Am I the only person who didn’t like Skyfall?
Darcy and I went to see it and I had high hopes. He liked it but I thought, “Eh.” Of all the Craig Bond movies, I thought Casino Royale was the best. It was good from start to finish. I’ve watched it dozens of times and not grown tired of it. Quantum of Solace was sort of an “eh.” It was a movie designed to explain things and tie up loose ends. OK, fair enough. But Skyfall was just weird. For me to explain, there will be spoilers. So don’t read ahead if you have not seen the film.
SKYFALL SPOILERS BELOW. DO NOT PROCEEED!
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Javier Bardem was sufficiently creepy as the villain. The blonde, 1980s Miami Vice hair was bizarre. When he takes the metal plate out of his mouth and you see what the cyanide did to him, that was a good touch. And, as far as I was concerned, one of the few truly good moments of the film.
The plot of the MI6 agents being released online and the MI6 system getting hacked was topical and relevant. Even so, I found it sort of boring and on-the-nose. You don’t go to a Bond movie for a political dissertation.
By the time they make it back to the ancestral boyhood home, I was almost asleep. I was nestled against Darcy fighting off the impulse to catnap and thinking about where we would go for dinner.
The rock wall bomb shelter secret passageway was a nice and convenient touch. I also liked M’s makeshift bombs and the old school weapons. The theme about “sometimes the old ways are the best” was not lost on me.
Whenever Bond pops up the ejector seat button in the Aston Martin, I was the only one in the theater who got the joke and laughed. Johnny Come Latelys!
Daniel Craig did a good job of looking haggard and out of shape. At the beginning, he makes you believe that he’s been drinking and living a hard life night after night.
I still really don’t get Javier Bardem’s character. He’s mad at M and feels like he was made into a monster and then abandoned. He was Mommy’s favorite until he was expendable. The cyanide made him insane. OK, but still. Bond villains typically are insane and wacky. For whatever reason, this one didn’t totally sell me. And the semi-gay scene seemed unnecessary and superfluous. Like, unless this illuminates the plot, why bother with it. At least with a villain like Auric Goldfinger, you get someone who is crazy and flamboyant in a way you can enjoy. Who doesn’t like, “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.” Or someone who is crazy but driven, like Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. He is cold and cruel and makes you believe it. With this character—whose name I can’t even remember—I simply never believed it. Even when he shoots the girl in the head to knock the scotch glass off, I’m sitting there like, “Eh. Whatevs.” I dunno. It was more like watching some high school kid’s rendition of what he imagined a weird crazy person might do. “Be spastic. Be all over the place. Be oddly emotional about stuff.” There was a woman in the theater who, towards the end of the movie, goes, “Oh. He must be crazy.” Darcy’s like, “Yes. No shit.” That was one of the best parts, LOL.
Most Bond movies do not feel like 2.5 hours. This one felt like 3.5.
Albert Finney as the caretaker was a nice touch.
I like Adele but I didn’t even care for the theme song.
The scene with the Komodo dragons was lame. Someone like Roger Moore could’ve pulled that off. RGM was a master of facial expressions and goofball humor. The face he makes in The Spy Who Loved Me when XXX can’t drive the standard transmission just kills me. But in Skyfall, the fat guy getting eaten by a dragon seemed stupid. RGM can get away with running across the backs of alligators while wearing crocodile shoes; this James Bond, not so much.
It’s cool that they are setting up a place for Moneypenny and they have selected a new M. But again, it doesn’t feel like it has the same magic. It’s a bit like when Timothy Dalton tried to take over from Roger Moore and people weren’t so thrilled. I personally liked The Living Daylights and thought it was great. I also think of all the Bonds, TD looks the most like the literary Bond. However, here’s a rule of thumb: Roger Moore can replace anyone but no one can replace Roger Moore. I am biased, of course, but to know RGM is to love him. I thought it was savvy of the producers that, when Pierce Brosnan took over after TD, they changed up the formula. I thought Goldeneye was well done and enjoyable. True, those movies eventually became way too focused on technology and gadgets. By the end, the invisible car gimmick was totally ridiculous. But it’s good to make certain changes each time the actor changes. You don’t want to make it seem like one actor is copying the next and so on. So I guess I don’t get this sudden desire to revisit the Bond of the past and make Daniel Craig fit that mold. He doesn’t. Who he was in Casino Royale was perfect and believable. It was a good mix of this tortured person who is gritty and bitter but who also falls in love with Vesper. Now it’s like, “OK, the Vesper story arc is concluded. We’re going to try to turn Daniel Craig’s Bond into a modernized version of what we think Sean Connery’s Bond would be like if he existed in 2012.” No thanks. I don’t care for that approach.
So I dunno. I didn’t “get it” and I didn’t enjoy it. This blogger wrote an impassioned article on how the blatant sexism and outdated attitudes were a major turn-off:
Perhaps that’s it. Sean Connery and Roger Moore could get away with things that were part of a different era. Toward the end of RGM’s run, it was a bit like, “Yeah, we’re still doing this stuff. Wink, wink. It’s all in good fun and irony.” Skyfall was more like a jumbled up, WTF moment for me. Juxtaposing this with, say, The Avengers feels like no comparison. The Avengers was like getting on a rollercoaster and loving every minute. Skyfall was like watching an old movie at grandma’s house that your grandparents just love but no one in the modern era gives a damn about.
