Your pre-trailer thoughts on Skyfall

Okay...so with every tidbit, new item, leak, speculation you've heard so far...what is your early verdict? Before the benefit of a trailer...

I don't have an answer but it's certainly no where near the doom and gloom this forum seems lean on.

To balance out this forum's doom and gloom, I feel like I have to start arguing that SKYFALL will be, in fact, The Best Bond Film Ever Made.

Harmsway wrote:

To balance out this forum's doom and gloom, I feel like I have to start arguing that SKYFALL will be, in fact, The Best Bond Film Ever Made.

The you must be employed by EON.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

To balance out this forum's doom and gloom, I feel like I have to start arguing that SKYFALL will be, in fact, The Best Bond Film Ever Made.

The you must be employed by EON.

Fool, I am EON.

Mixed. Sometimes I feel there's potential, then something comes up to give me pause. Put another way, after the hype from Quantum, I'm inclined to be very cautious.

Makeshift Python wrote:

I don't have an answer but it's certainly no where near the doom and gloom this forum seems lean on.

Harmsway wrote:

To balance out this forum's doom and gloom, I feel like I have to start arguing that SKYFALL will be, in fact, The Best Bond Film Ever Made.

This, pretty much.

What's interesting is the poll question phrases itself as "are you confident about Skyfall". And in that case, no, I am not. Confident is definitely what I am not. Despite all the talent involved, despite the fact that, yes, I hope Skyfall is good, yes I want Skyfall to be good, yes there is a chance Skyfall will be good, I am not confident. If you had asked me after CR if I was confident about QOS, I would've answered yes, absolutely. But QOS and everything that's followed -- the long wait, DMC, CB, MGM's difficulties, Babs, that damned Women's Day video, etc. etc. has just left me with no confidence in Bond as a franchise under current management. Which is depressing.

But the nice aspect of that is that if the combined talents of all the amazing people involved actually survive and make a great product, it will be all that more amazing and enjoyable for me, as opposed to QOS, which I went into with high expectations and still remains the only Bond film I don't own in some format or another (and that includes CR '54, '67 and NSNA)

Generally, pretty positive. The casting of the Bond girls and this talk of Bond discussing his childhood are really the only red flags so far, in my mind. Besides those two things...Mendes has convinced me that he is genuinely trying to create the best Bond movie he can and I think Skyfall will surpass both CR and QOS. From what we know about the production so far, this film seems to have a quiet confidence and a bit of a swagger that I like. They're keeping things under wraps very well, and the cast and crew appear to be very excited about the script and the film. I'm hoping for the best.

Oh no, it sucks because Babs is a feminist liberal feminist...but I'll go see it anyway.

Oh, no, is sucks because it's a film ... but I'll go see it anyway.

I'm still fairly confident, because I thnk EON will have learned from mistakes made by QoS, and by the sounds of it, are trying to emulate the success of CR - which is a good thing in my book.

I'm not happy with the shaved hair they've given Craig in this film, and don't like some of the things I'm hearing about Bond discussing childhood, etc. but I'm guessing this will be a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in the film, which is being blown out of all proportion.

But otherwise, I think EON will deliver this time round, careful to amend mistakes made by the last film.

I'll do my best to approach it with a completely open (read vacant) mind. It seems they are aiming for a different mood to the preceeding two pictures and that is a positive imo, poe faced emo pretention and Bond are not happy bedfellows imo so its only those leanings that give me any concern.

The 'Bond discusses his childhood' could be something as simple as him saying that he regrets his parents dying when he was young, and that he'd have liked the chance to have gotten to know them better. Which would be fine by me.

I'll give it a bash.

I voted "no" primarily because I sense SF could go down the same political path QOS blazed. That would be a shame, because the dramatis personae associated with SF are the best we've seen in a Bond film in ages.

I voted "no". I'm intentionally hating the movie now so that when it actually comes out my expectations will be so far down that my feelings towards Skyfall will have no place to go but up, and I will love the movie and think it's the best Bond film ever.

What I find interesting is that this publicity photo:



....was taken back in 1986 and distributed to the media and computers hadn't even been invented yet.

Even this somewhat recent photo of Craig on the set of Casino Royale is better than nothing:



And here we sit in 2012 with everyone connected to everyone else on the Internet, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, etc...and nary a publicity photo from EON except a picture of Craig's "perfectly formed ass" on the edge of a swimming pool. Where are the set pictures of Craig with the secondary Bond Girls? Where are the pictures of Craig with Merlot and Harris? You'd think EON and SONY had never heard of publicity, marketing, or social media.

You don't really need to release photos eight months in advance to market a Bond film.

My bet's that they're keeping it under wraps for now, but by April-May (last two months of filming) the marketing will kick off.

What I'm looking forward to most is Thomas Newman's score. That will effect my enjoyment of the film above anything, and David Arnold's score for QOS is probably why I deluded myself to thinking the flick better than CR, until I saw it on DVD.

Jack Wade wrote:

You don't really need to release photos eight months in advance to market a Bond film.

Agreed. You don't have to; James Bond will probably sell himself. But major film productions *traditionally* do. That picture of Craig with Murino and Greene was released how many months in advance of the film? At least 6 or 7. Maybe earlier. I think they were filming in the Bahamas back in March of 2006.

Even if you don't think they need to release footage and pictures and interviews, you have to admit the way they've been conducting the p.r. on this film has been remarkably different than previous Bond films. Makes me wonder why they aren't taking advantage of all the free publicity they could be getting from the world's media. It better be because the film is great and super-special and Mendes needs to keep it under wraps. If we wait 12 months for the film and all we get is another QUANTURD OF SOLACE I'm going to have a psychotic, nervous break-down in November.

Jack Wade wrote:

You don't really need to release photos eight months in advance to market a Bond film.

It wasn't always that way. The Good Morning America stories for The Living Daylights came out nine months before that movie was released. For the new Batman movie, there was a teaser trailer out at least eight months before its release date, and Batman right now is a bigger box office draw than Bond.

My pre-trailer thoughts? SKYFALL will by and large be awesome.

I'm sure that there will be a couple of elements I'll end up not liking (e.g. the theme song, a couple of embarrassing "emotional" scenes), but, hey, Bond films are not tailored to my own personal specifications so I guess I'll have to take it on the chin.

But I reckon SKYFALL will be excellent on the whole.

Sharky wrote:

David Arnold's score for QOS is probably why I deluded myself to thinking the flick better than CR, until I saw it on DVD.

It is :)

I voted yes, by the way.

jet set willy wrote:

I'm still fairly confident, because I thnk EON will have learned from mistakes made by QoS, and by the sounds of it, are trying to emulate the success of CR - which is a good thing in my book.

Some of it may have been mistakes, some may have been sheer bad luck. Craig himself virtually panned Solace when he said....

Quote :

On “Quantum”, we were fucked. We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, “Never again”, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not.’

This time around, they had the time, if not globetrotting resources (re budget cuts) to do it better.

His low cut doesn't bother me...