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Comments
A fair assessment, including the point totals. While LALD doesn't have the same credentials / production values as the others, it's almost like a cult classic and has some iconic imagery that is repeated in every bond related article.
As much as I hate to say it (TLD is my no 1) I can't say the same for TLD, and I have to say Glen is largely to blame for this. I do love his movies but he doesn't have the flair to make an iconic Bond movie
SF is still not what I look for in a Bond film, but I give it credit for being well executed, and articulate of its themes. I think this is the best performance and most natural performance that we could ever coax out of Craig, so it's another point in the films favour.
I went through a period of disillusionment (considered it lower half), fueled mostly by the same thing I felt on that first watch: it's not a Bond film as much as a film about Bond. That was the main item which was holding me back on it, and I eventually came to terms with it. If each of my #1 - #9 films were all erased from history, I'd move SF back a few notches from the new front. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of it representing what a Bond film should be -- it relies on the form and history the others bring.
That's a shame @Getafix . But to each their own.
Still, it's MUCH better than the disgraceful embarrassment that is SP.
In terms of SF, this is a film which I continue to enjoy and which continues to move up my rankings, while CR declines. I wouldn't be surprised if, in time, I view it as the best Bond film of the Craig era (as opposed to the best Craig performance as Bond).
Late 2013/early 2014 here. That would be the third viewing.
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Like to add one thing to my comment on SF: didn't think much of it at the cinema, but thinking back, it really annoys me that Ola Rapace as Patrice didn't have any lines. He's a good actor, and the role just feels like a waste of an actor who could have brought something more to a villain role.
PS the first time I had watched it since the discussions of DC ageing etc and etc and it is weird how, more and more SF should have been scripted as his last.
Well over the years you have written copious amounts of posts about it. You have dissected it, picked over every frame incessantly..and you are now admitting to not having seen it since it first came out?
I'm disappointed ;)
Besides my dissecting was mostly done a while back. Don’t need to see it again to confirm what I already know.
I liked his tougher approach in QOS but agree that Craig has never improved upon what he developed in CR. I disliked him so intensely in SF that I wondered if he had forgotten how to play Bond -- his "performance" (to me, at least) amounted to a series of shallow poses. There is nothing of the relaxed, down-to-earth character beats that he brought to his first two appearances, and he frequently resembles a constipated model in a magazine ad.
SF was a massive success with critics, audiences, and financially all at once. It may even go down as the most celebrated Craig Bond film. I suspect CR vs. SF will be the modern version of the FRWL vs. GF debate (ironically, I prefer CR to SF, but GF over FRWL). I think Craig did an awesome job in all of his first 3 Bond films, each a little different than the last. SF may be a little lighter and older than his first two, but Craig maintained his edge in it. With SP, it got over-the-top goofy and it was hard to take his Bond as seriously. To me, there is a very noticeable difference with how Bond is in SF and SP - and in SP it’s significantly weaker.
I do predict the tone/style of Bond 25 will be something closer to CR/QOS - darker, smaller, and more suited to Craig’s strengths. I have confidence in Boyle to do well.
In Danny B we trust! :D
Indeed! Wonder if he was close to this excited when he pitched his big idea to EON!
SF effectively managed past/present Bond. At least, I thought so; many others might disagree. What the BO numbers suggest, when looked at more closely, is that SF appealed to older audiences.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-skyfall-james-bond-box-office-20121111-story.html
I knew this was true without reading the reports, just looking at the people in the theater. MY father hadn't seen a Bond film in decades and he not only saw SF, he went and saw it three times.
QoS was too rapidly cut and edited for them. When I asked my dad what he thought of it after he saw it for the first time on blu ray his only comment to me was that it was 'all action'. He didn't say anything else about it but I could see he wasn't all that impressed.
The trajectory that Craig Bond started on with Mendes was inevitable. He started as an edgy rookie in CR and they have been trying to take him more towards the traditional template Bond as his tenure progressed and as he's aged. I don't think it works for him (at all) but the strategy makes sense. He couldn't keep playing the CR/QoS style forever, just as Connery couldn't play the DN/FRWL Bond forever either. People age, and people change.
I think the "strategy" (if you can call it that) is less about him aging and more about Craig playing Bond's iconic qualities rather than the (more interesting) human side. The Mendes era -- particularly SF -- is overloaded with superficial shots of Craig brooding and posing, as if we're meant to take some deeper meaning or significance from the character's threadbare adventures. I find it laughable.
Brooding and posing...Once, maybe, in the beach bar, early in the morning.
Once? It's all over the movie, the most laughable examples being in Scotland (right before Bond and M enter the Skyfall mansion) and in London near the end (the rooftop shot).
Can you imagine how the movie would have played out if that scene had been cut and we went directly to the new Ms office. It would have seemed really weired. One scene showing a transition from the death of M to the new mission was required and we got it.
Morphine is a hell of a drug.