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Love them both, but then again I love the 80’s.
Just watched Skyfall again. Now this is my just my opinion, and I respect the hell out of the film’s popularity (and bank), but it is plain dumb.
Not DAD dumb, but Sam Mendes dumb. I reckon he bought to the table a number of good things, so I’ll try to be as balanced as possible, but clearly his style isn’t for me. Sorry for the negativity but this seems like the right thread.
I won’t even focus on the plot, which is pretty dumb in itself (and documented well on these boards) but the chronic artifice of this movie, which is irritating even by Bond’s outlandish standards.
The PTS is tight and exciting. Take the bloody shot! Close up to M looking out over a rainy London. A brilliant juxtaposition of field and HQ. No issue.
Ditto Adele’s song. One of the better entries, love the visuals.
And then ... oh dear. Bond has spat the dummy and, despite previously showing zero sentiment in his dealings with M, refuses to return, instead staying anonymous by ... showing off his scorpion drinking in front of hundreds of bar flies.
But that’s by the by. This is about how Mendes constructs scenes like a play and burdens them with what he thinks is profound allegory.
Bond is unfit for duty, so we get a Rocky training montage with Tanner babbling exposition as if it’s an ongoing conversation. What the hell?!
M and Mallory, extraordinarily busy folk I imagine, find time to sit in on 007’s psyche assessment just so they can enhance a theatrically-designed scene.
Bond meets the new quartermaster at a museum (?), where he stares forlornly at a painting of an old ship being towed out for scrap. Oh, Mendes.
Back in business, then. Bond kills Patrice in a wonderfully shot, Blade Runner inspired scene, but it has all the visceral impact of a wet lettuce leaf.
On to Macau. Bond inexplicably asks Moneypenny to shave him, presumably spending the night with her, and yet Mendes expects us to believe he never asked her name. Just so he can reveal the scoobs in full pomp at the end, see? A very stagey trick.
Bond’s casino entrance, into the dragon’s den as it were, is great filmmaking. If only mendes limited his instinctive artifice to scenes like this, the balance would’ve been great.
Komodo dragons, sure, it’s bond. But the Indiana jones style ‘look behind you’ I could do without.
Sailing to Silva’s lair is a prime example of mendes’s theatrical artifice. Solange stands at the prow like a statute, joined by bond, then three goons behind them, all standing in perfect symmetry. Mendes loves people to stand. He hates movement, or anything that ruins his stagey, ponderous aesthetic.
Silva’s entrance, fine. The rat story meanders a little but the long shuffle from the elevator works, even if the lair itself looks way too stagey and nothing like the semi-real world bond normally inhabits.
Shooting the shot glass off the head is classic Mendes - zero movement, maximum stagecraft. For me, little impact.
Hannibal Lecter scenes, whatever.
The chase through the subway is good, except for the climax. We admire bonds tracking skills for much of the sequence then are expected to believe Silva has set up the train ambush precisely at that moment? Oh, mendes.
And so it goes. The old ways are best. The radio transmitter. The Aston Martin. Skyfall. Kincaid. The hunting rifle. The bulb bombs. M herself. The bulldog.
Mendes shoves in so much allegory poisoning we barely escape the movie alive.
Then there is SP.
SF is much loved and I could be way off the mark, but I reckon mendes, a fine theatre director, was ill-suited to carrying on the excellent, thrilling, visceral template laid down by CR and QoS.
Mendes gets the scale right, both geographically and thematically (despite the overuse of allegory) but forgets to propel Bond through his beautiful world like Campbell and Forster did.
The concerns you have for the film are precisely why I love SF so much (and not Sp). Bond died and was resurrected, and like the novel YOLT, this had such a beautifully different tone than all other Bond films, an almost dream-like, and (as briefly discussed before) Jungian template to it. And the actors and visuals responded accordingly.
The theatricality you speak of should never have been repeated again. Unfortunately it was.
Saying all of that-- your points are bang on to your truth and respectful (and sometimes quite funny). Usually I'm a more hard-boiled Bond fan, with a love for Connery (especially his first four), and my hard-wiring responded to CR and QoS (the latter film a little longer since I was pissed at the editing when I first saw the film).
The poetry behind SF perhaps should have repelled me. For whatever reason, I think it worked.
It didn't for you and I get where you're coming from. I think you're wholly right with your criticisms, and it's strange that those same things you see as being a detriment, I found them to be boons.
Thanks for sharing.
I didn't see this earlier @Birdleson ... once again, bang on-- reading and speaking my mind it's scary. Thanks for articulating...
Thanks Peter, I appreciate that.
Indeed, I think they were shooting for the stars with SF, and I cannot in good conscience condemn them entirely for that.
In fact, when you look at Craig’s first three, there’s an extraordinary level of thematic and directorial courage.
All films are a risk. No one knows, until the editor has completed his or her last snip how a film will turn out; even less of an idea of how audiences will respond.
Godfather was a huge risk in every way (from the casting of Brando and Pacino down to Coppola)...
Re: James Bond: I am certainly excited about the filmmaker they have at the helm, and believe we will see more of a “moving picture” under his guidance.
It has been a continuous pattern with all the mega hits in the series, hasn't it? The obvious and most embarrasing example is probably Moonraker which was simply TSWLM all over again with some Star Wars influences sprinkled in. But it pretty much goes for all of the succesors to unusually succesfull films in the series: The producers get to hung up on what made the previous film tick, and assumes we want the same elements all over again.
This is the big takeaway. It’s a huge letdown from the atmosphere created by Craig’s first two outings. This film has grown on me a fair bit from the bottom of my rankings about three years ago to about 16 or so. That’s mostly do to the themes of the film. However the plotting is so lazy, the cgi sucks, and the ending is too goofy and it’s a shame because it’s almost glorious, but skyfall for me needed one more draft in the writing stage
Since the formulaic elements were most criticized in the last film, I just wonder whether they will double down on character drama and theatrics, believing that this is what connected with audiences for SF. I personally wouldn't mind, depending on how it's executed, but I can see such a possible approach not going down well with all.
Not only is LICENCE TO KILL one of the greatest Bond films, but it's one of the greatest movies in cinema history.
Great call.
I can even envision a hypothetical car chase with all the grit of the QoS PTS chase but with gadgets in it. As you say, it's the treatment one gives the material that makes it work or not.
(I'm also a big fan of the FYEO chase by the way.)
It's a decent if flawed Bond film, but 'one of the greatest in movie history'...?
You need to see more films.
I think OHMSS is the only Bond film that comes close to such a title.
Or some of my home films.
Counterpoint: LTK has been regarded as underrated for so long that the reaction has led to be being overrated. The film still more or less deserved what it got at the box office - at its core, it's a bland medley of Miami Vice and Bond, hamstrung with a lot of the cruft that had built up at Eon in the '80s.
Dalton does Craig before Craig and Glen goes out with a bang, bringing serious editing and action chops.
I think it is unfairly labelled as ‘generic’ purely and simply because of its Florida / Central American setting.
It’s no masterpiece but it’s one of the top five action flicks of the 80s hands down.
Predator
Raiders of the lost ark
Licence to kill
Mad max 2
...?
Quantum of solace is a cinematic triumph and one of the greatest films ever made.
The Killer
Police Story
The Terminator
Aliens
Lethal Weapon
I'd say FRWL.
Kinky....
I was thinking the same thing. It has an almost ´Hichcockian´, classic thriller feel to it. And it is based on Fleming´s most glamorous, mystical cold war plot. It also contains what is in my view the most iconic performance from one of the era´s most memorable actors.
I'd always say that FRWL has the best cast of all Bond movies and in Robert Shaw the greatest actor who ever played in a Bond movie and I'd even say who gave the best performance in any Bond movie. FRWL is a peak that has never been reached again in the franchise. Not by GF, not by OHMSS, not by CR, not by SF.
True. Forgot to mention Shaw. But he could easily be described as one of the most memorable actors of the era too. He is definitely the most iconic villain/ henchman in the series. I was referring to Connery though... ;)