Ryan McNeil
There comes a point in all our lives that we begin to obsess on the inevitability of time. It’s the point when classic poetry suddenly seems eerily on-point, and when we start to see people half our age as a wicked threat to our usefulness. It’s a point that is ignored through denial and through sad attempts at proving that we aren’t ready for the scrap heap yet.
This point in time arrives for everybody – and surprisingly “everybody” includes James Bond.
SKYFALL opens with Bond (Daniel Craig) and fellow MI-6 agent Eve (Naomi Harris), chasing after a criminal who has made off with a hard drive containing the identities of several NATO secret agents. In the scuffle to retrieve the drive, Eve takes a rifle shot that misses its target, allows the crook to escape, and seemingly kills 007.
A few months later, the repercussions of the theft begin to be felt, as not only are identities revealed, but MI-6 comes under attack. The attacks seem to specifically be directed at M (Judi Dench), intended to shake her confidence and make her appear incompetent to her superiors in the British government. In the aftermath of an attack that kills eight MI-6 employees, James Bond resurfaces…wanting to protect his mentor, and resume his post as defender of The Crown.
This time around, he is defending it from a villain named Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Silva is a man driven by his past. He believes that M is causing more bad than good in the world, and that she must be punished for her sins. Not only does he pose a difficult threat for Bond by the fact that he seems to be one step ahead of MI-6 at every turn, but this is compounded by the fact that in his exile, James Bond has become rusty.
How is England’s greatest secret agent supposed to keep it safe, when he’s fighting a case of the yips?
It seems inevitable that every hero the public raises up on its’ collective shoulders is bound to topple and fall to the ground. Equally inevitable is the way that fall will increase our fascination with them. For some reason, we want to worship idols, but not Gods. So when a hero suddenly shows that they are like us after all – prone to disillusionment, pain, and age – that’s the moment that we care most about them. That’s the moment that we want to see them rise.
Seeing James Bond lose a step is like hearing Aretha Franklin miss a note. It’s like seeing Michael Jordan hit the back iron. It’s just so completely unexpected. It’s that unexpected story arc that makes SKYFALL such a fascinating entry into the series. Not that Bond gets “killed”, that’s been done before. It’s that in walking away from the job and embracing his “afterlife”, Bond suddenly embodies something everyone eventually embodies – a person who was once capable of so very much realizing that their capabilities are now limited. It’s as though the screenwriters became obsessed with the fact that the franchise was turning fifty and asked themselves “How can we work this into the narrative?”.
That thematic idea really makes SKYFALL a great film, and the idea is cemented by narrative beats where aging is countered by attacking the problem using “old school” methods. CASINO ROYALE did so very much to bring the character back to formula, but it feels like this film wanted to finally close the loop. It’s the film that specifically reminds the character that all he needs besides his instincts is a gun and a radio. What’s more, it’s the film that underlines that sometimes the best way to fight a technologically proficient enemy is to completely abandon technology. I can’t say I ever thought I’d see the day where 007 started tearing pages out of 21st century terrorists’ playbooks, but here we are.
“Here” is a place where legacy is on everybody’s minds. Silva is driven by it, Bond is trying to stave it off, Mallory uses it to force an issue, and M seems to feel it tapping her on the shoulder. I believe it’s this core theme of legacy that makes SKYFALL so successful because it’s the first time it has come up in the fifty-year-old series. By and large, these films have been frozen in time – with a character who never ages too much, and stories that seldom alter from formula. The world has spent so long being so fanciful, that to even drop in the smallest dose of reality feels invigorating…and makes everything so tangible. Well, more tangible anyway.
Not to end on a down note, but I must admit that I’ve been left perplexed by those who would call this “The Best Bond Ever”. Something tells me that were I to poll those who believe so, that there would be a large overlap in belief that QUANTUM OF SOLACE was “The Worst Bond Ever” (which also isn’t true). SKYFALL is a great Bond film that does a lot of things right – it brings much of the story back down to earth, and does right by longtime fans of the franchise. However, in comparison to earlier entries like FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE or GOLDFINGER…films that defined the genre and didn’t just honour it…this film feels less like greatness and redefinition, and more like a glass raised to where it came from.
The movie was gorgeous (let’s start there), but where you felt the film took a page out of war tactics to improve itself I felt it did it to reverb other idea of ones past coming back to haunt them. For M its Silva, for Bond its Skyfall. Loved the movie and can’t wait to revisit it sooner than later, if I have my way.
I felt that too but didn’t want to get too far into the discussion of Skyfall. I don’t know why I’m worried about spoilers since it seems like everybody and their brother has seen this film already, however I want to keep that final act quiet considering how little of it is in the marketing of the film.
That’s why I didn’t talk too much about the past…..that said, you’re quite right.
Great review, Ryan. Glad you like it as much as I did, we pretty much agree on the rating. I don’t think ‘Quantum’ is the worst Bond ever but glad that Skyfall is a huge improvement over it. Interesting that they toyed with the idea of ‘what if Bond is to retire’ given that it’s their 50th Anniversary. Of course it’s only short-lived, as the franchise is surely here to stay 🙂
Last night, I re-watched a Bond I’d only seen once. After looking at it with fresh eyes, I now have three rounds in the chamber for anyone who claims QUANTUM is the worst.
Good review man 🙂 I love the themes and the look of this film. The acting too is great and I don’t think a better film could have been made for Bond’s 50th. It *is* the best Bond movie that I have ever seen, which isn’t saying much but whatever.
Which ones have you seen? Given the effort you put into culling my Bollywood watchlist, I’d love to narrow down the 23 Bond films into something more potent for ya.
I think you’re overemphasizing what is just one of a lot of elements of this film. Yes, there is the ideas about the Bond being not up to snuff, but that pretty quickly gets shoved away in the second half of the film once Bardem shows up.
There are a lot of other threads in this film and I think the film never does a great job of making them feel like one whole film. You’ve got the M plot, the cyberattack plot, the Bond origin plot, and more and while it gives the film a lot of narrative beats, I didn’t feel like I was watching a singular Bond story.
Still, it is a gorgeous looking film and I really like the first hour of the film. I just don’t think it’s nearly as deep or human as people are saying. Go back and watch Casino Royale and I think you get a much more human and interesting portrait of Bond than you do in Skyfall.
What caught me wasn’t just that Bond was-or-wasn’t up to snuff, but it was how the whole notion of MI-6’s usefulness gets called into question. There have been mentions now and then in the series of the agency being a relic, but this is the first time the film actually acknowledges that much about what MI-6 does might be past its best-before date.
I might have short-sold it a bit by hanging much of it on 007 himself, but you’re right – all around in this film there’s a crisis of confidence…as if everybody feels like the ship in that painting being pulled away to the scrapyard.
Love that you used the Tennyson poem as the brief snippet of the post on the main page. I remember thinking: only in the Sam Mendes Bond movie could you get Tennyson. (That’s a compliment.)
What really got my attention with that poem is not only the way it echoes that feeling both M and Bond are haunted by through the story, but also the scene in which it is spoken. That might be the best-edited sequence in the entire James Bond franchise.
This film pays tribute to past Bond movies, with many scenes paying homage, but yet it’s an Anti-Bond film. This James Bond doesn’t seem to have a lot of fun doing his job which is pretty much the opposite of the earlier Bond. In fact, he has more in common with Jason Bourne than Sean Connery’s James Bond.
Having said that, I largely enjoyed the film. It’s shot beautifully, I like what it tries to do. I was very entertained for the most part. Like you, I am hesitant calling this the best Bond movie, I think Goldfinger still hold the spot for me.
Yeah, you want a real shock to the system, watch this film in concert with the Pierce Brosnan entries. You wouldn’t think such a shift in tone could occur from one actor to the next, but you’d almost swear they are films from two completely different properties…
The Craig films feel like Bourne by way of Christopher Nolan, and the Brosnan ones are feeling more and more like JOHNNY ENGLISH.
Glad you think its great, Ryan. I really love this one. I dont have it at number one, but its very very close. These Craig films are the beneficiaries of modern movie making, including modern action sequences. And when they’re so well done, they’re going to overshadow those classic films for a lot of people right away.
Personally, I love it because it does contain some thematic ruminations! How many Bonds do that?? As you point out, the battle against time, but also the role of and need for espionage in the modern world, they toll it inflicts on its soldiers… there’s a lot of food for thought in this one.
Add in the gorgeous cinematography and the GREAT villain provided by Bardem, and this one, in my opinion, is truly a Bond for the ages!