Skyfall for those who've seen it - open spoilers

Cafe Society
221

I think the point is that Silva was playing with Bond. He figured Bond would be better than his thugs, so he wanted to see what Bond would do, and have Bond burn his booby traps and whatnot. Then Silva makes his dramatic entrance with a helicopter, after Bond had is “is that it?” moment. It’s cat and mouse time.

He didn’t know about the tunnel, so he was hoping to flush them out, and thus have his final face to face with M. Of course, burning her in the mansion would work as a fallback option. But the tunnel got M out, and Bond outsmarted the helicopter with a propane tank (:dubious:), and then Silva saw the flashlight.

Apparently the helicopter was an AW101. It is not a missile platform or gunship, it is a transport vehicle. It is a kind of assault helicopter, for putting soldiers on the field or evacuating groups. It is not armed with forward-facing pilot activated weapons (at least not Silva’s), but did have a .50 caliber mounted in the crew compartment. Thus when Bond starts shooting, the helicopter pivots sideways before the .50 cal can shoot back.

And again, Silva didn’t want M shot by the .50 cal, he was yelling at his men that they were not to touch her. He wanted to be the one to kill her. The firebombs were a flushout technique.

222

I didn’t read most of this thread, and have nothing to say other than I didn’t like the gloomy, dark, 007 meets Die Hard Dark Knight tone of the entire movie.

223

Any thoughts on this?

The Adele music video has some good images from the movie (although with a bit of repetition): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-gLRp5bSpw

224

That, and from a tactical point of view Silva could throw warm bodies into the meatgrinder, force anyone inside to use up all their resources, and then follow-up with the real heavy hitting weaponry. It’s not neccessarily a perfect plan from a military point of view, but then Silva was working more with mercenary thugs than special forces, and he doesn’t get backup.

225

Googling, the director says in an interview that the writer just came up with it as the name of the manor house because it sounded classy, and then extended the name to the whole film.

So if there’s a deeper reason, its locked in the writers subconscious somewhere.

226

Ah, thanks!

227

I just watched it and loved it. I LOVED the moment when they opened the garage door, saw the old Bondmobile, and the Bond guitar theme came on strong in the background. Also loved when Bond fired it at the bad guys. When the bad guys shot it up, it seemed to kick up his rage a notch.

Did the guy who was dragged away by the dragon/lizard in the pit remind anyone else of OddJob?

228

I loved the return of the DB5 too. It’s such a beautiful car.

It’s been a while since I saw Skyfall, and even longer since Casino Royale, so I may have forgotten some detail that would reveal the answer to my question, but. . .

The DB5 in *Skyfall *is obviously the original Bondmobile fitted out by MI6 with guns and ejector seats and everything. But how did Bond (the *Skyfall *Bond) come to own it? Is it the same car he won playing poker in Casino Royale? And if so, how did the villain (I forget his name) come into possession of a car that was the property of Her Majesty’s Secret Service?

229

Bond and M stopped off at a storage unit before their trip north. The stated reason being to ditch modern cars with their electronics and such so they couldn’t be hacked and tracked. Except they then plant a trail, defeating the purpose of not being tracked. I presume the trail is delayed so they can’t be intercepted in route?

Anyway, I don’t recall it being explicit who owns the storage unit. It is conceivable it is MI-6 property. Else Bond won it in an office raffle? Bought it on auction from the surplus one year because it was cool?

230

I assumed it had been sold off by MI6 as obsolete… but still suited Bond’s purposes, and he liked the car due to a mix of good taste, nostalgia and you-never-know preparedness.

231

I am confused by the timeline / reboot but the “Goldfinger” DB5 was crashed in Goldfinger’s complex so I agree with the above poster, how did Bond get it back!?

232

That’s nothing, Felix has changed ethnicities and grown his leg back. Its pretty clear the Bond series doesn’t pretend to be consistent between movies.

233

So it’s not the Casino Royale DB5?

234

I think that was so they’d be tracked by the bad guy and no one else.

235

I’d forgotten the one from Casino Royale, but remembered it when it was on cable a few days ago. My take is that it is the same car, that he had it shipped back to
Blighty and Q division pimped it for him and he modified it himself in his spare time.

236

The Great Big Dilemma (ISTM) for all Bond directors/writers is to convincingly convey that Bond’s one true heroic skill is his capacity to improvise. He always has the courage to go in to an insanely dangerous situation without pausing, calling for back-up, etc, because of his supreme confidence that something will turn up, and he’ll be able to finagle a way to complete the mission, save the girl and get out.

The problem is that there are only so many times you can rely on wicked ninja skillz to achieve this before ho-hum sets in in the audience. Hence the rise of the gadgets.

The problem with the gadgets is that we have to be introduced to them (if we didn’t know Bond’s car had an ejector seat in Goldfinger, its unexpected deployment would would be a ridiculous deus ex machina). But the very fact of their introduction creates a Chekhov’s Gun problem. Every gadget introduced by Q has to be used in a one-to-one mapping onto crises, and this pretty effectively kills the spontaneity necessary for improvisation to shine.

The problem progresses when considering the villain. In principle, the villain should be allowed to be as adaptable to circumstance as Bond, but to project über-villainy, his evil stunts have to be so over the top that they require too much production to really be spontaneous. Hence the eye rolling at Silva’s train smash. This can morph too easily into ridiculous hyper competence - in order to pull off seemingly at will villainous deeds, the villain has to have improbably perfect crystal ball gazing ability in order to divine the future actions of other characters so as to set up his dramatic stunts.

The solution? For mine, it is to focus on character. Make improvisation look hard, not just a routine “with one bound, Jack was free” moment. Try to articulate why Bond has to make seemingly suicidal decisions to take on impossible odds so that it becomes a narrative necessity, not just a trope.

And I agree with what others have said above - it is really, really hard to come up with a credible villain with a credible evil program after all these years that surfs the fine line between providing the delicious frisson of threatening the end of civilisation and being the Green Goblin.

As for Skyfall, I loved it despite its faults. It seems to me that M’s defence of the continued need for MI6 rings a little hollow in this case. If (as is evidenced in Skyfall) the reason for keeping MI6 is to protect us all from rogue MI6 agents, then we are through the looking glass.

237

One interesting aspect of the film is that thematically, Silva isn’t the villain.

Consider who traditional it is for the villain to have a distinctive henchman, who is really dangerous and distinctive. The lead villain is usually intriguing and strong-willed, intelligent and cunning. However, it’s the lieutenant who is the cool, frightning, and dangerous guy. Consider which one Silva really maps to. Sure, you could see him as the lead villain. But he’s more like the evil Left Hand… except then there’s the question of the who the villain is.

Well, it’s M.

M is the evil mastermind here.

No, no - here me out. I know she’s not behind Silva’s mad rampage. But she’s acting like a villain throughout the story, and eventually it gets her killed. Likewise, we see (without any change in fundamental character) that she’s not really changed. She’s not making hard choices - she’s using people to meet her own vision of the world without thought of loyalty, decency, or even consequence. Just like any number of Bond villains.

Her death at the end isn’t a tragedy, and she seems to know it. It’s the just comeuppance for her evil deeds just like any Bond villain; the difference is that she’s not necessarily an evil person, just one who went too far in pursuit of a goal she thought worthwhile and then kept going. And we see over and over that Silva’s deeds weren’t really all that different from hers; the difference was that Silva didn’t lie to himself about it. He’s the dark mirror of his former master - not actually of Bond; he’s what Bond might turn into if M had burned him in a slightly different way. And at the end, Bond is defending her out of something she doesn’t seem to had for others: personal loyalty.

All in all, the movie actually plays out a lot like a Shakespearian tragedy; good men who do bad things and bad men who pay evil unto evil. Good wins out but we understand that the line between them isn’t quite as thick as we’d want.

238

That’s an interesting take on things, but I don’t completely buy it.

M did or ordered bad things for a good cause - the preservation of Great Britain, a constitutional monarchy under the rule of law, and the furtherance of its overseas interests. Silva did or ordered bad things just because of his quest for revenge. M is motivated by patriotism and dedication to duty. Silva is narcissistic selfishness carried to the ultimate evil extreme. Nothing we learn of M’s sins justifies the carnage, destruction and outright murders committed by Silva.

239

I really liked the film. The only thing that puzzles me is why Tim Curry didn’t want to be credited for his outstanding performance as the villain Silva, and instead chose to use the fake name “Javier Bardem” in the credits.
???

:stuck_out_tongue:

240

It’s mostly about Sam Mendes for me.

If Boyle hadn’t done it I wanted Mendes to do the Olympic Opening Ceremony: proper man-of-the-people bloke.