Skyfall (2012)

Back in the day, when Pierce Brosnan was the legendary spy James Bond, I actually watched it with great interest. Or maybe I just happened to be easily pleased because as I put all the movies I remember seeing into my Letterboxd account, I realized, I have seen some crappy movies as a kid. My god, most of them were just mindless teen flicks – now I can’t even stomach thinking about them let alone watch them. So taking into account the horrendous past of my movie history, Skyfall happened to make a good impression without actually having the Daniel Craig James Bond knowledge from his past movies Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

As I said, I have not seen Daniel Craig as James Bond before I sat down to watch Skyfall, if we don’t take into account the first 30 minutes of his previous Bond movie that bored me to death. Let’s just say Skyfall is my only Craig experience because then I can say that I like him as Bond. He has that weird guy vibe going on, not that it’s not good, I like it but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like he’s the kind of guy your mom warns you about, the kind you should stay away from because he would get you in trouble. So Craig adds that extra something to James Bond and makes him more interesting. But then again, this is because Skyfall actually manages to have a decent story line from the start.

Just like with any Bond movie, we start off with chasing and fighting, as if that’s the only way to introduce a character. This time Bond gets shot and ends up in the bottom of the river – enter the award winning theme song by Adele that I only like in the context of the movie – and everybody assumes he is dead. Now, we all know he’s not dead but I was a bit disappointed that his return was so unsurprising. I would have preferred him in M’s (Judi Dench) living room without the whole girl in bedroom, drinking in the bar and hearing the news scene beforehand. As if everything was meant to be spelled out to me so neatly – he was on an island pleasing women while drinking to celebrate his freedom but then his duties made him come back – it’s Bond, leave a bit of mystery to him.

Anyway, I’m rambling about things that don’t really matter in the long run because the main plot is all about the villain. Oh, Javier Bardem as the villain, why do the nice guys always play such pleasant bad guys? Tom Hiddleston is like fan-favorite although everybody should be rooting for the good guys, same applies to Bardem – I was kind of rooting for him. And why not? We all know the good guy will win in the end but playing for the opposite team is far more interesting because the villain is always the mysterious one. Though, I do have to add that Bond’s past unraveling in the second half of the movie was quite surprising and sad. I should have been more emotional about other things that happened too but I was just disappointed that there wasn’t enough Q (Ben Whishaw) and Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) throughout the movie.

What was the most interesting part of Skyfall, maybe it’s been going on for some time now but I’ve just been absent from the Bond world, was the lack of Bond girl emphasis. There were two ladies, indeed, but in the end the true Bond girl was actually Bond’s boss M, which was nice because of the whole big spoiler in the end. Which I knew about! That serves me right for waiting for so long and then finding out the big twist in the end – hence my lack of emotions. Still, as I said, the two ladies that seemed to only have half the Bond girl value (poor casting?) fell both so short against M’s girl power. Who knew M had it in her!

The big question now is regarding the previous Craig Bond movies but I’ll clear that up in a second. Most definitely I won’t go back to the other two because as much as I enjoy the decent Bond action, at the end of the day, it is what it is, a Bond movie. And Skyfall’s power for me was behind Bardem and in the end its quite serious plot which I doubt is as such in the previous movies, also maybe the following ones. Then again, I might be wrong and I’m sure one of you will correct my mistake. Anyway, while I do enjoy the action and Daniel Craig, and even though Skyfall does get a high rating, I wouldn’t go ahead and call it a favorite of mine. It’s still good though and a great addition to the never ending Bond franchise.

PS: The jumping onto the train sequence would have been so much more amazing if I hadn’t seen it about a hundred times before on tumblr.

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