I keep listening to it, and I see what the sneaky buggers have done. There are a couple of chord sequences and harmonies and things lifted directly from other Bond themes. Not enough to be a copy - just enough to drag the song out from whatever corner of your mind it happens to be stored in. That's why it sounds so Bond-like.
Damned cunning, Miss Adkins.
Who's got tickets to see this on Friday? I'm sorely tempted!
It's this friday? Oh man...
Quick review:
Better than Quantum of Solace? By miles.
Better than Casino Royale? Possibly!
This is a Bond film with a real sense of threat and menace, there is a deeply personal story that is central to the whole thing and which runs throughout, supported by incredible action sequences, moments of classic humour, and strong performances from the entire cast. Skyfall surges forward with such speed, all the while looking fondly over its shoulder to where it came from, and not a moment felt wasted.
There were a couple of moments I suspected were incoming over the course of the film, but when they arrived, my enjoyment wasn't at all diminished because the ride itself had been so much fun!
Damn it I want to go see this.
I echo the review by Droo. But I would go even further than that, and say this is easily the best Bond movie in many years, and on par with the with Sean Conner classics such as Goldfinger etc. This is a more realistic Bond, back to the roots. Great story with emotional resonance, terrific acting and the best villain in a long time. This is a movie you really remember.
Highly recommended.
And yes, I have to concur that Skyfall boasts such a memorable villain. Javier Bardem relishes every moment he's onscreen and creates an exceptionally creepy character with exceptionally creepy hair!
But I withold on saying Skyfall is better than Casino, purely because it wasn't until my second viewing that I was able to appreciate just how good Casino Royale was, and I'd like to see how this new film stands up to a second viewing before I decide which I like most.
Loved it. I'm not sure what else to say! Just a really enjoyable film, that balanced out what makes Bond entertaining.
One thing that stood out to me (aside from everything already mentioned) was the various locations looked amazing. The way everything was framed, the colours, etc. Especially on the shots in the skyscraper in Shanghai, then at the 'casino' in Macau, and later at Skyfall itself when the whole world seemed to be on fire.
Everyone I know has been really positive about how much they enjoyed this.
On the flip side, here's an article by a British journalist named Giles Coren about why he thinks Skyfall is awful:
BOND, VILLAIN
(The piece they tried to ban. Warning! This contains plot spoilers...)
by Giles Coren
There is a moment in the new James Bond film so vile, sexist and sad that it made me feel physically sick. If you have not seen the film and fear a spoiler, then look away now. Or cancel your tickets and do something less horrible instead. Like pull all your fingernails out.
In short, there is a young woman in this film whom Bond correctly identifies (in his smug, smart-arse way) as a sex-worker who was kidnapped and enslaved as a child by human traffickers. She is now a brutalised and unwilling gangster’s moll. She gives no sign of being sexually interested in Bond, merely of being incredibly scared and unhappy. So he creeps uninvited into her hotel shower cubicle later that night, like Jimmy Savile, and silently screws her because he is bored.
That is vile enough. And totally out of keeping, I’d have thought, with Daniel Craig’s Bond. But it gets much worse when she is later tied up with a glass of whisky on her head in a hilarious William Tell spoof, and shot dead in a game devised by the baddie. We knew already knew the baddie was bad, so there was no plot developing element here. It was merely disgusting, exploitative, 1970s-style death-porn (like when Roger Moore torpedoed the beautiful girl in the helicopter in The Spy Who Loved Me and then joked about it – a scene from which it has taken me 35 years to recover).
The ‘new’ Bond’s immediate response to the killing of a tragic, abused, indentured slave woman is to say, “waste of good scotch” (this must be the ‘humour’ Daniel Craig said he was keen to put back into the role) and then kill everyone. He could have done it three minutes before and saved her. But that wouldn’t have been as funny, I guess.
That Macallan (the whisky brand on her head) presumably paid to be involved in the scene, as part of the film’s much-touted product placement programme, is utterly baffling to me.
Personally, I am ashamed, as a journalist, of the five star ratings this film garnered across the board from sheep-like critics afraid or unable to look through the hype, to its rotten soul.
I am ashamed, as a man, that women are still compelled in the 21st century to watch movies in which the three female outcomes are:
1) Judi Dench’s ‘M’ dies, and is replaced by a man;
2) The young abuse victim is shagged by Bond and then killed for a joke; and
3) The pretty girl who manages to remain chaste despite Bond’s ‘charms’ is rewarded at the end with a job as his secretary.
And I am ashamed, as a British person, that this film will be mistaken abroad for an example of prevailing values here. It is a sick, reactionary, depressing film and its director, Sam Mendes, should be ashamed of himself, all the way to the bank.
Thoughts?
My only disappointment was the new Q. Not the actor and his performance but the plot for him.
His introduction is awesome but the whole decipher scene is ridiculous. The whole scene where the baddies laptop takes over the MI6 network would actually work yes but more on that in a second. The morphologic encription ridicilous but it has to look good for the cinema so by "the rule of cool" you can get away with it. Pluging the laptop into the same network where your security system is? Seriously big corporations don't allow their employees to plug their smart phones and usb sticks into their systems anymore.
So young smart Q gets fooled by the oldest trick in the book.
I thought the movie was amazing. Being shocked at sexism in a Bond movie seems a little silly, but I didn't think that Skyfall's faults were as bad as that review makes it seem. I mean, you can certainly read it that way if you want to, but it seems like reaching for meaning to me.
The sneaking into the shower bit was a bit off, I'll agree there. If that had been me I would have screamed to high heaven rather than be ok with a man suddenly appearing in the shower with me! But then, I'm not a damaged sex worker who has been seduced by the idea of freedom by a suave British spy.
For that matter, there was no 'rolling around in bed' shot after that scene, so who knows if they even had sex? I thought that the movie was very light on Bond girls and womanizing.
I don't agree with his review, especially the scotch scene. He said that to put his opposition off-guard. He's clearly angry about the killing.
Overall I enjoyed the movie and it's damn close to Casino Royale. I loved the contrast between the settings, and Javier Bardem might be a generational talent.
Callign this a good Bond film is not what I would say, given the bar for a good Bond film isnt that high at all - Bond films to me are very ordinary to say the least. Skyfall however is A Good Film, full stop. No qualifiers should be used. Films shouldnt be just called good when you compare to the genre or series, esp when the series in this case has a great deal of crap. It's called good when it stands on it's own merits. Skyfall does this.
I wont say Casino Royale or Skyfall are movies I like or care about - but that I think says a good deal more about how good they are when I can abstract myself from my personal likes and tastes in movies to acknowledge I'm no fan but yes, Casino Royale and Skyfall are indeed very good. Just not my cup of Dilmah.
That "review" doesn't get Bond - who is a controllable sociopath. In that sense, Daniel Craig's style of Bond is the closest one to Ian Fleming's original character. It is disgusting because Bond ought to be a little disgusting in his cavalier acts
I'm deeply conflicted over this movie.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality. It was frankly fantastic, and while I personally didn't enjoy the villain (cool concept, but Bardem just didn't do it for me), I thoroughly enjoyed the reimagined characters, the references, and the fact that it felt like "classic" Bond. I also enjoyed all the references to earlier movies, even if I am thoroughly confused as to why a Bond who became 007 in the 21st Century has a 70s Bond car in his garage.
For me personally, I think it's better than Casino Royale: I found the pacing much more engaging, and the references and one-liners made it feel much more like the Bond I know and love.
I'm conflicted because Skyfall feels like it should be the last one. Don't get me wrong: I definitely want more Craig-Bond... it just felt like a conclusion. As a rebooted origin story, they've clearly finished their job: the characters, the context, and even the oh-so-familiar office are all firmly established. Using MI6 as a metaphor, they confronted the idea of Bond being too out-dated for the 21st Century, and then proved that assertion to be wrong with resounding success. However, they also really drove home the idea that Bond himself was old and tired; that perhaps it's time for him to finally have a rest.
I don't want to feel that way, and I will happily watch a bajillion more films in the series. From a writing standpoint though... it seemed like a really apt way to bring 50 years of Bond to a close.
It's like that, and that's the way it is.
All questions can be answered with : James Bond is a Time Lord.
(Not really but I think it's hilarious)
Saw it the other day. Sorry to be lazy, but I think this review sums up my feelings pretty well. Parts of the movie were quite entertaining - I loved the Istanbul chase scene a the beginning and parts of the final showdown. However, I found very little compelling about the villain. The performance was great - it was the writing I found lackluster, propped up by cliches and "tell-don't-show" exposition.
Add to that things like the character of Severine. The shower scene made me dislike Bond; the snuff scene made me dislike the writers. I think I get what they were going for - it was another example of how Bond isn't able to deliver the happy ending of previous movies, like when he let his target fall to his death in Shanghai - but if Craig was planning on bringing any pathos to the moment, the movie absolutely torpedoed it by bringing in the magic helicopters seconds later. If you want to play the audience's sympathies with a tragic end for a tragic character, you need to show a little more nuance than that. At best, it's horribly clumsy, and at worst, as Giles Coren pointed out, it's disgusting.
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