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He hasn't seen it yet.






Oh, OK....
















SPOILERS





















I liked it a lot. Great fun, and unlike poor old DAD the injokes were fairly unobtrusive (I think Bond's own car being kitted out with old fashioned gadgets is the only one that would seem really odd if you'd never seen a Bond film before).

I'm surprised Silver has been getting so much praise though, I've seen comparisons to Ledger's Joker (and there is a big Nolan Batman vibe throughout- the burning of Stately Bond Manor, the old villain gets captured on purpose scam, the first real focus on Bond as an orphan in the films and the revelation the fist thing he did after he parents died was go into the caves beneath his house. Of course, as Nolan has cheerfully been making Bond films with Batman in that's probably fair exchange) but he was more the new David Walliams.

A bit of self aware camp is fine, but the whole "Ping ping cooo-eyy I'm bonkers me" stuff was way too OTT. And the attempts to try and create a Goldeney style parallel between him and Bond didn't work as a result. You needed someone who would feel like Bond gone evil and what we got was more someone who'd been rejected from children's TV for being too zany.

He was also a bit crap. Despite all the general chaos he caused, his one and only goal throughout the film was to kill one pensioner and (it turns out) himself. He winds up being incredibly inept at this and only winds up winning by freak events (Despite his "She's mine!" protestations it's one of his henchmen who delivers the killer shot to M). So we end up in the weird position where the film ends with the villain achieving him ends, but still a failure.

They again, we're talking about someone who, when they want to have someone killed in Singapore, they set up an overly elaborate "Lure him into a room to look at a piece of art and have him shoot from the next building" plot rather than just having one of the other people in the room- who are all in on it- shoot him themselves. He'd have saved four million Euros that way.

But despite his ineptitude at his actual plan, the set pieces he put into play as part of his failure were all very well done, the whole underground cross London chase being especially a highlight. The climax of the film was more Home Alone With Your Granny than Bond but still with a lot of pace and excitement to it. The poor old DB5

As a final thought on the villain... He's apolitical and will do any nefarious scheme for left or right for the money. So basically exactly like Quantum. He could have been the head of that organisation with almost no changes to the script, the fact he wasn't I think shows what Eon really think of that side diversion despite their claims they might revisit those plot threads in future.

Craig was great, even if it was odd to have the film dealing with Bond as old and past his best so soon after the relaunch and with more Craig to come.

The new supporting cast are great as well. Yes Ralph might as well have been wearing a "I'm the new M" t-shirt but Bond's boss as more than a contemporary to him is an interesting one and he managed to remain likeable even at his most sarcastic to old M.

And that was actually one of the things I really liked about the film. Dench's M has been basically incompetent since The World Is Not Enough (and of course, the NuDench M of the reboot doesn't have the strong showing of the first two Brosnan's to her credit).

Constantly making poor judgement calls, she's managed to get MI6 blown up twice and has hired at least one traitor a film, culminating in her own bodyguard trying to kill her. She's also basically entirely dependant on Bond for everything she does to not be a complete disaster (she's also a borderline alcoholic far more than Bond is, generally if she stands still for more than 30 seconds she'll break out a glass of the hard stuff). If not Dench being so good we'd all find her completely useless.

So for this to finally come back and bite her on the arse was long overdue. Dench has been great, but with the return of the "Classic" supporting characters and office set we'll once again see an MI6 where Bond may well be the best but everyone else isn't useless and/or evil.

And despite one of the trailers blowing its appearance (in fact, a surprising amount from close to the end of the movie is in the trailers) I squeeed when Bond walked into that office.

How long did you type on that post?

My girlfriend was convinced, from one of the trailers, that Bond actually travelled back in time. So I was glad that wasn't the case.
Overall, I enjoyed it but it felt like it couldn't tell if it wanted to be a dark, modern Casino Royale-esque Bond or a big, stupid fanwank. It was nice to have gadgets and incidental bond music back, anyway.

Addl wrote:How long did you type on that post?

Probably less time than you wasted reading it if you've no interest in the film.

Summerhayes wrote:My girlfriend was convinced, from one of the trailers, that Bond actually travelled back in time. So I was glad that wasn't the case.
Overall, I enjoyed it but it felt like it couldn't tell if it wanted to be a dark, modern Casino Royale-esque Bond or a big, stupid fanwank. It was nice to have gadgets and incidental bond music back, anyway.

In terms of avoided fanwank... Bond spends the last act of the film teamed up with a grumpy old Scottish man... That was so written for Connery wasn't it?

Just before we saw his face, I was convinced it would be Connery and was silently thinking to myself "oh dear, please don't . . ."

I haven't read a thing in this thread, but it's fun to threaten to read it to Hound when he pisses me off.

inflatable dalek wrote:I'm surprised Silver has been getting so much praise though, I've seen comparisons to Ledger's Joker

Yeah, no. He was crap. Completely crap. Trying to graft a serious backstory onto a campy 70s-style Bond villain just doesn't work, or at least Javier Bardem couldn't make it work. On the up-side he had far less screen time than Joker, so the couple of scenes where he went totally over the top detract from the movie a bit but don't ruin it.

inflatable dalek wrote:They again, we're talking about someone who, when they want to have someone killed in Singapore, they set up an overly elaborate "Lure him into a room to look at a piece of art and have him shoot from the next building" plot rather than just having one of the other people in the room- who are all in on it- shoot him themselves. He'd have saved four million Euros that way.

I sort of assumed the the whole thing was a setup from the get-go, with the kooky-but-somehow-genius bad guy knowing that Bond would kill his assassin and connect the dots to his secret private island. Because taken at face value, it's the stupidest plan I've ever heard.

Yes, even worse than Max Zorin's climactic "machine-gun all my followers while cackling like a madman" master stroke.

inflatable dalek wrote:The new supporting cast are great as well. Yes Ralph might as well have been wearing a "I'm the new M" t-shirt but Bond's boss as more than a contemporary to him is an interesting one and he managed to remain likeable even at his most sarcastic to old M.

If they were hoping the audience wouldn't catch on, it probably would have been a good idea not to cast someone who looked exactly like a younger version of the 1980s M...

Or was that just me?

inflatable dalek wrote:So for this to finally come back and bite her on the arse was long overdue. Dench has been great, but with the return of the "Classic" supporting characters and office set we'll once again see an MI6 where Bond may well be the best but everyone else isn't useless and/or evil.

Wait, wait. When was anyone else at MI6 ever useful? Every other 00-agent that we ever meet has gotten himself killed by being sloppy, with Bond called in to clean up his mess. The only exception to that was Alec Trevelyan who, hey, turned out to be a supervillain. Bond and Q were the only ones who were consistently successful at their job, since M is constantly hiring terrible agents and Moneypenny is too busy trying to get Bond's pants off to actually do her job.

Summerhayes wrote:It was nice to have gadgets and incidental bond music back, anyway.

Agreed. The music especially helped make the movie feel like an actual Bond film instead of a generic humourless spy drama, a problem for the last film.

inflatable dalek wrote:In terms of avoided fanwank... Bond spends the last act of the film teamed up with a grumpy old Scottish man... That was so written for Connery wasn't it?

A part of me wishes that it had been Connery, but another part of me thinks that it simply would have been a bit too much.

Overall, I really liked the movie. It was way, way more memorable than Quantum of Solace, perhaps a bit "dumber" but in a good way. It was fun, like a Bond movie should be, instead of serious business 100% of the time. My wife and I rewatched both of the previous Craig Bond movies this weekend before we went out to see Skyfall, and I have to admit that this was the only one of the three that actually felt like a James Bond movie. Casino Royale was a very good "how Bond became Bond" story, and as such really shouldn't come off as a traditional Bond film. Quantum of Solace was just sort of forgettable, though...not compelling like Casino Royale or fun like other Bond films, and even though I'd seen it at least twice before I didn't remember a single thing about it other than M's bodyguard trying to kill her (easily the best part of the movie). Skyfall hit just the right notes, though, introducing a lot of the traditional Bond tropes without sacrificing the more serious flavour of the Craig films so far.