It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
I understand that. I guess I have a certain view of what M and MI6 stand for in the world of Bond and when those things become extraordinary rendition, human degradation and overweening arrogance, I begin to fall out of love with Bond's world.
SF left Bond looking like the unquestioning enforcer of a totalitarian police state. I've said it before (and I know the criticism was made of previous Bonds), but there has been more than something a little fascist about DC's era. I think this is unfortunate. Bond was born out of the fight against fascism and the Nazis. I disliked the portrayal of M and MI6 as this sinister organisation that holds parliament in contempt and acts with a sense of impunity. Bernard Lee might have found the pressure from the PM or minister annoying, but he would never have displayed the open disrespect to elected representatives that Dench's M does in SF.
I very much doubt that MI6 was very much like Bernard Lee's operation in the 60s - the world that Connery's Bond inhabited was a reassuring fantasy in which MI6 were the guardians of the civilised world. Perhaps this new approach reflects the changing 'reality' of how poorly politicians are regarded in the UK and perhaps the lack of trust we have in the police and security apparatus, but that's a key reason I strongly object to too much 'realism' and contemporary politics creeping into Bond. The more it reflects the real world around us (which is surely not a key criteria for a Bond movie), the more depressing and similar to every other movie it becomes.
A very bad show.
Great scene with superb performances from Dench and Bardem. You could hear that Dench was starting to crack and that little chuckle Silva does to himself after putting the retainer back in made him look pretty mad to me.
That was the point at which he became just another pantomime villain, with an earth-crushingly mundane and uninspired motivation. What makes it worse is that the casino scene and Bardem's entrance build him up brilliantly, and then all the good work is blown away in a blizzard of machine gun fire, scowling and generic action tedium.
Personally I found Silva's motivation more interesting and compelling than Greene's which I thought felt oddly flat. That whole aspect of the story felt kind of rushed to me. We see a few shots of people looking for water but then we're soon back with Bond. Also, why doesn't he tell M when she confronts him about the oil theory in the hotel room?
Then he took out a prosthetic that a) shouldn't have been needed in the first place since that's not how hydrogen cyanide works, and b) should have been confiscated like belts and shoelaces are. Ruin the scene why don't you. I agree with this.
It's not about civil liberties exactly. I just dislike the 'tone' it creates and the implications about the way that Bond and MI6 work and their values. Sticking people in glass boxes is what you expect a villain to do - it dehumanises and humiliates the captive. Frankly that scene only made me empathise with Silva and dislike M even more.
When Bond is taken captive on Silva's island he treated classily - tied to a chair and given a leg grope. A sign that Silva is old school and respects the way in which these things are supposed to be done.
Pardon me while I go to the nearest corner and throw up. Pardon me if I don't harbor any sympathy toward a guy to acquires a former sex slave as his mistress and kills her in such a cruel fashion.
Personally I found Silva's motivation more interesting and compelling than Greene's which I thought felt oddly flat. That whole aspect of the story felt kind of rushed to me. We see a few shots of people looking for water but then we're soon back with Bond. Also, why doesn't he tell M when she confronts him about the oil theory in the hotel room?
Greene's motives were more about profit for the organization that he works for. Silva's was about getting revenge against a former boss who left him behind in the clutches of the Chinese government . . . after she discovered he was acquiring Chinese intelligence secrets and selling them to the highest bidder.
It's about being better than the worst in Humanity.
Surely you have to recognise Grant is an exception?
Before you get on your high horse, isn't Silva supposed to be the one who get's her out of the sex trade...? And any way, it was Bond who was only too keen to dip his wick, use her and stand by while she got shot, while following up with a lame quip. Classy.
We find out very little about the relationship between Severine and Silva, apart from that she seems to enjoy the run of his luxury yacht, gets to hang out in nice casinos and wear lots of expensive clothes. Silva shoots her because she betrays him (sort of predictable) and because she (inexplicably) walks right back into his lair to be caught. Fool her for trusting Bond. Seems like she threw away a nice gig in exchange for a quick shag.
We're not talking about the books though, are we? The Red Grant character in the film is brilliantly psychotic and conveys violence and menace without CGI disfigurements. And there is the classic railway dining car scene with Bond, as well as the amazing final fight.
I really think SF should have had a dining scene - perhaps at Skyfall Lodge, with Silva getting there first and having dinner laid out for Bond and M when they arrive. Bond would have faced the excruciating pain and humiliation of being held captive in his dead parent's own home, while Silva nonchantly tucks into one of the Bond estate's delicious grouse. Would have been nice and a chance for a final bit of verbal fisty-cuffs before the big fight.
'Such a lovely home. Honestly James, I really don't understand why you ever left.'
You're shifting the goal posts slightly. Grant is one of the all time great Bond henchmen/villains. Greene is a minnow in comparison. Silva could have been great, but for me he lacked the one or two killer scenes after the island to really cement his status. I think the lack of a proper final face-to-face confrontation and decent dialogue in the Skyfall Lodge sequence is a real shame.
It seems to me that the emotional significance/power of Skyfall is not fully exploited. In the end, the final confrontation could have been anywhere. We catch a glimpse of Bond's parents' graves, but so what?
I totally agree. I am not slating Greene. As I've said above, I think Amalric did a decent job with a not very amazing script. I also thoroughly enjoyed Silva's rat speech. It was excellent. At that point in the film I really was thinking 'here we go - this is where it really kicks off' and then almost immediately the moment Severine is dead and they go back to London all the suspense, tension and atmosphere that has been created is completely lost. Silva's dialogue from then on is forgettable and the story sort of trundles its muddled and tedious way to the Purvis and Wade conclusion. Severine and Silva were the only characters that I found remotely interesting or sympathetic in the whole film. I think it was a disaster to kill her off, and Silva becomes boring after the island as his mundane and incoherent little plot unfolds.
The only thing that went wrong with Dominic Greene was a poorly and practically non existent script and lack of establishing his character, which comes back to Marc Forster, really. Overall, I really loved how Mathieu Almaric gave him life, without having any physical deformity, just making him another shadowy bussinessman with an aganda to keep. That area of the character really kept to Forster's vision of having corporations and Global organisations controlling third world countries etc, and dictating and destabilising the power of these nations and gaining economic wealth. Very clever ideas, such a shame it wasn't better developed in the script.
M's life is threatened directly by the main villain and she is literally seconds away from death. That's something that in itself hasn't happened in the series before.
Because Skyfall is a proper James Bond Film- it has Humour (QOS had no humour whats so ever), a decent villain (who isnt a pathetic whiny frenchman with as much meanice as a girl scout), a straight forward plot (which QOS has no sense of direction- is the villain after Oil? no wait its Water wait what?-see no wonder why Neal and wade are gone), The Bond Girls in Skyfall were likable and not woodern or depressing (unlike Camille in QOS which is so forgetable) and there are no Bondisms and a gunbarrel which Craig walks like he shat himself.
last but not least the editing of QOS is so bad that it makes people physically sick: i mean this describes the editing in 5 Seconds:
Case Closed
=)) =)) =)) =))
I have just laughed myself shitless at what a bad suggestion this is. Rule number never let the fans write for you. And you moan about Purvis and Wade.
Your missing the point of the final scene. Silva is relentless in his pursuit to kill M. He's not going to give up. Bond takes M out of London and up to the Highlands because he knows this. As soon as Silva see's M he's going to kill her - not sit down for a nice grouse dinner.
What you are hankering for is old school Guy Hamilton Bond where the villain sits down and spouts cliches before killing him. Its cariacature Bond. What next? A midget disguised as a haggis ambushes him from under the table?
As someone said on another thread. The Craig/Flemingesque Bond fits very well into the modern world. With Skyfall we got a tight sharp thriller that was still very much a James Bond film.
Long may it stay that way.
@002,
I can see you don't like QOS, but I feel you are wrongly slating it.
That's a mashup of many scenes with terrible quality, you can't expect it to make sense.
Quantum Of Solace was a plot about revenge and about a man on the hunt for the killer of his lover , you can't expect him to be cracking jokes on it can you ;) and it has similarities with the Dalton era , its subtle on humour . Eg: The Fields-Bond conversations.
I know you may not see it the same way but in my humble opinion the plot was miles and miles better than Skyfall ,Because of the enormous plot holes. let me show you why I believe so
Watch this from 2:29 onwards.
You see the amount of plot holes it has in comparison with Quantum's which was devoid of any
and last Everyone I have seen agrees with the Quantum's gunbarell being much more better than the Skyfall's one in which he's stiff as hell and the graphics are poor .
In Quantum He looks elegant and classy without that ridiculous haircut
Judge for yourself ;)
That isn't really what it is about at all, in my eyes. It is primarily Camille's revenge, and her own feelings after she had killed Medrano show Bond that though you can kill someone who did you wrong, the pain doesn't go away and nothing is really gained except more tallies to your body count and more blood on your hands. Hence why Bond finally says "I don't think the dead care about vengeance" to her as they depart, finally understanding the meaninglessness of revenge. After all he has seen, from Mathis telling him to forgive Vesper to seeing that Camille doesn't look or feel any different after getting her own revenge, Bond refuses to get back at Yusef at the end of the film and instead gives him over to MI6 where he will at least be useful. Bond knows that killing him will do no good and doing so can't bring Vesper back. He realizes this when Yusef begs him to make his death quick and he answers with "she wouldn't want me to." It is here that we again see an ever-changing Bond growing less reckless and self absorbed into the competent agent that handles things with a level head and does what is in the best interests for his service instead of for his own personal gain. The great thing about Bond in this film is that everyone back in England thinks he has gone rogue to kill his way to find answers about Vesper (even M has slight doubts about him), yet he never steps out of line or risks his country's security or breaks his loyalty to the service to get his revenge in any way, shape or form. He is all about the mission, through and through. He won't even do Greene in at the end and instead leaves the rat to be exterminated by his own organization. These are the aspects I love about QoS. The deep character study of Bond and why he does what he does and says what he says, something you can't find in DAD and yet many place it higher on their lists. Hopefully time will be kind to QoS as appreciation continues to grow for it. There is no much substance there if you only open your eyes and look for it.
You summed it up beautifully!
but IMO It's also about Bond , he see's that him and Camille were on similar situations, only difference being that Camille went the distance and achieved what she needed to , something what Bond couldn't do. Showing Bond that even if you kill the one's responsible, the pain will never go away
That's exactly what I was expressing. And I in no way wanted to appear like I was correcting you, but simply just wanted to offer my view on things. It seems we agree on what is being expressed! :)
Now it's my turn to laugh.
I'm not going to defend my suggestion but your statement is patent garbage. The whole point of Silva's plan is that he wants to humiliate M. It is not even clear at the end whether he even has it in himself to kill her - he still loves mummy too much. If he' just wanted to kill her he'd have made sure she was in her office when he blew it up. You should pay attention to this masterpiece next time you watch it.
I think you've just made it entirely clear that you yourself have no idea what the film is about. For this I can hardly blame you as it's incoherent nonsense for the main part.
As Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian had the honesty to admit in his otherwise positive review, Skyfall "does not involve a plot in the boringly normal sesne of the word".
Tight sharp thriller? What planet are you from?
I could say the same for you. Silva had already humiliated/picked at M and ate away at her by releasing the names of the agents and tarnishing her relationship.
It isn't about him killing M, it is about both of them dying. Think about it: Silva's whole existence is bent on getting at her, and when she is dead he has no more purpose. It makes logical sense that he would wish for her to pull the trigger and kill them both as he tells her to do when he and M are in the chapel at the end of Skyfall, but Bond intervened.
I suggest you go back and watch this film again.
I agree that Silva probably hates himself more than M. He's almost sorry when he see's she's hurt. He still "loves" her because she was his surrogate mother in the same way she was with Bond yet hates her because of how she gave him up.
I love the end scene because you see how twisted he is. He wants her dead but also wants himself dead and I suspect if M had refused and Bond hadn't shown up he would have just killed her and then himself.
@0BradyM0Bondfanatic7
Yes we very much do !
I find it a bit shameful that some Bond fan's judged QoS on what the critics say, That really says something about how mentally weak they are.
They lent a blind eye to the character development, the scale of the action and the overall beautiful feel . Instead based they're decisions on what some self proclaimed expert reviewers had to say. Little do they realise that these so called 'experts' are just normal viewers like you and me only difference being they hate action.
I could only hope at least now that people give it an additional viewing and forget what these so called 'Critics' have to say and judge for themselves.
But that just seems like wishful thinking at this point
What? That's absolute pants. He isn't hesitating to kill her at all. He was wanting her to pull the trigger so they they could both die, since as I have said countless times, he was only alive to kill her. With one bullet he could complete his mission and then die at the same time since he no longer had a purpose to live.