Anyone still out there?...Good.
Now, I know that I haven't done this in over a month, despite the likes of Argo or Silent Hill 2 or whatever that I could have been reviewing, buuuut life gets in the way sometimes and hey, that Community isn't going to rewatch itself. To be quite honest, my demotivation occurred when I realized that half way through the draft of my Looper review, the damn film wasn't even in theatres anymore...and it was only three weeks after its wide release. Same goes with Seven Psychopaths. Long story short, these were good-to-great movies with an unjustifiably short shelf life whilst Pitch Perfect is still going after two months. Life sucks.
But winter is coming, friends. And with that comes the holiday sprint with a healthy mix of Oscar bait and holiday blockbusters. With that in mind, I thought I'd make my triumphant return to what my lovely Mandi calls the bloggity-blog with what is probably the biggest deal of a movie this season that has nothing to do with vampires and/or werewolves. Skyfall is the latest in the now 50 year tradition in film known as the 007 franchise, and the third film to star Daniel Craig as James Bond. As a prologue, I'll say that the film was pretty good, but I wouldn't be writing about it if I didn't have some problems with it.
I'll start off by saying that Casino Royale, the first Bond film with Craig taking point, was awesome to the point of being my favourite Bond movie (haters gonna hate). It did away with a lot of the cliches that the previous 25ish films had created and then beat to death, such as the transforming car, the laser in a watch, ability to dodge sexual harrassment laws, etc. It was established that Royale would be the origin story of (this version of) Bond, and thus a clean slate to have a grittier, more realistic feel to a tired franchise. Basically, they pulled a "Batman Begins" on Bond, and it worked.
Then Quantum of Solace happened, and it was less good. You know how they split up the last Harry Potter movie into two because a single movie would either be laughably long or make no sense (see also: money)? That's what I feel happened with Royale and Quantum. One was just an extended ending to the previous film that didn't really improve or change anything at all, resulting in one of the worst forms of sequel to exist for me: the unnecessary continuation of a concluded story. Casino Royale had an ending, and the only reason it wasn't better is because Quantum had to happen. If they just tacked on the ending to the Vesper Lynd storyarch from Quantum onto Royale and did something different for the second Craig film, I probably would have liked all three much better. But alas, here we stand. The point of going back to the first two Craig films is that there is a consistency between the two, a connection of characters and story across two films that establishes a context and, if I may suggest, an expectation for more of the same. Apparently when creating Skyfall, the powers-that-be looked at this existing context, went 'meh', and tossed it by the wayside, along with damn near everything else good that this fresh new series had accomplished.
OK, so if Casino Royale is Bond's 'Batman Begins', Skyfall would be like 'The Dark Knight Rises', if directed by Tim Burton or Joel Schumacher but nowhere near as badly executed. Royale made a successful effort to get away from all of the typical Bond tropes and create something new, and what did Skyfall do? IT BROUGHT EVERY DAMN THING BACK! We have the tricked out Aston Martin, the dangerous animal-filled pit trap scene, the inconsequential female roles, and the appearance of recognizable side characters that hadn't even been referenced in the past two films. Basically, it's as if they forgot that Royale and Quantum ever happened, and Skyfall is just the follow up to Die Another Day. Now, I would actually be all right with this happening, because there is the argument that Royale and Quantum were a lead up to Craig becoming the Bond we know and love. However, there are some inconsistencies there as well, such as how much time passed between Quantum and Skyfall? TDKR had the common courtesy to state that the events of TDK happened 8 years prior and no one has seen Batman since. Skyfall didn't mention it at all. For all I know, Bond woke up the day after the events of Quantum and went 'Welp, that was fun, but now it's time to go Connery' and started trying out new accents in the mirror. It's not hard, just throw in a subtle remark about how a couple years ago Bond lost his shit over a girl and now he's better, or go the less subtle 'FOUR YEARS LATER' text at the start of the movie. There, I fixed Skyfall! (No...No, I didn't.)
Here's the thing that drives me up-the-wall crazy about this film: it's not that it became a throwback to the olden days of Bond. I can make peace and even appreciate that. I would have laughed my ass off if Adam West appeared in TDKR to offer up some Bat-Shark Repellant to Lucius Fox or whoever. The problem lies in the fact that they didn't take the references seriously. It was like the pretentious hipster snicker of homages. Case in point: we have Q, the actual literal tech supplier to Bond who spent the last 50 years of movies actually making all the ridiculous crap, being all hipster-like and 'we don't do exploding pens any more LOL'. Go fuck yourself, dick! Don't pretend you're too good for the gimmicky shit that your department came up with for-fucking-ever. And if you are going to make tongue-in-cheek references to the old guard like that, go full out and DON'T HAVE THAT SHIT IN THE MOVIE! When Q made that exploding pen jab I was like, 'OK, I get why they put that in. It got a chuckle, but the point was made in the last two Bond movies.' Give people some more credit. We know the silly gadgets aren't part of this series, or else we would have fucking seen them already. No need to be all 'HAHA Bond was silly and now it's cool' like we can't understand the subtlety of just leaving things out because Q don't play that way anymore. I guess the time for subtlety was before Scary Movie (thanks, Community. You teach me so much.)
So yeah, we brought back a lot of the tropes with this movie whilst poking fun at those exact tropes and cliche-ing up what had the potential to be a badass follow up to a badass movie and its lackluster sequel, making it one of the most hypocritical sequels of all time. That sucks, and I may never really enjoy this movie as much as I should, or other people do. But all is not lost, as there were some pretty awesome aspects of the film that even make it superior to its predecessors. In fact, if you can forget that Royale and Quantum happened, this is one of the best Bond movies ever. The plot alone is pretty spectacular. Without giving too much away, Bond goes after a guy who has taken something from MI6 (naturally), but gets caught by friendly fire and is presumed dead. MI6 suffers several attacks and upon hearing about this, Bond leaps back into action. In many ways, this is the TDKR for Bond in that he's a broken man out of shape and practice and a good portion of the film is him preparing to get back on the horse in order to face a villain he knows nothing about and is not prepared for. The difference being, Bond is Bond the whole movie and we're not left with the 'Batman was barely in that movie' feeling we had after TDKR. We can also thank American Beauty director Sam Mendes for making this film the most artsy Bond movie ever. It was very pretty, maybe too pretty for its own good, going back to the whole pretentious hipster vibe I got from the whole thing.
What really sold this for me were the people in it. Craig as Bond is the biggest D&D Fighter version of Bond ever. Not particularly intelligent, as subtle as a jackhammer and can't bed a woman without forcing them into a corner, but he's tough as nails and will 100% beat the everloving shit out of you. Previous Bonds had much more charm than Craig, weren't as brash or attention-grabbing, but would absolutely get their asses handed to them by Craig, no questions asked. Considering how he's been portrayed in the three films he's been Bond, Craig's awesome. Javier Bardem as the film's villain, Silva, is the 'Heath Ledger as the Joker' of Bond movies. He was perfect, as unsettling and creepifying to Bond as he was to the audience. In comparison to the meh villains in Royale and Quantum, Bardem stands out as maybe one of the best Bond villains ever.
As for the females, well, their importance was lessened in this film in comparison to the previous two Craig films. We have Naomie Harris as Eve, whose major contributions to the film were: shooting and almost killing Bond, shaving Bond, and a throwback reference to the Bond series at the end of the movie. Thanks for coming out. Judi Dench and Voldemort as authority figures within MI6 were awesome side characters. Ben Whishaw as Q did the computer guy bit pretty well, but as I said earlier contributed a lot to the hipster element, so it's a wash.
Like I said, if you can forget Royale and Quantum happened, or have been waiting for Bond to return to "Business As Usual", Skyfall is for you. This is by no means the worst Bond film I've ever seen, and in almost every way is an improvement on Quantum and is on par, if not better, than Royale. But I've made my opinions very clear on the impression this film left with me. It's the hipster kid who's ashamed of its goofy parents. Maybe it's a phase and by 2014 or whatever, it will either go back to being cool and awesome like Royale, or fully embrace its quirks and grow up to be just like the Bonds of old. I don't really care which one it is, as long as it isn't another Die Another Day or worse, a Batman and Robin, in which case we will have to hit all of the Abort Buttons, which are probably hidden in the gear stick of an Aston Martin.
Knight Owl
