Skyfall: a surprising disappointment

Seve wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

Lazenby was great, but that aside. ;)

by the way, I was referring to his decision to abandon the role after one movie, rather than his actual performance in the role
;)

Ahh! I see, said the blind man. Yes of course!

now that I've seen the movie I would like to revisit this

GK wrote:

If there's one scene that encapsulates this entire movie, it's the scene where M is reciting pretentious poetry interspersed with action scenes involving Bond. The inter-cut action scenes are boring but that doesn't matter. In Mendes hands, it's the pretensions that are important. The action scenes are only there to add symbolic weight to the words of the poem -- or to be strung together pieces of "art" and paraded as a Bond movie.

fortunately this is not the case, the poetry reading is only intercut with a straightforward race between Bond and Silva to the next actual action sequence, which is the shootout in the hearing room. In fact the action sequences in this movie a quite adequate and something of an improvement on the nauseating shaky cam fest endured in QOS

GK wrote:

That's all forgotten as Bond goes from being a rookie (though, at times, an unbelievably skilled rookie) to being all washed-up.

the superficial rookie angle was never very convincing, given Craig's actual age and appearance, I'm relieved they've moved on

GK wrote:

The best Bond movies are somewhat serious but always fun (though they should never be silly or attempt to be comedies). Producers, you got to 50 years by making fun movies. OHMSS was great as a one-off stand-alone. You'd have never reached 50 making something so heavy over and over -- anymore than you would have gotten there by making "Moonraker" over and over. Even OHMSS though, had some silly-ness in addition to major plot faults.

true but the audience of today seems to be in the mood for "heavy" over and over, when their not I'm sure Bond will adapt again, personally I found Skyfall had the best dry humour out of the Craig series so far

GK wrote:

Daniel Craig is a great actor. However... Half the fun of a Bond movie used to be simply watching Bond be Bond. Unfortunately, this is not so with Craig's emo Bond. Craig would make a better villain than a Bond.

I too felt Craig would have made a better Bond villain, but I've moved on, I enjoyed him "being Bond" in this one more than his previous two outings

GK wrote:

I like the idea of a young computer expert assisting Bond (even if all the "computer work" by Q in this movie is ridiculous and unbelievable -- and the graphics look like something from the 80s after we were JUST given REALLY GOOD graphics for the computer work in "Quantum of Solace"). However, shouldn't someone older, with more experience, be creating gadgets?

modern film makers are still struggling to come to terms with the computer age, where so much can be done by simply tapping a keyboard, which however, is not visually stimulating, and so we get silly graphics of swirling whirlpools of numbers which suddenly resolve themselves in a map (yeah right)

GK wrote:

Now, let's get to those plot faults... First, why does Bond go AWOL and become addicted to alcohol and pills? It's never explained. Is it simply because he was accidentally shot? One minute, he's on top of his game fighting on top of a train. The next, he's all washed-up but we don't know why. Bond can't take a bullet? He's sulking.

he was wearing an earpiece, so he heard her say "take the shot", his boss has betrayed him and almost got him killed, he survives but he has lost his faith. He now feels confused and questions whether his career has been a waste of his time, he avoids facing these unpalatable questions in a haze of partying, booze and casual sex. as usual it's the mental scars not the physical which take longest to heal with Craig Bond

GK wrote:

An attack on MI6 pulls him out of it. Really? Why doesn't the knowledge of those infiltrated Quantum agents embedded in MI6, or that dangerously still missing hard drive, keep him from going into sulk-mode in the first place? Surely they're at least as great a threat to MI6 -- maybe Quantum is even behind the recent attack. Why does MI6 not attempt to recover Bond's body after he's thought killed? Is it not at least possible that he had obtained the hard drive just before he was shot and that he has it on his person? Did MI6 not send another double oh after the hard drive after Bond said "the hell with it" for three months?

who's to say they didn't do all those things? but they clearly didn't succeed and so…

GK wrote:

MI6 is attacked with explosives... How did Silva get the explosives into the building?

this is explained, Silva used his super hacking skills to take over the buildings heating system, which is apparently all controlled by computer these days, then releases gas and set off an explosion, how feasible this is I don't know

GK wrote:

Bond breaks into M's home. He also did this in "Casino Royale" -- a movie in which he also remotely hacked her computer. How does this behavior not get him court-martialed -- especially after he just went AWOL? It's an obvious attempt by the producers to make Bond more Bourne-like but Bond is not Bourne. He works FOR queen and country not AGAINST them -- or, at least, he shouldn't work against them.

my only issue with this is it shows how easy it would have been for Silva to just grab her from there anytime he felt like it, but I guess he is also interested in causing damage to the organisation and having M suffer slowly in a professional sense as well as personal

GK wrote:

Shanghai. Three "bad guys" (we later learn) have someone in a room that they want to kill. Do they simply kill him? No. They fly in a hit man to shoot him from a neighboring skyscraper. Bond coldly watches the murder without interfering. Then Bond quickly out-fights the hit man and accidentally kills him -- the same man he was unable to kill on top of the train. Now that Bond is all washed-up and unable to fight, he is suddenly able to vanquish him quite readily. Why did Silva, who's been monitoring nearly everything at MI6, not warn his hit man that Bond was pursuing him? I did enjoy the silhouetted fight.

what the villains are up to is unimportant, I've read one idiotic explanation, and if that was true, then I think the director made a wise decision to leave it vague in the movie. I've also read another very intriguing and far better explanation, which the actual script writer probably didn't even consider. in any case, what they are up to is unimportant, although it's somewhat disturbing that Bond doesn't choose to act before the killing. Bond is now a gnarly veteran, perhaps he can no longer be bothered to turn up for practise, but he raises his game in real life? he has an adrenaline rush? injured hero's who miraculously recover their skills is nothing new in action movies

GK wrote:

Macao. The same three "bad guys" who couldn't kill a man that they had surrounded and isolated in a room (and had to hire someone to murder him), decide to kill Bond in a crowded casino. They're not worried about anyone seeing. They don't wait to try to kill him outside. They attack him in the casino -- but without simply pulling a gun on him. They first allow Severine (another good performance) to speak with him but don't bother to find our what she learned before trying to kill him. I did enjoy the Bondian Komodo dragons.

they expect him to think they just want to take him to see the boss, that he will come quietly and not make a scene, they don't know that the girl has tipped him off as to their true intentions

GK wrote:

Next we meet Silva on his island lair. It's a great scene with a great performance by Bardem. The trouble is, it makes no sense. We are to believe that this man, formerly of MI6, is motivated by revenge and wants to kill M -- maybe attacking MI6 and NATO first for greater revenge even though this represents the same kind of betrayal to his compatriots that he himself has suffered.
We don't know how Silva obtained his release from his Chinese captors (whose hands M had betrayed him into) but we do know it was many years ago. Does this great (we learn) former agent immediately track down M to seek his revenge upon gaining his freedom -- the very reason, he says, that life continues to "cling" to him? No. He somehow becomes an amazing computer expert (better than the genius young Q who is outsmarted by Silva). Silva becomes a sort of computer-espionage expert for hire and builds a private army. Apparently, this is all merely to pass the time while he continues to think, for years, about getting his revenge on M -- not worrying that the "little old lady" might well die of natural causes or retire before he gets to her and her MI6.

he wants M to suffer professional humiliation as part of his revenge, as a man whos' personality has been twisted by his terrible experiences he no longer sees the irony in his betraying fellow spies. wasn't he always a computer hacking expert? and it takes time to build up the funds to run a super villain's organisation, recruit the right staff, locate a suitable island lair etc

GK wrote:

He and Bond are the two lone survivors that M has created - -as Silva explains to Bond. Really? Bond is all that's left of the 00s or MI6? When did that happen? Silva acts as though he knew, for years, that M would send Bond for him and that he has some connection to Bond. Bond is part of his plan -- but Silva has no connection to Bond as he does to M.

he seems to know Bond is a special favourite of M's, as he once was, or thought he was. There may have been others in between but they are irrelevant now

GK wrote:

Silva kills Severine (a waste of on-screen talent and an interesting character). Bond, who had promised to rescue her, doesn't give a damn -- even though he's a more emotionally vulnerable Bond when it comes to his own hurts. This is now the third time in as many mission/movies that Craig's Bond has directly caused the death of an innocent and not cared.Then Bond, who couldn't hit a stationary target with his gun a few days (seconds?) earlier, expertly outguns four moving gunmen at once -- killing them all with only one shot to each.

true, this is a bad one, Bond could have been missing to lull the villains into a false sense of security? but that idea falls flat when Silva doesn't shoot the glass… Bonds sudden recovery of skill is either inexplicable or he has chosen to sacrifice the Bond girl in a rather selfish and unadmirable manner. if he could he should have shot the glass and waited for another opportunity to turn the tables, as Silva was clearly making the classic super villain mistake of playing games with the hero when he could easily just kill him

GK wrote:

Silva is then taken into custody -- all part of Silva's plan. Apparently, it was also part of his plan to blow the cover on his island lair, lose some men, and lose his access to the vast computer network that he had spent years building and was the source of his livelihood and power.

yes, all part of his plan to be captured so he could get his computer inside the new underground MI6 and mess them up, how realistic this is I don't know

GK wrote:

You see, in his master plan, years in the making, he knew that if he escaped from MI6 into the subway system that Bond would pursue him there and catch-up with him as he was making his way up a ladder -- at the exact moment that a subway train would be approaching. Silva could then blow a hole in the subway corridor (with explosives that he must have planted years earlier) that would send an entire subway train careening toward Bond (a train that, at rush hour, is completely empty). This is much better than having one of his men kill Bond. You see, it makes perfect sense. This train scene is quite bombastic and totally lacking in Bondian flair. This ludicrous "plot" (for lack of a better word) device is what gets passed-off as a mid-movie action "set-piece".

true, all those rush hour comuter scenes and then an empty train comes through the roof... this could be the kite surfing / collapsing building / sinkhole parachuting moment of the film, although in fact we have learned that this train is shown to be out of service and we know that trains are very frequent on most tube lines during rush hour

GK wrote:

M explains to Bond that she traded Silva to the Chinese because he was too gun-ho in his job and exceeded his mandate. Sound like Bond? You'd think at this point Bond might be concerned that the same could happen to him and that he'd take Silva up on that job offer. After all, the Craig Bond fails every mission, is insubordinate and rude, regularly breaks into his boss' home and hacks her computer, had just gone AWOL, and is an alcoholic and drug addict. Anyway, I knew governments traded prisoners for other prisoners but it's quite unsettling to think that they trade their own agents. At this point, I began wishing Silva success.

right on the money, except Bond's never a alki or a drug addict, he was just on a bender

GK wrote:

Silva shows up with his men. Being now denied his island lair with its computer network and presumably stripped of all personal belongings when he was taken into MI6 custody, how was Silva able to organize his men and follow the computer-created "bread crumbs" laid-out for him by Q? Without access to bank accounts (which surely MI6 had seized), how is he able to pay his men? Why are they still working for him? How did they get a helicopter?

perhaps when his computer takes over after Q plugs it in to the MI6 network, it has been preset to send signals to his henchment to go into action and follow a plan he devised earlier, then after he has escaped all things are possible. MI6 freeze his bank accounts? When it's his computer that has taken over theirs, not visa versa, however improbable that may be

GK wrote:

Bond fails in protecting M and Silva kills her. Bond then does Bardem's great character the dishonor of killing him by cowardly stabbing him in the back with a knife throw. It reminded me of Bond's hot-headed and cold-blooded shooting of the unarmed bomber at the beginning of "Casino Royale" (the one he needed alive). It also reminded me of his cowardly and sadistic maiming-shooting of the unarmed and unsuspecting Mr. White at the end of that movie -- which Bond performed from a distance while hidden.

I wouldn't call it cowardly, he's got a gun to M's head, so there's no time for Queensberry rules, assassins kill people and Bond is sometimes an assassin, but I agree the knife throw to the back is an underwhelming finish

GK wrote:

This is now Bond's third failure in as many missions/movies. In "Casino Royale", he failed to deliver Le Chiffre alive. Having redeemed himself by capturing Mr. White, he then loses him in "Quantum of Solace" and never recovers him. Bond then deliberately failed in delivering anyone else alive during this mission/movie -- including Dominic Greene, who could have been used to gain intelligence on the mysterious Quantum organization. In fact, Bond deliberately sent Greene to a slow sadistic death (the kind of evil the villain would normally dish-out). Bond, very unprofessionally, did this from personal motivation (after only extracting the information from Greene needed to satisfy Bond's own personal vendetta) and then lied to his superior about it.
It's interesting that after Bond fails to recover the stolen hard drive at the beginning of the movie and then goes AWOL and then fails all of his tests, M rewards him by lying about his failed test results and sending him out on a mission with such high stakes for herself and MI6 and NATO -- especially given this drunk, drug-addicted Bond's track record of failure and insubordination. It's even more interesting that after Bond "kidnaps" M and gets her killed -- damn near treasonous action -- the new M rewards Bond with yet ANOTHER mission.

all true, along with the PTS bomber in CR and, plus, in QOS, he fails to bed the only Bond girl ever to survive to the end of a Craig Bond movie - unforgivable!

Yes unfortunately much of Klein's dissertation doesn't hold up to scrutiny. He complains about a lot of stuff that has since been explained, even if it did require 2 or 3 viewings and much discussion with others to get the hang of what's going on; but that's OK, as that's par for many Bond films, if not all of them.

He does have some interesting observations though. Craig's Bond does seem to be a tad more sadistic than other Bonds, notably with his maiming of White in CR and his dispatching of Greene in QoS. Mind you, these characters are so vile, that I'm not sure any of us gentle filmgoers really cared. Bond had good reason to hate both these guys. White was payback for Vesper and Greene was payback for Fields, not to mention Mathis, although Mathis might like to explain to Bond someday, that he does indeed care that he was dropped in a dumpster. Just because he drinks cheap wine.......

Craig though is losing an alarming number of sympathetic Bond-girls to the bad guys. Fleming of course famously sacrificed Vesper, Tracy and the Masterton sisters, so it's not unprecedented by any means, but compared with the other Bond-actors, Craig's steady one per film, plus Vesper, is above the average. Craig is averaging 1.3 dead Bond-girls per movie. No wonder he can be such a bastard when it comes time to put down the villains.

Klein's litany of complaints does I think at least speak to the foibles of continuing to attempt these characerter driven drama-Bonds. Such attempts are constrained by the tried-and-true Bond-movie formula and what we can reasonably expect from these iconic characters and the films themselves, as stylish,entertaining, action suspense pieces.

Mind you the critics are eating this one up. There almost seems to be a pack mentality, but they are judging the film on its own merits and not so much on what some of us Bond fans might prefer. Fair enough, but even the critics at some point might weary of drama Bond. Then again....

Going so far off reservation with as normally stalwart a character as M, is I think problematic. Silva's broader scheme, as opposed to its details and execution seems somewhat contrived;eg that he would willingly give up his island stronghold; that it took him so long to put the plan into motion. We have to suspend disbelief in order to facilitate his crazed oedipal obsession with M.

Things were much more plausible I think, when villains were using their estimable resources to capture capsules in space or subs at sea, and plotting to destroy the world to further their own megalomaniacal ambitions, rather than to get back at their bad mommy.

Silva seems like such a waste of supervillain talent.

tiffanywint wrote:

Silva seems like such a waste of supervillain talent.

Only one with a personality in some time....we don't often see villains wearing Police hats. I felt cheated when he got knifed in the back without even seeing it coming...save that for someone like a henchman, or Tanner, not a lead.

Yeah, I was a little disappointed in his death, given that Patrice got to fall out of a skyscraper after a fist-fight, and one random henchman got eaten by a komodo dragon and a second got drowned in an icy lake that Bond deliberately plunged himself into.

But I can't really think of any other way for Silva to have died. He couldn't really fight Bond, because that would just contradict his statements that running and jumping and fighting were pointless.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Yeah, I was a little disappointed in his death, given that Patrice got to fall out of a skyscraper after a fist-fight, and one random henchman got eaten by a komodo dragon and a second got drowned in an icy lake that Bond deliberately plunged himself into.

But I can't really think of any other way for Silva to have died. He couldn't really fight Bond, because that would just contradict his statements that running and jumping and fighting were pointless.

yes, it would have to have been some kind of cerebral duel or slight of hand death, like Bond v Scaramanga

Silva's death by such a rudimentary medieval instrument as a knife, in a darkened centuries old chapel, at least fits the "sometime the old ways are best theme." SF is very much about it's themes.

Too bad a Silva-like character couldn't be dregded up for a proper world-domination Bond movie with lots of action, girls, some good gadgets, lots of colour and excitement.

SKYFALL has lots of colour, both in the literal sense (it runs the gamut the muted dust and earth tones of Turkey and Scotland to the strong blues and reds of Shanghai and Macau) and in the sense of benign bizarre and humour. Lots of light touches, despite the drama. It never gets bogged down in its own seriousness, like QOS.

I don't mean colour in the literal sense. I mean colourful lairs and such. Think TSWLM or MR.

Yes SF was quite beautiful in part but that's not what I'm getting at.

This kind of campy Bond villain-lair set design.



"Names are for tombstones! Take this honky outside and waste him."
Silva I think would have thrived in such outlandish environments.

Plenty of colour in those images...












Sorry.

I just notice in the 2nd LALD still, that there is a "honky" in the back meeting room with Tee Hee and the other brothers. Wtf! Who left the door open? Why wasn't he escorted into the back alley with Bond?! :scratch:

tiffanywint wrote:

I just notice in the 2nd LALD still, that there is a "honky" in the back meeting room with Tee Hee and the other brothers. Wtf! Who left the door open? Why wasn't he escorted into the back alley with Bond?! :scratch:

Is that Cubby?

GeneralGogol wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

I just notice in the 2nd LALD still, that there is a "honky" in the back meeting room with Tee Hee and the other brothers. Wtf! Who left the door open? Why wasn't he escorted into the back alley with Bond?! :scratch:

Is that Cubby?

That's what I thought...

I saw it for a 5th and final time at the cinema...it's grown on me...still wish it had another major action piece but there were enough good things to like about it (which is maybe why I keep going back and, of course, following it's BO performance with interest).

The last Bond movie I saw 5 times at the cinema was Goldeneye...but that was a bit different. I was barely a teenager in 1995, started dating, and went 5 times with 5 different guys... :bounce:

Did they have a problem with female authority?

I was disappointed by it.

I was disappointed by the story, the execution of some scenes, the waste of the Severine character, the ending, the Miss Moneypenny "twist" and the lack of gun barrel sequence in the beginning.

I also found a couple of what I consider "Bond Universe" continuity goofs.

I think the only good thing about Skyfall was the title song by Adele.

Heck, I just got the 50th Anniversary Blu-Ray set a couple of weeks ago and I watched all 22 films in chronological order.

Now after watching Skyfall and then rewatching Quantum Of Solace, the latter felt more like a Bond film the the former.

Even the "Jason Bourne" style cinematography and fight sequences and editing in QoS didn't bother me so much anymore.

j7wild wrote:

I was disappointed by it.

I was disappointed by the story, the execution of some scenes, the ending and the lack of gun barrel sequence in the beginning.

II also found a couple of what I consider "Bond Universe" continuity goofs.

I think the only good thing about it was the title song by Adele.

Heck, I just got the 50th Anniversary Blu-Ray set a couple of weeks and I watched all 22 films in chronological order.

Now after watching Skyfall and then rewatching Quantum Of Solace, the latter felt more like a Bond film the the former.

Even the "Jason Bourne" style cinematography and fight sequences and editing in QoS didn't bother me so much anymore.

Welcome to my decidedly small world.

I've only just seen skyfalll and I was really looking forward to it. However I agree with a lot of what people say. It all felt very bond right up till the point on the island where the woman got shot, and then it just went downhill, I mean borriiinngggg. I just lost interest. Whilst I think bardem is a great actor, his character was just silly. Very disappointing indeed . I thought it was quite tired.

James777 wrote:

I've only just seen skyfalll and I was really looking forward to it. However I agree with a lot of what people say. It all felt very bond right up till the point on the island where the woman got shot, and then it just went downhill, I mean borriiinngggg. I just lost interest. Whilst I think bardem is a great actor, his character was just silly. Very disappointing indeed . I thought it was quite tired.

Hi James, welcome aboard. My one main gripe about Skyfall is its missing another major action piece after Severine's death...I can relate to the boring side of it if one was specifically hoping to see Bond type action. The bit with the derailed tube just wasn't enough. Still, I saw it 5 times which means that it still connected with me somehow...so my getting the blu-ray is reasonably assured.... :cheers:

Hi mrs aural sects I could watch ur video more readily , very hypnotic indeed.

I didn't think it was bad, just that the 2nd half lacked content and was over long, plus were they trying to save money by shooting it in London. I mean do we really want to see grey skies etc. another gripe, Daniel Craig's running style, does anyone really run like that !

James777 wrote:

Daniel Craig's running style, does anyone really run like that !

Nowhere near as bad as Brozza's or Tom Cruise's.

Now that it's been pulled from local cinemas, I'm actually missing it.

And to think I started off scowling after seeing it the first time... :drunken:

Ah well, I can wait 6 weeks for my own blu-ray...I'm expecting on-line rips to be available in late January.

{sarcastic voice} I kind of enjoyed seeing Craig's face CGI'ed on the stuntman's head and the CGI Komodo Dragons were pristine - worthy of ILM!

I think it would be more fitting to CG Craig's face on the Komodo Dragon, myself.

Then I could do a STAR TREK /BOND mashup with Bones McCoy asking Komodo Craig, 'How can you be deaf with ears that big?'