It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
That's how you quite lazily see the ending, and for that I can't help you.
Did I miss the memo stating that SF is high art or something?
It is the latest episode of my favorite spyshow, that gets more and more pretentious with each new movie. And the action gets less impressive as does the story. 007 cannot protect his boss against a suicidal homicidal maniac which is most certainly not 007 at his most competent. How is that view lazy?- It is the ending made by the director Mendes and everytime he defends his choices I get less impressed.
Like I said, that is how you view it and for that I know I won't ever change your mind. When someone challenges your views the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people is a defense mechanism fueled on stubbornness, so your strong stance on this is no surprise. It is just my view that everyone who chalks the ending down to Bond "losing"/lacking competence miss the entire point of the film and some of its greatest messages while being ignorant to so many of the film's themes. To say it was all Bond's fault is quite simply a lazy, easy way out and shows a lack of thought placed on the ending of the film. The whole film presents us with the theme of moral ambiguity and how there really is no good or bad when it gets down to it. The "good guys" usually presented as MI6 and Bond see themselves as protectors of England, while villains like Silva see themselves as heroes and MI6/Bond as enemies. People in Silva's camp have their own aims where people are killed and institutions are destroyed to reach that said goal, and when you get down to it both sides do what they do because they feel they are the good guys. To those of the same ideology of Bond, Silva is evil and just plain bad, but to those that think like Silva, he is a heroic radical fundamentalist. So, when thinking about this there really are no good guys or bad guys, no winners or losers either, when you look at it closely. We end the film with Silva dead, a man so pathetic he is only alive to die with a woman he has sought vengeance against. He didn't even get the satisfaction of killing M or dying with her on his own terms. Instead, a person "from the shadows" (and quite literally the gunman is in the dark shadows of Skyfall when he shoots his gun) shoots M and that is what causes her death. On the other side of that, Bond has lost a great ally and maternal figure, but manages to survive to tell the tale. As we can see, both men lost more than they ever bargained for, and so Bond nor Silva is a winner or loser. Skyfall is able to eloquently squash any semblance of a victor or loser in its presentation of the ending.
Let us also consider another reason why M's passing is not Bond's fault. Let us look at the situation with eyes open, yes? The entire film has a running theme with M and presents the film's mission quite clearly as her swam song. She is a person who is dedicated, just like Bond is to her duty and she openly states that she won't be going down without a fight and will not stand to leave MI6 in the mess that Silva brought onto it. She is the one who agrees to leave with Bond, and to go in alone so that no more have to die for her. She is the one doing the honorable thing, and is willing to die so that Silva can be stopped; to be the "bait" if you will. Therefore, she dies fighting, and on her own terms, doing the thing she wanted, and nobody else. Her death is nobody elses fault because she courageously put herself out there and faced Silva's onslaught, helping Bond stop him and before she dies from her wound she sees Silva dead, knowing that her duty is done with his termination and passes on.
And to Bond, M will never die. She has instilled in him a great sense of duty and has ridden him of his recklessness to form him into a stubborn yet leveled headed agent. The bulldog she passes on to Bond in her will is a special message that only he can understand, because M's relationship with him was special and completely unlike what she had with the others at MI6. M's final gift of the bulldog is telling him to keep pushing and to never give up no matter what lays ahead of him, a strength she helped to bring out in him. So in the end of the film Bond is stronger than ever for going through these trials. He stands on the roof, looking over London knowing England is safe from Silva, that M's memory will always be with him, and that his past he left at Skyfall is quite literally extinguished and he can begin anew. The ending is in fact the start of a new beginning for him, and though he will always miss M he knows that her and her lessons will always be alive in him, for she is the person who crafted him into the person he has become. For that and more, Bond does not finish the film being a "loser" or "incompetent", as you so ineloquently put it. He IS competent because no matter what faces him he always endures and fights through the challenges before him, and no matter what obstacles stand to face him, he never gives up and always returns to his duty of protecting the realm. Because the measure of a man isn't based on successes and failures. It isn't important how much Bond stumbles, but how many times he is able to get back up and continue on fighting, a better man for his struggles.
There was a very good SF review posted on the HMSS weblog today which really sums this problem up: http://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/more-belated-hmss-reviews-part-i/
(Make sure you read it to the end)
On the question of the least competent performance by Bond, I know this thread is dedicated to the films but I'd like to give a (dis)honourable mention the From Russia, With Love (novel.)
Bond's an absolute idiot in this story. Ignoring the many, many obvious indications - and warnings from Darko Kerim - that he's falling into a trap simply because he falls for Tania. Poor show all round.
The one thing that I found most strange was when they knew that Silva was the culprit and lured him into a trap she could have due to her position ordered loads of other forces around to make sure that Silva would not escape. Two against Silva and his forces is the bit that is a bit iffy for me, even if you call it honorable. She was incompetent to put it mildly, her job was to make sure that Silva would be stopped and her plan was luring him with just 007 around. She failed to do her job properly and that annoys me because in none of her movies this M was this incompetent so perhaps the hearing was very justified, just as a 1 disk with all names of all undercoveragents. I know it is McGuffin but for all purposes a daft one. For me M was perhaps honorable but by NO means the smart operator she used to be.
What I most miss in SF is the aspect of 007 return, finaly a chance to use something from Flemings TMWTGG. Nope Mendes left a large plothole and improbability of an missing agent returning being trusted that quick. It would be against the company rules and if M overruled them she would have shown her imcompetence once more.
For me 007 failed several times, he failed to get the job done in Istanbul, failed Severine, failed MI6 when he allowed Silva to escape and the pursuit was great combined with preposterous (that train was OTT it made an invisible car look sensible). And in the end he went along with M's idea of the two of them against SIlva's unknown army. They had no backup plan or troups or other 00's around to help them.
While I consider your vision the knightly one the execution of the movie was somewhat poor and stupidly in justification.
You and the other PRO SF people seem to talk down on people that point out weak points and they get countered with great visions of grandure and explinations that try to make up for some very weak points. For me SF was an improvement visualy from QoB, storywise it was a step back. CR remains for me the best movie of the Craig series so far because that was essentially a very tight story which showed more of Craigs skills than Mendes attempt to make an epic story. When I saw SF first some stuff annoyed me but on rewatching I found the movie less and less entertaining as my initial view.
I hope that the next director is a decent action director because we need more action and less arty farty, pretentious moviemaking. I want to see Craig get a good spy actioner where he can do his personal thing. That would be nice after Mendes navelstaring excercise.
Indeed a good review but one that quite nicely steers around the weaker points of the movie namely the story and its improbabilities. But I do agree with the points made by this reviewer even if I would not call Silva that great a baddie, but he starts brilliant and becomes more two dimensional with every new scene in the movie.
It could have been a great Bondmovie but alas they chose Mendes who liked the characters but forget to make logic storyline and when he goes OTT as the Bondfans like he fails to make sense ( a trainwreck to stop 007, planned so far ahead???).
Mendes clearly loves the character and the movie does contain some great moments but there is too much pulling me out of the movie by sheer unlogic.
I hope the next Bondmovie will be more action and less of Bonds navelstaring.
At least the oscars recognised the movie's pretentions and awarded the best bit namely the titlesong (which should have been awarded much often with this great franchise imho).
I do not mind an intelligent story but I SF has nothing like that. Perhaps with CR they ran out of decent scripters of ideas.
@SaintMark, the fact that Silva's scheme doesn't really make sense doesn't necessarily mean that Bond is incompetent. In fact, the two things are unrelated.
I happen to believe that plot holes are very rarely a problem for a viewer. Most of us happily wave aside such plot holes in our favourite films but criticise plot holes in films we don't enjoy. When a viewer is engaged by a film, it's much easier to suspend disbelief.
@Matt_Helm, you mentioned OHMSS as combining character development, drama and logic. But the entire film, and Bond's entire plan, hinges on the assumption that Bond and Blofeld have never met and that Blofeld won't recognise him. Yet they met in the previous film (in very extraordinary and unforgettable circumstances) and it's established that Blofeld knows what Bond looks like anyway. So OHMSS abandons both character development and logic. Yet you love OHMSS despite this. That's probably because you enjoy the film so are able to ignore - or hand-wave away - its problems.
GF is a favourite film for many Bond fans and is often cited as one of the best in the series. Yet the plot and character development are completely illogical. We are expected to believe that:
1) Goldfinger will allow a British spy to remain with him whilst he carries out a plan to detonate an atomic bomb in the USA for Communist China. What's more, he actually goes to the trouble of flying Bond over to the USA in his private plane and leaving him in the same room as the bomb, thus allowing him to help deactivate it.
2) Bond is able to discover exactly what Goldfinger is about to do because Goldfinger conveniently decides to explain his plan (along with maps, diagrams and a scale model) to a group of gangsters just yards away from where Bond is held captive. Goldfinger then kills the gangsters - in a clearly pre-planned attack - so the entire briefing was pointless. (Goldfinger even goes to the trouble of fielding questions from Bond afterwards just to make doubly-sure Bond understands exactly what the plan entails.)
3) Pussy Galore, a seasoned criminal who has clearly been working on Operation Grandslam for some time, chooses to switch sides at the last minute and alert the CIA because Bond has a tussle with her in the hay and tells her Goldfinger is quite mad.
All of these are ludicrous holes in the plot defying logic and character development. But I don't care. I love GF, so I just ignore them
Neither of you enjoy SF so the plot problems bother you. But I'd wager that your problems with the plot are a symptom rather than a cause. You probably dislike the film for other reasons and so aren't able to suspend your disbelief as easily.
I too enjoy GF, and find Goldfinger to be great fun. I like to think most of his inscrutable antics in the film are due to his enormous superiority complex. :))
I find that CR put the bar very high for Daniel Craig, even if that "Venice scene" was the worst thing that could happen to an otherwise very good movie and introdcution of DC's 007.
Then we got QoB, which had a fairly decent script. The editing did destroy all soul out of the movie. Where in the Bourne series the editing and shaky-cam added something QoB got really hurt by it. The Killing of Mathis did really annoy me and the way that was handled showed that EON has no clue really what to do with great suporting characters. Mathis & Leiter are actually a worthfull add to the 007-verse.
With SF after the fall I expected something from TMWTGG in the sense that Bond would be treated like somewhat of a leper. Which would be the right thing to do after Bonds absence for so long and the questions his absence/being wounded would raise. Nope straight back into the action as Mendes had other priorities, as Brady did so beautifull illustrate in his response to me. Even if I find it somewhat farfetched.
The heartless response to the killing of Severine by 007 was then something I found hard to accept. This was the 2nd time in two movies where Bond carelessly responded to the death of somebody close to him. I guess with "the bitch is dead" remark from CR EON thought they had something and I dislike the continuation of such a flippant response where in CR it was right and written by Fleming.
The Traincrash was another total stupid idea that made no sense whatsoever, besides a director that realises he needes some moneyshots and has really no clue where to put them.
And while Brady among others have illustrated the trapping of Silva and his army by 007 and M together, it makes no sense at all. The death of M becomes in my view no so much tragic but the result of incompetence on her side and a gross miscalculation of the director into making 007 the superhuman being that alone can fight an flipping army with next to no weaponary at all. They did that more convincingly in the Die Hard movies, and more fun too (I have not seen the last one yet).
For me Daniel Craig is a very good 007, and he is easily the best thing in his movies. But EON fails to make a decent movie for him in which the script and action are well balanced and possible. They seem like in the Brosnan era to be coasting on the things that work in the first outing. Which does neither of them a favor.
Uh, did you miss the part where M doesn't stay out of sight like Bond tells her to and starts shooting at Silva's henchmen? This can't be blamed on Bond or even a script plot hole, M made yet another bad decision in once again not listening to people more competent in the field than she and she got herself killed.
@O'Brady- dead on accurate my Connery brother.
It was Goldfinger. Bond at his worst performance as a field operative. He is told to watch Goldfinger, instead he has to have a fling with his girlfriend and gets her killed...
He trails him to Switzerland and gets Tilly killed...
He gets himself captured and nearly tortured after his stupid moves cost Tilly her life
He escapes from his cell only to be recaptured by Goldfinger's guards
His lame attempt to alert Leiter and the authorities about Operation Grandslam is crushed by Odd Job
He cannot even disarm the nuclear device...
It was the arrival of the calvary in the nick of time who actually saved the day, otherwise he would have been vaporized along with Ft Knox
And it was Pussy Galore who called in the calvary not Bond.
After he warned Pussy about firing guns in planes, he fires one during the fight with Goldfinger.
IMHO Pussy should have been dining with the President and not Bond.
It was by the grace of God that Bond's career survived this assignment.