***SPOILERS - Go no further if you've yet to see 'Skyfall***
Movie no 23
Cast
James Bond - Daniel Craig
Villains - Raoul Silva - Javier Bardem
Henchmen - Patrice - Ola Rapace
Henchmen - Patrice - Ola Rapace
Bondgirls - Sévérine - Bérénice Marlohe
- Eve - Naomi Harris
M - Judi Dench
Bill Tanner - Rory Kinnear
Q - Ben Whishaw
Gareth Mallory - Ralph Fiennes
Director - Sam Mendes
Writers - Neal Purvis, Robert Wade & John LoganQ - Ben Whishaw
Gareth Mallory - Ralph Fiennes
Director - Sam Mendes
Theme - "Skyfall" - Adele
I'll update all of the above in the morning, now that I'm not avoiding spoilers from imdb!
ReplyDeleteBut just got back from the cinema and the 23 film marathon is now complete. Proper comments will also follow in the morning.
It's been epic.
Glad to hear that you're going to wait til the morning cos now I have an excuse to as well!
ReplyDeleteQuality film though is all I'll say for now.
When I walked out the cinema last night I posted on Facebook...
ReplyDelete'Excellent!
"Best Bond ever"? I don't think so.
Good strong addition to the franchise? Very definitely!'
Having had time to reflect and sleep on it, I stand by that. There was definitely a lighter feel from 'Casino' and 'Quantum', but that works; Bond's vengeance over Vesper was settled in 'Quantum'...it's a nice parallel to the Bond of Fleming's early novels.
Silva is brilliant. Historically (and with a clearer perspective from the last few days) the better Bond villains for me are the 'insane' ones - Zorin, Drax, Blofeld - calm, calculating, well spoken, wealthy, disciplined...bat-crap crazy. And the cyanide was a stroke of genius - blur the black and the white with sympathy - "But the good guys did that to him...I'd be pissed as well!". You don't know whether Bond has the cap in his tooth, but it clearly crosses his mind, and so the audience sympathy is extended to Bond as well, and that puts the audience in a position where they're putting M on one side and Bond on the other..."Whose side am I on?". Very clever.
It was something that I think they could have taken further with Zorin; it wasn't the good-guys that did it to him, but medical experiments on his mother created him, gave him these problems...I think that's something they could have made more of. Silva's deformation was better...make it extreme, but show it once and only once. Even though you can't see it from that point onwards, every time you see his face you can see it, even though you can't see it.
Bringing back the DB5 started off feeling like a 50th anniversary gag..."Oh, that's a bit cheap!", particularly with the ejector seat joke. But then they destroyed it. And I realised that that was actually really rather clever. The continuity of Bond is something that everyone is happy to ignore [that's one of the reasons why I ignore people that complain about plot points or realism...you're happy to ignore the fact that for the first 19 films that Q is getting older but Bond isn’t, but want to get fiddly about something minor…go away!] Same with Q’s exploding pen joke – we’re moving on, we’re growing up a bit, but this is still Bond, it’s what you want, we’re going back to a formula you know (Q, Moneypenny, leather-padded doors), but we’re taking Craig’s era with us. Destroying the DB5 was a (less subtle) step in that.
Not going to break down the rest of the story, or each and every character, other than saying that I’m excited where they’re going to take Q and Moneypenny; excellent casting and done is a way that didn’t make you feel like Llewelyn and Maxwell were being replaced in your memory.
So there you go…probably got a bit carried away there, but I haven’t properly recovered from the last three days.
Right, here we go then. Haven't really been sure how to put all of this down...
ReplyDeleteMASSIVE SPOILERS FOR SKYFALL BELOW!!!!
Outstanding film. Really great. Not the best Bond film but I wouldn't say it was too far off.
Not a big fan of the song. Sitting here now, 48 hours after seeing it, I'm struggling to actually remember it. Every time I get close I end up going into one of the other Bond songs. That might just be due to the song deliberately calling on some of the older ones in parts.
Javier Bardem is amazing as the villain. After a couple more watches I might even call him the best one. Like Ian above, I clearly like my villains crazy. Skyfall has some obvious connections to The Dark Knight and the Joker which is cool because Bardem has always been my first choice to play the Joker if ever needed again.
I'm actually slightly disappointed that Naomi Harris turned out to be Moneypenny because it would have been cool to see her out in the field again. Harris is brilliant in this. And dear lord she is hot. As for the other Bond girl, Berenice Marlohe, I imagine she has spent more time in interviews about this film than she spent on set! I'd have liked to have seen her in the film a bit more as she was shaping up to be fairly interesting.
The new Q is very cool. Although having him admit that they don't really go in for the exploding pens anymore might make him a bit limited in future films. Hopefully they'll find ways to make him more than the tech guy on the end of the phone.
Fiennes should be good in future films but isn't he always good? I'm intrigued to see what they do with him because they showed that he is willing to bend the rules himself. That might make future scenes with Bond a bit boring if there isn't any conflict between them. I like my M when he/she doesn't really get what Bond has to do.
Albert Finney stole the show for me. Not a pun but his 'welcome to Scotland' line was the funniest in the film. It's just a shame that there isn't likely to be an excuse to bring him back. Which leads me to...
Oh M, how I'll miss you! DJD (Dame Judi Dench) just killed it in this one. She's always been good but she was something else here. I was hoping that she would end up retiring to Scotland to live with Kincaid at the end which would have made me very happy as we could have got some DJD/Finney cameo action in the next one. Emma said that I looked really sad when she died. Her Majesty's Secret Service aside, I'd come to expect happy endings from my Bond films! Although she'd made some screw ups I felt that she'd earned a happy ending. Very sad. As I said with Vesper's death feeling much more tragic than Tracey's, M's death felt much more tragic too. Craig's Bond has taken a right kicking so far!
There was some beautiful location shooting in this one. I think at this point we've seen pretty much every type of location in Bond now so it will always come down to how well they are shot. This one came very close to toppling Casino Royale for me.
Looks like the magnetic watch will be my favourite gadget for some time if Bond is only going to get a gun from now on. Will this end up making him a bit more like Bourne in that he will start improvising things? I wouldn't be too upset with that.
My heart sank when Bond said that they were going to be going 'back in time'. I had a feeling that we were going to start seeing a whole bunch of gadgets from the old films being used so I'm glad it was just the car.
I guess this finally puts to bed the whole argument that these are prequels to Connery's films. Unless DJD's M is going to be magically resurrected in time for Brosnan's Bond you've got to call these a reboot. Which makes sense...
Watching this after the previous 22 back to back is a weird experience. It is jarring just how different the last 3 films are but it never really hit me until the very end of Skyfall. At the end, Bond is pretty much back to being the character from the original films. It is weird though because he goes through so much development to get there that I never really realised quite how far away he had been. This was the perfect film for our marathon to end on because everything ended up going full circle.
ReplyDeleteSo no changes but...
ReplyDeleteSeries Favourites:
Film: Casino Royale
Song: Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey)
Hottest Bond girl: Eva Green (Vesper Lynd)
Best Bond girl: Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) (Licence to Kill)
Villain: Max Zorin (Christopher Walken)
Henchman: Xenia Onatopp (GoldenEye)
Fight: Stairwell fight (Casino Royale)
Stunt: The Croc Run (Live and Let Die)
Pre Title Sequence: GoldenEye
Pun: “I think he’s attempting re-entry Sir” (Moonraker)
Locations: Casino Royale
Gadget: Magnet Watch (Live and Let Die)
Something that occurred to me the other day but I forgot to add...I think Skyfall is the first time that you could consider that Bond actually lost. Although there have been previous films where the bad guy got away, I don't think he ever really failed in his objective before. Yeah Silva ended up dead, but Bond's objective was to protect M but ultimately she died as a result of the attack. That's pretty hardcore for a Bond film!
ReplyDelete