One more time

Epix has been showing Skyfall and I decided to give it a second try. I wanted my Labor Day to consist of as little labor as possible. With the exception of mowing the yard, I succeeded pretty well. So I settled in with a cold Red Hook (they had me at Woodinville, WA) and watched Skyfall. Unfortunately, I still agree with my first assessment of it.

http://sarasplacetorant.blogspot.com/2012/11/skyfall-no-thanks.html

As I watched it, I thought, "I go to a Bond movie for some amount of fantasy. I don't go to a Bond movie for it to be like 'ripped from the headlines.'" In the next movie, will the villian be an IT guy who lets loose the CIA's secrets and then gets asylum from Blofeld? Come on, people. In the words of the Joker: why so serious? As Roger Moore put it, "I mean, this man is supposed to be a spy, and yet everybody knows he's a spy ... it's outrageous. So you have to treat the humour outrageously as well." The fantasy, escapism part of the franchise was something I missed. I love Casino Royale because it told a great story. Le Chiffre was mad as a hatter and the repartee between Bond and Vesper was great-- and it was all fantastical. Not as overt as say, Moonraker or Die Another Day, but we got to escape for a couple of hours into a world where Bond has just been given 00 status and has to battle a nutjob playing cards. I dunno. I still think the biggest difference is that this has no basis from an Ian Fleming novel or story. It's Bond minus his creator. Quantum of Solace was really the beginning of the process since that particular short story really doesn't lend itself to becoming an action film. Now here we are with Javier Bardem and his bad hair, which somehow doesn't achieve the same humor as Christopher Walken with the same bottle blonde treatment. I don't know how many incarnations they can have or how many ways they can continually set up the same characters. Time will tell.