Skyfall: Bond #23

Bardem was worth it just for that opening monologue in which I expected him to start talking about how he invented Tron and sexbots while he was at it.

loool

it was fun but as been said by many others, so many incoherent/wtf moments.
like the flashlight used while they try to escape secretly (the guy has been living there for decades, he should know the place like his pocket !).
also bardem having planned everything (the bomb so that the metro would come right to the spot where bond was standing !)... and ends up shooting around stupidly and failing to kill M at the ministry meeting...
and yeah, by the end, his goal is achieved as he succeeds in killing M... so I was like "all that for that ??".

also, the bond girl (french !) was completely useless. why did she bring him back to the island knowing they were trapped ?
and why bond didn't do all his tricks and kill all the guys and have the helicopters coming 1 minute BEFORE so that the girl doesn't get shot ??

well, quite

why did she bring him back to the island knowing they were trapped ?

this whole transition was strange, i didn't quite understand her plan or his. in macau he's like "who do you work for" and she's basically like if you can make it out of here alive and get to my boat before i leave i'll show you. so he sneaks aboard, immediately STRIPS and bonks her in the shower, which she loves obviously, then.. they're woken with juice, toast, and a few submachine guns pointed at their noses? bond tries to take out the baddies offscreen but fails? or they just stroll up to the deck and wait to be cuffed? in which case she has basically sacrificed herself?

exactly ! I wonder if even the director could explain !
the komodos were fun (although bond left his special gadget gun... which he didn't even use once !)

well the only gadget was that the other guy cdn't shoot him with it tbf, so he did "use" it

i like the fact that Bond essentially exploits Bardem's girlfriend to get to him, another version of the "strictly business" riffs that run thru the movie. she has no way of knowing what his business is with Bardem at that point, and he presumably "regrets" the fact that she dies getting him to the target.

but perhaps those of you looking for a clearer explanation of why the bad guy's girl decides to hook up with JB are unfamiliar with the previous 22 movies.

I do wish every action movie had komodo dragons now.

ahah. I second that !

but why limit it to action movies ?
ALL movies should have komodo dragons in them !

Especially romcoms.

@ Noodle Vague : it's not just the fact she hooks up with him and he exploits her, it's the fact that the plan for her makes no sense at all !

is this the inception thread? who cares about the plot? this was cool.

and psychological dramas.
arguably, "amour" by haneke would be a bit more fun with komodo dragons.

is this the inception thread? who cares about the plot? this was cool.

Hasn't anyone in the James Bond universe seen the first "Mission: Impossible" movie? Why do they keep having lists of all the undercover agents around the world if all they're going to do is get stolen all the time?

This was OK, still not nearly as good as the admittedly high bar set by Casino Royale, which I watched again the other night. Enjoyed the somewhat tongue-in-cheek meta-nods to the franchise history. The hacking stuff was very "lol 90s."

Naomie Harris is an amazingly beautiful woman, btw. I was actually afraid they were building to her being some double agent or something. The
way it turns out is a little arch, but anyway.

also bardem having planned everything (the bomb so that the metro would come right to the spot where bond was standing !)

I think it was more a matter of, this was the route Bardem chose for his escape, and he planned to blow the track just at the point where he ascended out of the Tube, and Bond just happened to be there at the time. The bomb itself was a diversion to get as many London police as possible away from M's hearing.

Part of the movie seemed like a prolonged answer to the question that started to be put forth shortly after Judi Dench took the role -- Bond does his work for queen & country, but the spymaster/spy relation has unraveled in the last few films to the point where it's become ambiguous whether M is mother or master. Or at least that's the angle that Mendes seems to be playing, fairly bluntly, in this film.

Pretty obvious symbolism when Bond comes back from the dead post-bombing and the only thing from M's office to survive is the bulldog paperweight that now has a visible crack in it. Everything's back to normal at the end of the film. M's a man, surely the master, and Bond gets the paperweight as a reminder that he's the bulldog.

"amour" by haneke would be a bit more fun with komodo dragons.

I hate Haneke so I think all of his films would be improved by having komodo dragons.

Werner Herzog and komodos would have been great. Klaus Kinski would have killed and eaten some on camera.

Well, Herzog did have some lizards in his Bad Lieutenant...

Klaus Kinski would have killed and eaten some on camera.

whislaw as Q had me hoping the villain was Nathan Barley.
funniest bit is how thoughout the entire movie, the biggest emotional reaction from Bond is when they blow up his car.

Hahah yes. Down to the musical sting.

the biggest emotional reaction from Bond is when they blow up his car.

yes ! that was a great moment (with the music blasting at the same time) !

as well as the old theme playing when he gets the old car out !

yeah there were quite a few quality lols in the film, i forget mostly.

Bardem does a fabulous "OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE" eyeroll just after the knife hits him in the back and he turns round to face Bond, he's not even angry

Haha, yeah, Bardem's annoyed "fer crissakes" take after Bond shoots the ice around him and the henchman is absolute gold.

yeah, it is really fun, for various reasons and in various ways.
the "how do you know it would be the first time?" moment was another good lol.

Thought large amounts of the intro was pretty lol. Good old fashioned crate-busting car chase through a market! Driving a digger on a train! Good old fashioned fist fight on top of the train! Bond playing drinking games with a scorpion!

thought the scorpion cgi was a bit amiga 500.

was he shown taking drugs, or was that just something alluded to in the assessment report?

and having depressed sex !

he has pills in the bungalow before he leaves for the beach bar, hasn't he ?

i think the pills are pain-killers but clearly he's been caning them. the opening chase was fully hilarious

the opening chase reminded me of the big chase in the Tintin movie !

back to the movie as deconstruction of the Bond series

Silva has such a tormented relationship with MI6, to an extent it being the flip side of the government's need for secret agents. We're told via the hearing that agents are a cold war relic, that they're not as useful in a more transparent society, and possibly more of a liability when they're outed. M isn't just justifying the existence of agents, she's justifying the public's want for Bond pictures. Silva is what happens when governments don't need secret agents -- they still exist, but he's outside the system. Even makes a reference to coming up with his own "secret missions." He, as much as the audience, fetishizes and sexualizes the idea of agents as much as he does Bond.

Silva as audience stand-in

Silva as private contractor potentially having public work outsourced to him

or, as my friend reminded me:
"this is the bond that returns M to the paternal figure with a feminine assistant, and the bad guy was an unstable homosexual who wanted to die with his mother, whom he felt betrayed him"

kind of not the best movie when it comes to presenting reasonable social views

the opening chase reminded me of the big chase in the Tintin movie !

― AlXTC from Paris, Monday, November 12, 2012 11:23 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, I thought so too!

did I imagine Bond doing a "dude, stop hitting me, there's a komodo dragon behind you" gesture to his opponent before he gets eaten. kind of out of character to warn a guy. maybe this nu-bond has more empathy for henchmen?

this whole transition was strange, i didn't quite understand her plan or his. in macau he's like "who do you work for" and she's basically like if you can make it out of here alive and get to my boat before i leave i'll show you. so he sneaks aboard, immediately STRIPS and bonks her in the shower, which she loves obviously, then.. they're woken with juice, toast, and a few submachine guns pointed at their noses? bond tries to take out the baddies offscreen but fails? or they just stroll up to the deck and wait to be cuffed? in which case she has basically sacrificed herself?

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, November 12, 2012 8:38 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes this exactly! i assumed he had taken out her minders... but he didnt? and he just moseyed onto the deck the next morning unaware or not caring that there were guards all around?

also can anybody fill me in on what the assassin was actually doing in shanghai? who did he kill? some kind of art expert? the whole thing was a set-up i guess?

"this is the bond that returns M to the paternal figure with a feminine assistant, and the bad guy was an unstable homosexual who wanted to die with his mother, whom he felt betrayed him"

I liked the movie but this is a good summary of some stuff in it that was icky

also Bond girls are by definition pretty disposable but "that was a waste of good Scotch" after she got shot seemed needlessly cruel

add me to the list of people who didn't understand what the heck happened on the boat

well replacing M wasn't really icky in itself but the whole "women aren't cut out for field work" thing with Moneypenny, and Bardem seeming like a mincing gay stereotype at first (this kind of got less pronounced as the movie went on)

that scene where he took his teeth out was great

Bond is trying to meet her boss why because radio + gunships -> he convinces her that he can kill her boss -> she tells him about the ship going to meet her boss -> Bond arrives on the ship and basically gives himself up, possibly because fuck finding Silva in a place that size when he can be just taken to him, possibly because he is sure that he can escape why because Bond -> she has judged poorly.

Or she figures that she doesn't mind dying if there's a chance Silva will be caught.

The assassin was doing a completely different job, Bond as always relying on blind luck.

no right i got that it was a totally difft job, just wondering what the job actually was (and why bond seemingly needed to wait for him to shoot the dude before wreckin shop) - it didn't bother me, actually i liked how it was this window into the routine workaday world of the international assassin, just wondered what was up

if the assassin didn't execute, the employer would have gotten suspicious.

how come bond only had the one bullet wound? shouldn't he have at least another from being pegged by moneypenny? plus years of spying.

He had a couple, the one that was swole was where he still had shrapnel in there