SKYFALL: Is this the best Bond film?

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  • Posts: 4,139
    TripAces wrote: »
    Easier if you evaluate it this way :

    QOS is something of a disaster. It will always be Craig's weakest entry, in fact it's a mess, and NTTD for reasons already stated doesn't really come into it which leaves only two others.

    CR is superb. Was never really in favor of the reboot idea but Brosnan couldn't continue in the role by that stage and they needed someone other for the role. Craig's debut (after initial skepticism) turned out to be an outstanding success and you can award it the highest of plaudits but somehow it can't quite match Skyfall in terms of overall terms of suspense, thrills and viewing satisfaction.

    Javier Bardem doesn't provide the most memorable villain of the entire series but still commands a strong screen presence. The opening sequence in Turkey is real fun then you got a strong theme song in Adele and from there the action never really lets up. Great climax in Scotland where we learn the movie or film title originates from Bond's ancestral home and Dench's M provides a very poignant moment. I must rate it highest from a personal perspective due to time of release. Maybe it's clouding my judgment over Casino Royale such is the case as to which is ideally better but I made a decision, and stuck with it.

    I get that John Logan's scripts are hit and miss, but he got SF right, and this is mostly because he got the villain right. Silva is one of the most fully-realized, fully-developed villains in the franchise, and he works on two levels.

    1. Logan gave him agency and ability. Once it's established that Silva is a point-and-click villain who can "persuade" people to think/act as he wants, everything becomes possible. This is why the story of the deserted island is important: Silva can program and bend people to his will. A major criticism of SF is that Silva's plan was all "pre-planned" but was it? Or is that just what Silva wants people to think? It's brilliant. Nevertheless, Silva just needed to create the right algorithms and then let the computer (AI, in its earlier forms) do the rest. It's not that Silva predicted MI6's moved weeks or months in advance; he didn't have to. He created the programming to adjust to what MI6 did.

    2. Logan also gave Silva a significant fatal flaw. In this case, it's an obsessive desire to embarrass M and then make his killing of her deeply personal. This goes against what he says he wants: missions in which he isn't "running around." He prefers the pointing and the clicking. But there's the rub. None of that is ever satisfying (see the Bond/Q scene in the museum). He could have killed M in the MI6 explosion. But that simply wasn't enough. The irony, of course, is that being "in the field" is not Silva's strength: it's Bond's. And Silva fails (yes, yes, he does) to accomplish his goal, ultimately killed by the oldest of weapons: a frickin' knife. Again: brilliant.

    Is SF the best Bond film? Yes. For the above reasons and more. And it's not close. I have TB, GF, CR, and FRWL in spots 2-5, and there's not much separation between them. But SF offers just a bit more and stands head and shoulders above all others.

    Interesting points about Silva. I think I wrote the other day how it’s a misreading of the film when some people say Silva wins. By his own standards he completely fails, and even blowing up MI6 is fruitless in the long run.

    I think he’s a wonderful villain. I love the parallels between him and Bond with both being M’s best agents, suffering due to M’s orders, and going off the map for a time before returning after being ‘dead’ as it were. The major difference is when MI6 is attacked Bond realises he has a job to do and selflessly returns, while Silva effectively goes mad because of personal vengeance. While Bond returning for a higher duty is his redemption in this story, Silva’s motivations are what lead to his undoing.
  • j_w_pepperj_w_pepper Born on the bayou, but I now hear a new dog barkin'
    Posts: 9,028
    Silva is probably my second most favourite villain in the franchise (after Fröbe's Goldfinger). Brilliant analysis, @TripAces, and Bardem's performance (meant to be at least borderline over the top) also contributes to my assessment, which is in line with both GF and SF being in my top five.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited November 7 Posts: 16,382
    Seve wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »

    Javier Bardem doesn't provide the most memorable villain of the entire series but still commands a strong screen presence.

    I think that's fair. Maybe a bit harsh on Bardem: he's not far off the most memorable Bond villain. I'd say he's certainly way up there and the best one, in, I dunno: probably 40 years. Mads is right up there too though.

    Yes, I'd rate Bardem my favourite Craig era villain, just ahead of Mads, then bit of a gap back to Remi, a huge gap further back to Waltz, with Amalric so far back he gets lapped by the field.

    I do like Amalric though, I do believe him as a slimy, unhinged baddie. I guess he's perhaps not very big in his performance which makes him slightly unmemorable, but I think he works really well in the film. I often think he could have played Le Chiffre and done a good job.
    I actually think the Craig films all had pretty good baddies really, less hit and miss than Brosnan's or Moore's.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,183
    What brings down Greene is that he never feels like an adversary. As far as Bond is concerned, Greene is just a middle man with information he needs. Once he gets it he just leaves him in a desert.

    Imagine if they got rid of Medrano and had Greene be who killed Camille’s family. At least there would be a bit more conflict between Bond and Camille because they have the same target but where he wants information out of him she just wants to kill him.
  • edited November 7 Posts: 4,139
    What brings down Greene is that he never feels like an adversary. As far as Bond is concerned, Greene is just a middle man with information he needs. Once he gets it he just leaves him in a desert.

    Imagine if they got rid of Medrano and had Greene be who killed Camille’s family. At least there would be a bit more conflict between Bond and Camille because they have the same target but where he wants information out of him she just wants to kill him.

    That's actually quite neat. I like it! I think Camille in QOS is a character who shows Bond the pitfalls of going for revenge, hence why he doesn't kill Yussief by the end. This would have tightened that a bit more and strengthened it.

    We could have gotten a more streamlined fight between Bond and Greene too. Instead of cross cutting to the General and Camille we could have gotten a TB type thing where Greene is about to get the upper hand on Bond, but Camille kills him just in time. Perhaps they'd need to find another way for Bond to get the information about Quantum, but that seems like an easy rewrite (I dunno, maybe Greene says something about Vesper to taunt Bond during the fight that gives him a clue about Yussief, which is very in keeping with the character being a nasty little sh*t who gets inside people's heads). And Greene would have gotten a better death.
  • edited November 7 Posts: 1,340
    What brings down Greene is that he never feels like an adversary. As far as Bond is concerned, Greene is just a middle man with information he needs. Once he gets it he just leaves him in a desert.

    Imagine if they got rid of Medrano and had Greene be who killed Camille’s family. At least there would be a bit more conflict between Bond and Camille because they have the same target but where he wants information out of him she just wants to kill him.

    Is the death in the desert a homage to The Eiger Sanction?
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited November 7 Posts: 16,382
    What brings down Greene is that he never feels like an adversary. As far as Bond is concerned, Greene is just a middle man with information he needs. Once he gets it he just leaves him in a desert.

    That is literally the same situation as with Le Chiffre though: they want to bring him in so they can interrogate him. And I think there's not much wrong with Le Chiffre's role in that story.
    Imagine if they got rid of Medrano and had Greene be who killed Camille’s family. At least there would be a bit more conflict between Bond and Camille because they have the same target but where he wants information out of him she just wants to kill him.

    Yes that's nice, although I do like all of the stuff with Greene seducing Medrano, and then revealing that he's screwed him at the end, that is good.
    They could have done more with Camille's journey though- the underground dam is kind of like what the stingers were to Bond in LTK, the moment where they realise there's more going on than just their personal revenge.
  • TripAcesTripAces Universal Exports
    Posts: 4,585
    mtm wrote: »
    Seve wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »

    Javier Bardem doesn't provide the most memorable villain of the entire series but still commands a strong screen presence.

    I think that's fair. Maybe a bit harsh on Bardem: he's not far off the most memorable Bond villain. I'd say he's certainly way up there and the best one, in, I dunno: probably 40 years. Mads is right up there too though.

    Yes, I'd rate Bardem my favourite Craig era villain, just ahead of Mads, then bit of a gap back to Remi, a huge gap further back to Waltz, with Amalric so far back he gets lapped by the field.

    I do like Amalric though, I do believe him as a slimy, unhinged baddie. I guess he's perhaps not very big in his performance which makes him slightly unmemorable, but I think he works really well in the film. I often think he could have played Le Chiffre and done a good job.
    I actually think the Craig films all had pretty good baddies really, less hit and miss than Brosnan's or Moore's.

    What I liked about Greene was that he was an "out in the open" villain: a very public figure. To most he was a successful businessman and political influencer, even presented himself as eco-friendly (the Greene Project fundraiser was a nice touch). But there is a dark side, of course. I really thought Blofeld should have been portrayed similarly.
  • Posts: 387
    I think in QOS, Camille should have been the metamorphosis character and revealed as the villain. That would have been so much crazier.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    edited November 10 Posts: 6,296
    Stamper wrote: »
    I think in QOS, Camille should have been the metamorphosis character and revealed as the villain. That would have been so much crazier.

    That would be crazy.

    Olga does not get enough credit for this film. I think she's good in it and has easy chemistry, especially with Amalric.

    Like SP, QoS has solid building blocks that don't quite cohere--IMHO there were too many disconnected action sequences. Another draft of the script would have helped.
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