Not having read them I have to rely on Wikipedia:
So how does that fit Bond’s hiding out after his parents’ deaths and coming out no longer a boy? Sorry but I was expecting a story of violent murder and torture leading to his childhood trauma that was so alluded to, not a boy living abroad whose parents died mountain climbing. Is there more to it than the Wiki summary?
Is there an unspoken rule that all bond villains must have a deformity?
Hmm rich orphan takes up fighting crime with hi tech gadgets. Sounds like Bond is Batman.
Well, yes. It provides an easy visual contrast with the (normally) dashing looking and impeccably dressed Bond.
Nope, not anything more than that. Perhaps because the character is larger than life people expect events around him to be larger than life as well. (In fact, I think this is the crux of a large amount of the criticism being given to this movie- it wasn’t “big” enough, the plot was too “real”, etc.) Is it that no one expects James Bond, as a child, to want to hide for two days after hearing both his parents are dead? To me, it makes him more real, more like me, more identifiable, so when things happen to him, I care. I don’t want this fantasy super agent who doesn’t bleed or doesn’t have a hair out of place or doesn’t himself get emotionally invested in things. (If he doesn’t care, why should I?) I recognize that a lot of people still want that, though. And no, the wiki info and the movie info doesn’t quite mesh. But they’re both bits that can easily be put together as a plausible background story for Bond and his parents. I think it’s up to the audience to carry some of the weight of a movie and figure out some things for themselves.
1 - They reference the climbing accident in Goldeneye.
2 - I really hated that they cemented this Bond’s name as actually James Bond. Now I have to pretend it didn’t happen for the rest of eternity.
3 - Dirty and gritty is fine as long as the scope of it is a little grander. I want secret lairs, henchmen in uniforms, and a grander evil plan. Killing M should have been plan B with plan A being WW3 that would ensue when China finds out that there are MI agents EVERYWHERE.
4 - Build off point 3, they should have had some scenes of the outed agents being systematically eliminated.
5 - Again, reboot Q if you must. Replace M sure. Why Moneypenny? Q and M are positions. Moneypenny was a person and shouldn’t be replaced by a person that’s completely different in many regards. Field agent moneypenny? The desk job is receptionist? Do I want to play the race card? I would have been more OK with a slight shift and calling her Honeypenny or something.
I will say I would have enjoyed the Daniel Craig experience a lot more if it wasn’t under the Bond umbrella. James Bond is better than Jason Borne because Bond can finish whatever mission Borne’s assigned but in a suit, drunk off martinis, and in between marathon sex sessions with international hotties. Oh he also walks out of it without a scratch and a million dollars richer after a few hands of baccarat while waiting for the mark to show up.
So yes. Dark and brooding might be the zeitgeist for movies now but when you marry that personality and still try to apply the formula? It seems like Craig is just going through the motions. He’s ordering a martini for the sake of ordering a martini. He put it all on red even though deep down he wants to return it to evidence at MI6. He may be having sex with a gorgeous woman by the beach but he’s giving the thousand yard stare while he’s mid-coitus.
I think it would do the franchise well to reboot it with a super-young (like mid20’s bond) who REALLY isn’t ready for the spy life and is splurging British Intelligence resources at Ibiza and has to reconcile the killing with all the partying he does. Showing up to briefings hungover, bedding multiple models in Monaco, zipping around in a gull wing douchemobile borrowed from Q, etc. Then he has to earn the 00. He has to go toe-to-toe with some fierce ass Chechnyan. He’s a fish out of water in the central Asian steppes and realizes that he is out of shape and out of his element. Lucks into a kill but a close call and has to think if this is the right career path for him. If he really does love England and all that. DUnno. Just my 2 cents.
“He came out a man,” Kinkaid said melodramatically. Sorry but with that and the suggestions of such unresolved childhood psychotrauma, with the big parent (and parent figure) abandonment/loss issues running as the movie’s theme, with the contrast set up between Silva’s and Bond’s responses to such losses, one does expect something … more.
In any case, not having been reared on the literary Bond I have always preferred the Bond I saw in Connery and still see in the characterization by Craig (even as it is written out by this backstory): Bond is a very well trained very well equipped thug at his heart, a thug who knows how to well play the role of refined and who loves his country, but a thug nevertheless. Him actually being of upper social class and having learned to act the thug is much less appealing.
Seen any of the older Bond movies lately? The full-volume Bond theme is almost exclusively reserved for scenes like “driving past a beach view”, “walking into a hotel to get a room” and “meeting with the local contact”. Pulling out the classic theme music for the classic car was unquestionably a nod to how they were both used, once upon a time.
I wasn’t a big fan of this one. It was serviceable enough, but I was hoping for Casino Royale and got You Only Live Twice. I’m really not enthusiastic about the signs that they’re taking the Bond series back to the goofy over-the-top formula.
I found that very irritating that a “gamekeeper” would do this.
And they didn’t pay it off. It is the cue for action in a James Bond film. They used the iconic theme several times and never paid it off. The final battle, where it should have been playing, was more concerned with big explosions than building to a climax. The first battle on the moors was exciting, then they lost all the momentum when the helicopter arrived.
I read them all in 1964, probably before you were born. The novels and movies have virtually no connection other than name and I wouldn’t look to them for an answer to a story written some sixty years later.
There are hundreds of action films. What distinguishes one from the next is the character they’re built around. A Rambo flick looks like a Rambo flick. Die Hard is just another blow-em-up without Bruce Willis. The whole point of a movie franchise is that it has a recognizable focus. I guess you wouldn’t be offended if we based the next Lord Of The Rings movie on a Chronicles Of Narnia script. They’re both fantasy adventures with short people in them.
According to IMDB, it’s an Anderson Wheeler double rifle. I didn’t know such things existed, but they clearly do.
I liked it, but I have to say, that was definitely the weirdest remake of “Home Alone” I’ve ever seen. I’m assuming that the plastic wrap with glue rigged to the fan with the feathers will be a deleted scene on the DVD.
I had this exact thought as I was watching it.
I feel much better now.
No, it’s not used as a cue for action in a James Bond film; not since the Craig versions, anyway.
The Ageist card!! Yay!! What does reading the books have anything to do when I was born?
And I know we’re talking about Skyfall, but the death of his parents in a climbing accident was indeed referenced directly by Alex Trevelyan in Goldeneye, so perhaps the movies have a bit more than a virtual connection to the books.
No, I won’t be offended, because those mean nothing to me. If you want to quantify a James Bond flick in such simple terms, I can see why something like changing the use of the Bond theme puts you off the movies. But for me, this is exactly why I said I think this particular movie has finally found the balance between the farcical fantasy of what Bond means for some people, and the new reality that others wish to see in a “Bond film”.
Clearly, YMMV.
The plot was ridiculous and seriously flawed. But the action was riveting, the characters were great, the emotional arcs worked well, and the cinematography (?) was beautiful in some parts, especially the fire at night, and under the ice.
But I think the Bond films are starting to become anachronistic. Any future films should be rebooted as period pieces set during their original time.
I’m probably just a sap, but I was thinking they were setting up M to retire with Kincaide.
The flashlight was my main peeve also. I really thought that M was doing it on purpose to lead Silva to her, but then it turned out that she hadn’t kept her pistol.
This may be an architectural style as we saw the same type of rooftops in Taken 2.
One gripe I had was spoilers in the trailers. By the last of the trailers, I was joking that a moderately skilled video editor could have assembled 90% of Skyfall from YouTube clips:
Hard drive with the identities of deep cover agents being stolen.
Bond chasing bad guy on a motorcycle.
Bond chasing bad guy on a train.
Bond using an excavator to get at a bad guy on the train, knocking cars off the flatbed and tearing into a passenger car.
Bond fighting bad guy on top of the train.
Bond getting shot by his own agent.
Bond falling off bridge.
Bond “dying.”
M writing Bond’s obituary.
Bond impressing the locals with his drinking prowess.
The terrorist bombing in London.
Bond returning to London and reporting for duty.
Bond meeting the new Q.
Bond getting his new signature PPK.
Bond training on a gun range.
Bond getting shaved by Eve.
Bond meeting Severin in a casino.
Bond taking a shower with Severin.
Bond captured and tortured by Silva.
Silva captured by MI6 and placed in an isolation cell.
Silva escaping and being chased by Bond.
Bond almost getting run down by a subway car.
Bond catching Silva only to have Silva detonate another bomb and dropping a subway train on top of Bond.
Etc. etc.
About the only things that weren’t spoiled for me were:
The death of M.
The reveal of Moneypenny.
I have only myself to blame as no one was forcing me to view these teasers and trailers ala Clockwork Orange but I have a feeling that my Skyfall experience would have been greatly enhanced had I been able to go into the theater cold.
C’est la vie.
Oh, that happens in every Bond movie. There are always dozens of innocent bystanders, who don’t get hurt, but maybe their cars are wrecked, or their wedding disrupted and cake destroyed, or their home demolished, or their antiques smashed, and maybe left with severe PTSD.
I think the same roofs were in the recent Bourne movie too. Those roofs have become a popular cinema trope!
