed someone will no survive ( M didn't survive, although she betrayed her agents). NASA also said that you need to prepare your house and wait for it to come (just like in the film, bond and m were prepared, waiting for enemies to come). Even the main theme song for the film (Adele "skyfall") say:
    This is the end
    Hold your breath and count to ten
    Feel the earth move and then
    Hear my heart burst again

    For this is the end
    I've drowned and dreamed this moment

    Let the sky fall, when it crumbles
    We will stand tall
    Face it all together
    At skyfall

    Skyfall is where we start
    A thousand miles and poles apart
    When worlds collide, and days are dark

    doesn't it seems a little strange?
  • HALAHALA
    Posts: 1
    Friends,

    All is about The Bond's Movie Series Resurrection, as he mentioned in movies too, and in the Adele Song's too, it means to rise in a glorified way from SKYFALL to a new bodily state of existence, where death is no more....
  • RangerRanger
    edited November 2012 Posts: 1
    I think Skyfall is a metaphor for the fall of evil. I think of Jesus' quote in Luke 10:17 where He said, "Behold I saw Satan fall like lightening from Heaven". And is it a coincidence that 'good triumphed over evil" in an old stone church, the 'old fashioned way'(perhaps meaning the christian ways of of our patriarch's and our forefathers)? In this story eveil fell in the 'old' country of Scotland in what appeared to be an old redundant church, at the hands of what people thought was an old redundant man, James Bond. They quoted more than once in the movie that, "Sometimes the old fashion ways are the best ways." I think the metaphor's are quite obvious !
  • docdorydocdory
    Posts: 2
    1°)Skyfall is a swedish word which have several meanings in english :
    skyfall (n.)
    cloudburst, deluge, downpour, flood, inundation, outpouring, overflow, pelter, pouring rain, rainstorm, shower, soaker, torrent, waterspout
    When M learns what she thinks to be the death of James Bond, she looks by the window and there is a very heavy rain that begins to fall at this time of the movie.

    2°) In Saint John's Apocalypse are several allusions about various things falling from the sky at the end of the world.

    3°) In the famous Belgian comics "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_the_Swordfish " Scaw-Fell is the code-name of a secret military basis of a super submarine-airplane which is supposed to end a third world war ( sounds a bit like sky-fall, doesn't it ? )
  • thomas1969thomas1969
    Posts: 2
    You're all wrong. A skyfall means a change or a turn over. In the Theather, when the curtain falls, it`s often called a skyfall. one act is done, an other one is about to happen. In the Movie, it has a dobble meaning. His childhood home wears the name Skyfall, and when Bond is set up with the shrink, the Word skyfall dropps in, and Bond replies "done". Catching my drift, people?
  • docdorydocdory
    Posts: 2
    @Thomas 1969.
    Your theory is very interesting and highly plausible. However , I have a strong objection : I tried to check it in about twenty on-line glossaries or dictionnaries of english theatrical terminology, and the word "skyfall" appears in none of them.
    I find that a little annoying. Can you give us a proof of your theory ?
  • SandySandy Somewhere in Europe
    Posts: 4,012
    I was wondering what was going on in this thread, well now I know. Why don't you do yourself a favour, go watch the film and you'll know what Skyfall means!
  • thomas1969thomas1969
    Posts: 2
    To docdory: The expression is mentioned only once in a letter from William Shakespeare to his wife Anna after the loss of their son in 1596. His name was Hamnet. To shakespeare, his son's death, felt like a skyfall - like when the curtain drops between two acts, he writes. Maybe it`s a New beginning, a change in our lives. Some die young, but there is always with some
    sense of perpose, he says. Anne's answer is yet uknown.
  • chaseterrrychaseterrry
    Posts: 1
    The meaning of "Skyfall" in the new movie: it's the house James Bond grew up in
  • Cadito_ICadito_I
    edited December 2012 Posts: 1
    SKYFALL... The boarding house where James was raised. So, how could MI-6 have forseen Silva's plans? No-one knew about them...
    Eventually, after the operation, the obvious name for the operation was SKYFALL. The point here is... SKYFALL ... The relationship between his boarding school in Scotland, his past and M... and "survival"... Did he survive his childhood? Humm...
  • SandySandy Somewhere in Europe
    Posts: 4,012
    Cadito_I wrote:
    SKYFALL... The boarding house where James was raised. So, how could MI-6 have forseen Silva's plans? No-one knew about them...
    Eventually, after the operation, the obvious name for the operation was SKYFALL. The point here is... SKYFALL ... The relationship between his boarding school in Scotland, his past and M... and "survival"... Did he survive his childhood? Humm...

    Boarding school? Oh, please 8-|
  • silvialasilviala
    Posts: 1
    I liked all of your comments but I don´t know why nobody mentioned that the name of Bond´s house was Skyfall. was this an anticipation of disaster?
    Thanks
  • bond50bond50 Banned
    Posts: 42
    It has basically nothing whatsoever to do with any culture in the world.
  • doremidoremi
    Posts: 1
    It could be a slogan that the international established order will use to achieve a One World Government in the spirit of a New World Order even if it means to defy God regardless of the desastrous or catastrophic consequences this will bring for the earth and mankind.
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