Skyfall
2012
D: Sam Mendes
**********
Pros: Characters, Dialogue, Cinematography Music, Javier Bardem
Cons: Some Logical Problems with the Plot
Skyfall takes over after its solid predecessors, Casino Royale and the unjustly maligned Quantum of Solace, in the Craig Continuity and effectively extends this origin story. This was a relief considering that director Sam Mendes was previously known for overrated proto-woke works like American Beauty and Revolutionary Road; turns out he’s just very good at making movies in general. Still, the movie does seem to treat British patriotism, even at its kitschiest, with affection, while Americana seemed to have been depicted as a pathology in Mendes’ previous films.
The movie takes a break from the Quantum arc and focuses on a villain who has a vendetta against M (Judi Dench). This particular antagonist, Raoul Silva, is one of the best in the franchise, although a lot of that has to do with Javier Bardem’s insane levels of charisma; I’m not sure he’d be quite as good without the actor. Silva is also somewhat similar to GoldenEye’s Trevelyan: a former MI6 agent who was betrayed by the government and holds a vendetta for a one of the heroes, all while acting as a good nemesis to Bond because of his skills and background. M’s past consequentialism resulted in her selling Silva out to the Chinese government years ago as part of a deal based on the excuse that he was acting outside his brief. Unlike Trevelyan, Silva sees Bond as a potential ally. Like many Bond villains, Silva is based on a real life celebrity, in this case Julian Assange. Personally, I don’t think he deserves such a cool character based on him; I’m not that red-pilled. He has a memorable, but subtle disfigurement that, when revealed, is enhanced by Thomas Newman's chilling score.
The inciting action of the plot involves the failure of Bond and his young field partner Eve (Naomie Harris) to stop a man from getting away with a disk full of contact information for all the British spies abroad. This results in a massive scandal for M, and culminates in her getting into trouble over all the spies’ being executed by national enemies. For some reason, she recites poetry during her hearing.
The movie also partially deconstructs the franchise by showing Bond’s facing some consequences for his mistakes, although it possibly takes it a bit too far. He pridefully refuses to get out of the way to make an open shot for Eve in the first scene, and that results in the plot. He goes into hiding for a while after his presumed death and returns after seeing the ravages of Silva’s plan on the news. For some reason, MI6 decides send into battle against Silva, fudging his requalification to give him a false pass, despite his struggling during the physical, failing his marksmanship test during which he loses his temper and advances toward the target and still misses it, and ragequitting the psych eval the second his childhood home comes up. It seems that Bond’s importance as a protagonist is too important for MI6 to heed logic. This gets even more absurd when this happens again in No Time to Die. They just need to stop giving this loser breaks. In contrast, GoldenEye doesn’t sacrifice Bond’s competence for him to face some personal consequences from his job; he inevitably makes enemies that were once friends.
In order to further the theme of Bond’s drama as a central point in the movie, Bond spirits M off to his own childhood home in order to stage a final showdown with Silva. He even enlists the help of Q (Ben Winshaw) and M’s assistant Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) to subtly guide Silva to the place. One would expect him to hide her in some random place that could not be guessed, but he asserts that he’ll have the advantage. Of course, you’d think a person as obsessive and intelligent as Silva would have preemptively scouted this area, just as another Javier Bardem character would.
Despite the flaws, the movie’s plot is effectively character-driven. It marks a transition in Bond’s life in which he has to choose loyalty to country over feelings and get over his past (he symbolically demolishes his home). While M is ultimately killed in the confrontation, Bond faces a new present, in which he has fully transformed into the Bond We Know and Love; the movie ends with Eve’s being revealed to be Moneypenny, and Mallory’s becoming the new M, complete with the traditionally styled office.
The one problem with the Bond We Know and Love, however, is that he’s not that compelling a character, and the Craig Continuity seemed to realize this because it kept hitting the reset button on his origin story. This worked surprisingly well for the first three movies to the point where I think Skyfall works better as the finale of a good trilogy, but unfortunately they persisted into the clumsy retcon that was Spectre and the equally flawed No Time to Die, which killed Bond off as a tragic character. The former, now that EON had regained rights over the word “spectre,” recast Quantum, as somehow being a front from SPECTRE while rationalizing Silva as a one of its operatives, albeit a strangely unreliable one. It makes little sense for them to hire someone with sympathies to Bond when the organizations entire motivation, outside world domination, was to screw with our hero. The feeling of the Craig movies was slightly frustrating because you were hoping for the fun-and-games Bond to finally come into play while secretly knowing it would not be that great. Still, the Craig continuity is the most consistently well-executed of the franchise, and even the bad ones are at least watchable.
The movie features a mixed bag of fanservice. Although it was very satisfying to find out that Eve was Moneypenny, the chaste romantic tension between the two characters, which always contrasted effectively with Bond’s promiscuity, was somewhat spoiled by one sexually tense scene between them. Also, I did not find Ben Winshaw’s Q to be particularly enjoyable, even though he improves somewhat in the next movie. When he issues Bond a small radio and an underpowered WW2-era pistol, he indulges in a bit of fan disservice by taking a subtle dig at the use of cool gadgetry in the previous films by having Q say that we don’t do silly things like exploding pens any more.
That’s strange considering that it is useful for spies to have devices disguised as common objects to the point where they did this stuff in real life. And yet the movie features a rather forced example of fanservice in the form of the weaponized DB5. The movie makes it unclear whether or not this is Bond’s private car or an MI6 company car dating back to the 60’s (M is aware of the ejector seat, for one thing). The regressive fanservice continues in Bond’s being officially issued a PPK, a practical power upgrade in the books. It has a faddish smartgun feature to boot.
One moment of cringe occurred when Eve explains how the experience in the intro put her off field work and Bond reintroduces lame puns to the franchise by saying “At least you gave it your best shot.” One of the things I was really enjoying about the Craig movies up to this point was the refreshing lack of stupid humor. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a sexual double entendre. Still, the dialogue is generally very witty and keeps the movie enjoyable.
The movie also has a lot of good style points. In addition to solid action, it also features great cinematography by the legendary Roger Deakins. It’s strange how such a popular long-running franchise would never sweat such a thing; in fact, up until Skyfall, the most artfully shot Bond movie was actually the 1967 Casino Royale spoof. As usual, the music is good, but Skyfall is special in that Adele's excellent intro theme not only broke the series’ curse of Oscar snubs, it also broke the Academy’s 30+ year stretch between deserving Best Song winners.
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