Skyfall

Post Reply New Topic

Just got back from watching this new James Bond movie. I enjoyed the movie. I thought the story was well done and the action worked well with the movie. The only knock I have is the villian as he may go down as one of the worst villians and this type of villain (to a degree) has already been done in a Pierce Brosnan Bond movie.

Anyone else seen this/want to see it? What do you think?

I'd have thought that Javier Bardem would have been a great villain. He won an oscar for playing a villain in No Country For Old Men. Was it his acting or was the script thin for his part?

I can't wait to see it!

My wife and I just saw Skyfall, and we both agree it was great. So far, I'm the dissenting voice regarding Bardem's character, Silva. I thought he was positively chilling, and that his obsessive hatred of M for her betrayal of him - and what subsequently happened to him - made him the human embodiment of the furies.
I also very much liked seeing an almost broken Bond - seeing him so vulnerable certainly added to his character. And Bond's love/hate relationship with M is mirrored by Silva's tormented feelings for her. Silva hated her only because he had loved and trusted her so much - revealing he wanted to ultimately join her in death. Bond, it's revealed, had been traumatized as a child by the deaths of his parents, and in a very real sense, M had become his mother. Both Bond and Silva had been M's orphans - both two different sides of the same coin - and that, in my opinion, truly made this the best Bond film yet.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I liked Skyfall

I was firstly a bit skeptical about the new actor, but he really pulled it off. The scenes shot in Scotland were breathtaking with the ruined old handsome home in the highlands. My favourite character might be Kincaid, the kindly old caretaker that was like a father figure to 007.

Skyfall seemed more sentimental than what we'd expect from a Bond film, but it worked with the story somehow. I thought the villain was scary. Maybe especially when the acid he'd previously ingested transformed his figure!


(BTW, as an aside, the Lab Pet is lately trying to use more emoticons. Did you notice? I have to hold the cursor over the given emoticon to know what it means, but I've memorised the basics, like smile, tears, etc.)

OK, here is my input, in one sentence.

Sam Mendes manages to bring the same kind of conceptual mastery to James Bond that Christopher Nolan managed to do with Batman.

That is my high praise.

I saw Skyfall last night and really enjoyed it. It actually made me really, really sad that Quantum Of Solace got screwed over by the writer's strike (google for interviews with daniel craig about what happened with the script for that one if you want). Perhaps if it hadn't, we'd have this really special loose trilogy of Bond movies.

But leaving that aside: ... Yeah. This was pretty good. I've really liked Casino and this one's focus on the actual human/emotional consequences of having to be this dude without completely discarding the other stuff that makes the series work. Oddly, I really enjoyed Javier Bardem's performance, but thought his character was a little underwritten. Revenge is a fine motivation (and the increased focus on M was welcome), but I never felt like we really got a good look at what series of events lead to his and M's estrangement. It was explained at all, but I didn't particularly ... feel for him exactly?

For some reason the guy playing the new Q reminded me of Jonny Greenwood from radiohead. I'm not sure why. Maybe the hair?

Overall, good movie.

EDIT: Haha. The more I think about this movie, the more problems I have with it, and not the sort that are standard silly spy movie stuff. Worth seeing once though. Gorgeously shot.

SPOLIER ALERT

I know you have to suspend your disbelief when you watch James Bond films, but being a pedant, I just thought Skyfall was ridiculous. If the bad guy wanted to kill M, and if he could cause an explosion in the MI6 building just using his computer hacking skills, surely he could have killed M at the start and saved a whole lot of trouble. Right near the start, Bond managed to break into M's house on his own, so why did the bad guy need a whole army of mercenaries to kill her? What was the point of letting himself get caught just so he could escape? The human aspect of the story did not make up for all this as far as I was concerned. (M is Bond's mother figure. Big deal.)

Yeah, the villain was the worst part of the movie, I kept expecting him to have an actual plan and it never showed up, he just wanted revenge. I feel like the plot was too simplistic for a spy thriller and the villain was the center piece of that simplicity.

I did like the way it ended which makes me look forward to the next Bond film more. I don't feel like Daniel Craig has made a bad bond film yet(Even the criminally underrated Quantum of Solace), this one was pretty good but could have been better but it sets up more in the series nicely.

I liked it a lot! I thought it was the best JB flick.

Just watched Skyfall on opening weekend and thought it was the best JB movie.