Skyfall: Bond #23

I wish they had included the section from the book where Bond joins a vegan health spa and finds all his aggression floating away.

problem (one of) this movie was its desperate eagerness to please in every second at the expense of making sense minute to minute or act to act. "waste of scotch" line read like "hey! you guys like the old misogynist bond, right??", momentarily throwing out a character impulse not hinted at beforehand and quickly forgotten. if the coldness had any tradecraft layering w/r/t bond getting in with silva it wasn't anything mendes thought fit to show.

"the bitch is dead" looked to me like an attempt to interrogate the bond character's historical misogyny. oh, see, he lost somebody, it's realy sad. excuse-making, maybe, but an idea purposefully executed.

every time I have read "the bitch is dead" on this thread, I've gotten Elton John's voice stuck in my head

Casino Royale movie actually super-emphasises that by having some foreshadowing at the beginning where Bond claims to only smash married women cos it's complication-free

that was Paul Haggis at work, I think

still amazed the first one did so well with one of his scripts

that line gets worse and worse to me as time goes on. i cant think of any previous iteration of the character, even at his coldest and most heartless, that would crack wise about an innocent woman being murdered by the bad guy - much less joke that her life was worth less than a glass of scotch. its like the transformation of mcclane from guy who's scared to die and even fears for the life of a scumbag like ellis, to smirking poochy bruce who goes 'heh, that had to hurt' as he maims dozens of innocent people in a carnage-packed moscow car chase

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Tuesday, February 19, 2013 3:34 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

qft

i hated that moment so much

man this movie had so much loathsome things that the odium Albert Finney's inspired on this thread is so misplaced.

just imagine if they'd actually put Sean Connery in that role

the humor would have returned to the franchise

well... it's kind of unavoidably loathsome though, right? otherwise it's not a bond movie. it's already pretty close to turning into bourne without those things.

man this movie had so much loathsome things that the odium Albert Finney's inspired on this thread is so misplaced.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, February 19, 2013 4:58 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

qft too

who cares

I take back everything I said trying to be devil's advocate for that line and scene, btw

Finney thinking Dench's character is "Emma" is still great

at least Connery wd've had one of those rare career highlights where he cd do the accent

and Bond is in large part a celebration of loathsomeness, i cd really give a fuck about that aspect of it, i just like joshing on Finney cos he didn't just phone it in he sent it overland on the back of a beermat from Irkutsk

Finney thinking Dench's character is "Emma" is still great

kinda feel like finney himself originally thought so and they were just like, let's keep it in

oh god, I hope so

i like how he said "mum"

what did y'all think of pingu as Kid Q?

hot as fuck

hotter than pingu as scentless apprentice in Perfume?

disappointed no one threatened Q with electrical zapping

The q shit was so shit

i was kinda surprised by how much i disliked this

I do think that fixating on the awfulness of the line with the scotch might be pulling ppl's attention away from how stupid and lazily held together the rest of this really was

i feel like bond's final ploy to draw silva out should have been met with blank stares and termination of his employment.

He'd just have refused to be sacked, like m earlier on

Silva's an expert at modern technology, Bond faces him in a no-technology area, and M still manages to die

it's so crazy it just might work*

(*it didn't, at all)

Yeah we all seem to be forgetting that this movie just sucked

what would have been awesome is if Bond called in a drone strike, provided as a favor by his CIA friend Felix Leiter, blowing up his family home and Silva, as he and M hide in the chapel

Or even better, Bond and M make Silva think they're in the chapel, drone blows it and Silva, and he remodels the family home as a shaggin' pad

then there's an implied Oedipal scene where we figure out if he's really saying "mum"

TURN OFF YOUR FUCKING TORCH YOU OLD FOOL THE CHURCH HARDLY FUCKING SHIFTED SINCE YESTERDAY

he should have turned off his flashlight, too

ha yes, excellent tradecraft there

used that word twice already today, that's my limit

despite everything i did have a pretty good time watching the film (craig is still good, deakins is awesome, action scenes as standalones were pretty cool) but it definitely has diminishing returns.

i feel like bond's final ploy to draw silva out should have been met with blank stares and termination of his employment.

loloolol

the other thing that didnt resonate at all for me in this was the angle about bond being made obsolete. no attempt is made to give it context, everyone just talks about how he's a dinosaur so he can have the triumphant Sometimes My Old Man Ways Are The Best arc. are we meant to imagine unmanned drones taking his place offscreen? what makes it a relevant issue in 2012 instead of when the last bond came out, or the one before that? it irritated me way more than it should've, like they just wanted to have the gritty old guy shows the young punks that hes still the best story without laying any groundwork... maybe i just missed the point or something

I thought the point was that he was an older dude who got shot on a mission and wasn't bouncing back as quickly as he would have had he been younger

right but its the springboard for a bigger theme about the relevancy of agents in this brave new world or whatever

m's big speech in front of the british... panel.. of upset people. whatever that was

I thought it was less the relevancy of agents in general and more the specific relevancy of M and Bond because they are old fossils who should be replaced with young sparkly models like baby Q

and M's baseline argument was "bitch I've seen some shit, don't front" and then the building blew up and Bond and The English Patient shot everyone in the face

(that was my takeaway anyway)

yeah u could be right. also, lol

the british... panel.. of upset people

the script is the worst thing about this, and that's including Sam Mendes existing

sans news and credits, you would not have known this was Mendes.