Films I Loved - Skyfall

Directed by: Sam Mendes

Starring: Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris

Gosh, I loved Skyfall. It’s such a good film. And it’s crazy how good it is because writing a James Bond film is - by the creators’ own admission - a freaking mess. In the modern day, it’s getting even harder, because you have to adapt to the changing movie action hero ideal while still keeping the Bond spirit while also fitting in well to the larger franchise while also justifying the premise while also trying to tone down the more cliched and/or sexist/racist character types of the original while also telling an interesting story while also being a movie on top of all that. It’s just a mess. It IS possible, it just doesn’t come as easily as other plots. This is why Marvel movies are so successful; they have a massive number of stories to draw their plots from. James Bond has to make it up (with a little influence from the books) every time. 

There’s also the danger of Bond being thought of as kind of liiiiightly British supremacist - an Englishman who touts around the world defeating evil foreigners ‘cause Britons are the best and everyone else isn’t. But I don’t think that’s quite what the character is - he’s a picture of British self-confidence in the 20th century, yeah, but it’s done in a spirit of adventure and overcoming adversity. At his inception, the world was still being explored and had many places full of instability, and someone like Bond - who was skilled and brave and resourceful enough to always come out on top - was a legitimately inspiring figure to anyone who had to go someplace different. He’s not propaganda, he’s a model of what we can aspire to that’s been turned into blockbusting spectacle. That’s universal and not offensive. Skyfall’s a good example.

First off, great name. I love it. It’s the kind of short novel, vague meaning word that works great, and the way it works in the story and in the marketing (the teaser for Skyfall is one of the coolest teasers I’ve ever seen) works great as well. The film hits the perfect note of swinging between the over-plot (saving people from the bad guy) and the personal plot (the main characters confronting their pasts), and the name of the film ends up applying to both excellently. 

So now that I’ve gotten past the actual name of the film, the actual film is also great. Bond films seem to swing between good or mediocre pretty easily, quite often because the script will be being continuously rewritten DURING shooting - more than that already happens - and so it’s really anyojne’s guess what it’ll be in its final form. Skyfall got delayed a lot (five years between it and its predecessor) and apparently it’s thought that the extra time let them iron out the script properly BEFORE shooting, so the delay was a blessing in disguise. The result is that this film has a TIGHT script - well-defined characters, thoughtful main plots, consistent themes (which is really hard to do), excellent and diverse set-pieces, an exploration of the Bond character that informs without devaluing (this is also what good comic book stories do), and a main emotional hook that gets fulfilled on well. It combines that with the excellent music (Adele’s Skyfall is STILL great 👌🏻), beautiful and coherent imagery (courtesy of Roger Deakins, godfather of cameramen), and well-written and executed action (pro-tip - how you write the action does just as much of for it as the performance does) to make what is - in summary - a total banger. 

There’s a couple of flaws - the typical weirdly and poorly scripted James Bond sexuality makes an appearance; some minor plot points get dropped, but so smoothly you don’t really notice - but overall it’s really good, and a good use of your time. Probably the best Bond film of your lifetime aside from Goldeneye, and this has none of the potential campiness that Goldeneye has, although your mileage may vary on that. Good, good film.