SKYFALL (2012)

[Vic Sage]

Daniel Craig returns as Bond, James Bond... secret agent 007.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Vic, have you ever done a Bond filmography? That would be interesting to see.

[Edgy MD]

I actually just sat through The Spy Who Loved Me a few weeks back.

As Bond has too often been about the lastestness in style, almost all Bond films seem dated years later. While most agree that the Connery ones are the best, I think it's more that Connery was the coolest cat to play the roll, but the films themselves seem boring on review.

I remember the Moore ones being funnier --- Roger playing against the absurdity of the character --- but most of the zexy ladies come across years later like overpainted tarts. And the cuts back from action to romance seem bouncy and haphazard.

I guess you're supposed to get caught up in the event --- this time we go to Paris and Honolulu! --- that you're supposed to forgive how stupidly convoluted the plots all are. But years later, when there's nothing cutting-edge about the style, the cars, the chicks, the wierdo villian or anything --- the emptiness of the plots is just disengaging.

Old Bond films --- like decades-old mildewed copies of GQ and Vogue --- are best viewed as curiosities.

[Guest sharpie]

Pretty much agree with Edgy on this and I also watched The Spy Who Loved Me recently as I wanted to see whatever movies I could get a hold of that were at least partially set in Sardinia (very few, Swept Away and Padre Padrone being the others). I've probably seen about 9 or 10 of them and I can't really remember much particular about any of them.

[Ceetar]

I want to see Skyfall but somehow I keep..not seeing it. I haven't really sat down and watched one of the pre-Brosnan films more than just the occasion couple of minutes here and there in flipping though. I've always enjoyed the flashy over the top explosions and chases and gadgets, but I guess that won't quite translate across decades.

I have been listening to some of the audiobooks of the original books. Those are still fairly interesting, although I found Moonraker to be a little slow to build to anything interesting.

[metsmarathon]

i saw it with the wifey a week or so back. we both enjoyed it very much. i like that it had none of the goofiness of some bond eras. it's been a while since i saw a connery bond, so i'm not terribly able to compare the two. as such, i gave it a 4-star score. it might be better, it might not be, but it really is good.

the main villain was excellent. i found hte plot mostly lacking in egregious holes or unnecessary globe-trotting. i thought hte hong kong bit was a touch overwrought and underexplained, but my biggest problem overall was the commuter train punching hole after hole in solid stone walls with nary a scratch or crumple, but, model-making - whatchagonnado. i suppose i should quibble at teh effetiveness of the armor afforded by the excavator in teh opening scene, but worse has surely been committed in teh cinematic stoppage of poorly-aimed bullets.

very stylish overall, as you would expect.

[Vic Sage]

This 23rd installment of the franchise is not the "best bond ever", as some critics have trumpeted, but it has a distinct POV and look, and it is well worth seeing.

SKYFALL is a sleek, beautifully shot action film with perfectly executed set pieces, with all kinds of vehicles chasing each other and blowing up all over the globe. It's got an enjoyably over-the-top villain played by Javier Bardem as a mincing cyber terrorist-for-hire with his own island, army, and obsessive mommy issues. The film has got some beautiful (albeit anonymous) women for Bond to bed or banter with (or both), and it even carries on the tradition of great Bond theme songs, this one written and performed by Adele over a visually arresting and evocatively Bondian title sequence. Mostly, it's got the current Bond himself, the excellent Daniel Craig, playing Bond with a depth and psychological realism that is largely absent from the character's history. Putting Craig's Bond in context with the gallery of Bonds over the years, different actors have brought different elements to the character:

* Roger Moore's urbane, witty Bond was always believable falling into bed or throwing off a quip, but less so when killing the bad guys... you just didn't buy that he'd be willing to stain his tux;
* Timothy Dalton was more brutish than Moore, but lacked charm and sexuality, despite matinee looks;
* Pierce Brosnan had the charm and sex appeal, and was believably (and surprisingly) sadistic, but lacked gravitas (substituting, instead, a morose stiffness); and
* Daniel Craig looks like he kills people for a living. Somewhat light on charm, he has just about everything else.

BUT Connery had it all.

Connery's Bond was a sadistic animal in a fine tux who appreciated a good martini, a great car, a beautiful woman, and a reliable pistol. When taking off a woman's bikini top, he was as likely to strangle her with it as kiss her. He enjoyed killing and fucking and driving fast and living well, and every man wanted to be him and every woman wanted to be with him. He was superhuman, you see, and Bond movies were FANTASIES... high-tech (for their day) wish fulfillment fantasies for boys, like superhero comic books were.

And this is the problem with SKYFALL. Director Sam Mendes (an excellent stage director, with a few good films to his credit, particularly AMERICAN BEAUTY) has taken the franchise down into the muck of realism, developing a freudian backstory for Bond, investigating the roots of his murderous tendencies, literally taking him all the way home to find out what makes him tick. The triangular relationship between Bond and M and the villain, Silva, represent a familial nightmare of dysfunction. In the end, the STRAW DOGS-style payoff in which Bond defends his surrogate mommy & daddy at his ancestral home from his symbolic brother/villain is the stuff of Greek Drama, but it imposes a moroseness and dire quality symptomatic of the whole film. Even Q, who often provided Bond with his fun spy toys, is a victim of realism. Here he gives Bond only a gun and a radio transmitter. "What did you expect, an exploding pen? We don't go in for that type of thing anymore." Apparently not.

From a purely narrative perspective, the villain's "want" is surprisingly small. He just wants to kill one person, for personal reasons. *** SPOILER *** (he ends up succeeding, with Bond failing to protect her.) *** END OF SPOILER *** Now a Bond villain usually wants to take over the world or destroy it, or something consistent with the fantasy basis of the franchise. So, the stakes end up being surprisingly low, even if consistent with the more realistic and psychological approach to the material being offered by Mendes. But the story does do a nice job of taking us full circle to leave us at the beginning of the Bond legend, setting up characters that would be seen from DR. NO on, performing a narrative ju jitsu of sorts that works surprisingly well and, of course, sets us up for further sequels.

But a realistic Bond is not an ideal Bond and ignores the character's fundamental nature. A "realistic" Bond would in the real world be a murderous, imperious, sociopathic ass, abusive to women and condescending to all; that's why he was a "fantasy" Bond in the first place. So its a very good film, but not the best one by a large margin, and one decidedly misguided in its overall approach.

Edited December 10, 2012 by Guest

[Vic Sage]

A BOND filmography? hmm....

[metsmarathon]

yeah, i must admit that i was struck by the smallness of hte villain's aims. like, the dude has tremendous computer skillz, has amassed quite a little empire for himself, and all he wants is to kill m? sure, he's done some very bad things along the way, but, sheesh, all we're really exposed to was his mommy issues.

okaaayy...

[Vic Sage]

Ranking the Bond films -

I've arranged the 25 films to date (not including the `67 CASINO ROYALE spoof) into 3 groups, based on the "rotten tomatoes" %ranking (it aggregates critic response), and the IMDB rating (from fans), and then I've adjusted based on my own preferences.

Since my basic assessment of a Bond film is primarily (but not exclusively) affected by who is playing Bond, my Bond actor ranking should be considered first:

* Connery
* Craig
* Moore (when he's good)
* Brosnan
* Dalton
* Lazenby
* Moore (when he's bad)

That being said (ranked in descending order):

top 10:
*Goldfinger (1964) - Sean Connery / 96% rotten tomatoes ranking (52 reviews) / 7.8 imdb rating
* From Russia with Love (1963) - Sean Connery / 96% (48 reviews) / 7.5
*Casino Royale (2006) - Daniel Craig / 95% (220 reviews) / 7.9
*Dr. No (1962) - Sean Connery / 98% (45 reviews) / 7.3
*Skyfall (2012) - Daniel Craig / 92% (278 reviews) / 8.1
*Thunderball (1965) - Sean Connery / 85% (39 reviews) / 7.0
*You Only Live Twice (1967) - Sean Connery /71% (38 reviews) / 6.9
*GoldenEye (1995) - Pierce Brosnan / 82% (49 reviews) 7.2
* The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) - Roger Moore / 78% (41 reviews) / 7.1
* On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) - George Lazenby / 81% (43 reviews) / 6.8

watchable:
* For Your Eyes Only (1981) - Roger Moore / 73% (40 reviews) / 6.8
* Live and Let Die (1973) - Roger Moore /65% (40 reviews) / 6.8
* The Living Daylights (1987) - Timothy Dalton / 75% (36 reviews) / 6.7
* Licence to Kill (1989) - Timothy Dalton / 74% (38 reviews) / 6.5
* Diamonds Are Forever (1971) - Sean Connery / 64% (39 reviews) / 6.7
* Quantum of Solace (2008) - Daniel Craig / 64% (244 reviews) / 6.7
* SPECTRE (2015) - Daniel Craig / 64% (288 reviews) /6.9
* Never Say Never Again (1983) - Sean Connery / 59% / 6.1

unwatchable:
* Moonraker (1979)- Roger Moore /62% (39 reviews) / 6.2
* The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) - Roger Moore / 46% / 6.7
* Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) - Pierce Brosnan / 57% (63 reviews) / 6.4
* Die Another Day (2002) - Pierce Brosnan / 57% (197 reviews) / 6.0
* The World Is Not Enough (1999) - Pierce Brosnan /51% (120 reviews) / 6.3
* Octopussy (1983) - Roger Moore / 43% (35 reviews) / 6.6
* A View to a Kill (1985) - Roger Moore / 36% (44 reviews) / 6.2

Edited December 11, 2012 by Guest

[Guest El Segundo Escupidor]

Not impressed.

So Bond is an indestructible god who can withstand depleted uranium fired into his body, falls over 100 yards, and baths in frozen lakes. Contrast this to Nolan�s Batman who is a physical (and perhaps mental) wreck by the end of the trilogy.

You know the franchise is on its last legs when a comic book movie comes across as more believable.

The plot is a rehash of GoldenEye but at least that had some context in the post-Soviet era, where your enemies became your friends almost overnight. The only context this had was to serve as a 2 � hour introduction to Moneypenny and the new M.

The new Q is as unbelievable and as much a stock character any of the ridiculous Bond villains from the 60�s-70�s.

[metsmarathon]

i'm pretty sure that was not a depleted uranium round. i mean, i'm no expert and i certainly don't recall them mentioning hte type of bullet in the movie, but i don't think they really make small caliber DU rounds.

i think the bigger issue is that if you fall offf a train on a high bridge over a narrow river, your momentum is most likely to carry you into the rocky cliff on the near side as you'll maintain most of the same forward velocity as the train when you fell off it, despite whatever kick you received from the impacting projectile.

[Guest El Segundo Escupidor]

metsmarathon wrote: i'm pretty sure that was not a depleted uranium round.

Yes, it was.

Yes, James Bond takes a depleted uranium bullet to the chest, shrugs it off, and proceeds to keep the shrapnel in his chest for three months.

http://www.chud.com/116466/movie-curiosities-skyfall/

[metsmarathon]

ohhh, ok.

the bad guy he was chasing was using DU rounds. got it now. i missed that hte first time through, i think.

i was of hte impression you meant that eve was firing DU rounds, which wouldn't make too much sense.

but the bad guy uses custom DU rounds. alright, fine, got it.

those bullets are probably gonna go extra slow, relative to a generic 9mm round. so they likely wouldn't be as lethal.

the reason DU rounds work in military applications is that, well, they get shot at really high velocities by really big guns, typically. the gatling gun dangling off hte mouth of a warthog is a massive fuckin' thing, and it can shoot those DU round off at just over 1000 m/s. the DU penetrators that shoot holes in tanks get shot at at least 1500 m/s.

out of a glock, a relatively light 7.5 g 9mm bullet comes out at 400 m/s. a heavy bullet, at 9.5 g, comes out at 300 m/s. a DU bullet, at 67% heavier than lead, would weigh somewhere around 12.5 to 15.5 g. that's going to come out super-slow. maybe 200m/s or less even less. not a whole lot of penetration power, and not a whole lot of stopping power. kindof a blunt instrument. and its not a point blank shot, either, so it will be slowed further.

i imagine the killer likes his bullets to be DU because they are a signature - a way to know it was he doing hte job.

good chance they're hollow point, which explains the fragments. also explains the relative safety afforded by an "up-armored" excavator. not sure hte amount of damage that a shoulder would would do given a hollow point DU round, other than collapsing a lung, mashing bone, and chopping up some vital bloodwork. could be survivable. certainly would restrict bond's ability to fight back, and ultimately to recover.

i guess the long story short, i don't think a DU round is necessarily all that good for killing a man when it fails to hit anything good. i don;t think it entirely all that spectacular, that a poorly aimed such bullet would not kill a man who could survive the rifle shot to the, uh... abdomen?

[Frayed Knot]

They were uranium round fragments that hit Bond's chest/shoulder, and those are, like, totally easy to shrug off.

The action IS totally preposterous at times, but other than that the flick was entertaining enough - and this from someone who had pretty much given up on Bond in recent years. I skipped much of the Dalton & Brosnan era and was less impressed than most seemed to be with Casino Royale even though I thought Craig up to the task.

[ashie62]

Just a tired burned out franchise.

Lord, I saw Dr. No in a drive in...

[Vic Sage]

Really? Was he there with Honey Ryder?