My Skyfall Review

[Haurock]

Originally Posted by redm

Perhaps what your saying is true, but the fact remains that they set a very high standard with Casino Royale and the subsequent movies are going to be compared to that level of quality.

The question becomes, based on expectations set with the previous two bond films of this reboot, do you feel it lived up to that standard?

.. Personally, I do. I don't pay much attention to hype because in most cases, the hype.. is just that.. hype...

I think if this had been the first Bond movie with Daniel Craig... everyone would be commenting on how good the new 'attitude' is.... I was expecting about the same, ...So I wasn't expecting 'more'.... that for me, is a sure way to eventually get disappointed, so I don't set myself up that way...

I don't expect any Bond film to get any academic awards.. and I'd be flabbergasted otherwise... but it is still very enjoyable.. a good distraction..

In short, I have no complaints...

[redm]

Originally Posted by Haurock

I think if this had been the first Bond movie with Daniel Craig... everyone would be commenting on how good the new 'attitude' is.... I was expecting about the same, ...So I wasn't expecting 'more'.... that for me, is a sure way to eventually get disappointed, so I don't set myself up that way...

I would agree, the new Bond's are great compared to Pierce's Bond.

There was defiantly hype about the movie, but hype is not the only cause for expectations. The previous movies set the expectations and while thats subjective, its defiantly not hype

[doggiehowser]

You guys must be really young to consider Brosnan the worst Bond

I still cringe when I see Roger Moore especially in his cheesier last few outings as Bond.

I think Brosnan made a great Bond but the plot and stories just weren't as compelling.

Anyway, back to Craig.

FWIW, I believe Casino Royale is the best Bond movie to date even if I think Connery is the best Bond. The writing and the premise of a newly minted licence to kill is excellent. It's Bond before he was the Bond we saw in Dr No, so to speak. So he's less polished, more emotional and less detached. Before the fancy suits.

QoS then lost the plot. It was an OK story but just not that compelling. I liked that it was a smarter Bond (the opera and how he sussed out who the conspirators were) but nowhere as amazing as the Bourne Ultimatum where Bourne got the CIA out of the office.

Skyfall is IMHO a better movie than QoS but it lacks the freshness of Casino Royale.

I was a bit surprised with the change in direction tho.

Casino pretty much put up a new canvas to play with. Skyfall feels more like a homage to the Bonds of old. I get that this is the 50th anniversary but it seems like it is a waste of the opportunities to take Bond in a new direction.

SPOILER ALERT
Calling Bond old when he's just been made a double 0 two movies ago seems a bit odd tho in line with the 50th anniversary homage.

I did like the scenes that they shot with the DB5 which as the DP called it, were timeless.

I thought the barbs and repartee with Eve strangely familiar but could not quite place it until the the final scene when she and Bond hung their coats on that familiar coatrack and I knew her name even before she said it. And this background provides a lot of explanations for how she and Bond became that close in the old Bond movies.

And the padded door to M's office. Classic.

Dislikes: as a boffin, I think the hacking scenes a tad contrived and worse, the scale of the elaborate plot and sequence of events and the coincidences were just too far fetched to be believable.

Likes: Javier (I wasn't sure I recognized him from Old Man) was a great character. It was like the premise of Sean Bean but you can see how the experience made him more deranged.

End spoiler

[JohnK]

Dislikes: as a boffin, I think the hacking scenes a tad contrived and worse, the scale of the elaborate plot and sequence of events and the coincidences were just too far fetched to be believable.

Which could be applied to just about any of the Bond movies. Anyone remember Moonraker?

Anyway, my quick take. We saw it in IMAX, and I liked it, a lot. I will see it again, but what I liked was the mix of new (the new, nerdy Q) and some of the references to the old (the Aston Martin - not just seeing it, but how it's special features were used, and some dialogue which were references to other Bond movies). I liked the pacing a lot better than others - especially QOS - it wasn't all just action. There was preparation, there was some foreshadowing, you could catch your breath between the action sequences. And I think there was a good bit more dialogue this time with the Bond character.

There were some other subtle references too - the sleeve on Bond's suit in the opening sequence - one button undone (it surely wasn't missing) - one of the hallmarks of a bespoke suit (though I didn't like the shorter cut or the single vent); the juxtaposition of Bond and the new Q in the museum and the way each are dressed, playing the off the generational thing.

Visually, there were a few scenes where the camera was drawing back and down (or up) that were breathtaking - maybe that was an IMAX only feeling. I felt a visual symmetry between several parts of the movie...

There are some other comments I'd like to make, but I fear they'd be spoilers for anyone that hasn't seen it yet.

I liked Skyfall a lot, maybe as much as Casino Royale, if not more. I think this would appeal to non-Bond fans as well.

[doggiehowser]

Of course Bond movies always had an OTT and elaborate plan but I just thought that they had done away with it since Casino Royale which was what made it special and more realistic than the ones like Brosnan's outings that were condemned here.



spoilers again...


Anyway elaborate and OTT is one thing, but Silva's plans also had to do with immaculate timing and precision yet relied on an inane amount of coincidences. He just happened to be captured on the day M was testifying at Westminster so he could use his elaborate plans of the old underground network. And it only worked because the boffin happened to hook an external computer to the MI6 network (which IMHO any basic computer tech will tell you is NOT done) at the right time for him to escape.

[Masterlu]

Ahh... But the girls, gadget, guns, and cars.

[redm]

I liked Roger Moore!

[doggiehowser]

Originally Posted by redm

I liked Roger Moore!

So does the missus

Back to Masterlu's question: best Bond girl to me were the Dalton ones: Taliso Soto and Carey Lowell.

[Masterlu]

Olga Kurylenko

[JohnK]

And it only worked because the boffin happened to hook an external computer to the MI6 network (which IMHO any basic computer tech will tell you is NOT done)

Agree, that was a pretty obvious surrender of reality to make a movie. I cringed at more or less the same things in the early Dan Brown novels, where someone was downloading code from the internet onto a US three-letter-agency computer.