Spoilers for both films below
After the mixed critical reaction to Quantum of Solace the James Bond producers returned 4 years later with the franchise's most acclaimed entry to date- Skyfall. Arriving in time for the series' 50th anniversary it was an appropriately meta-textual film, commenting on the character's place in the 21st century and questioning whether he has a place. Director Sam Mendes- the first Oscar winning director to helm a Bond film- cited Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight as an influence, another film which questions the hero's place in society. In an interview Mendes said that with The Dark Knight Nolan was able to make a "huge movie that is thrilling and entertaining and has a lot to say about the world we live in." Like The Dark Knight, Skyfall asks how we fight a new kind of villain that doesn't play by the old rules. And both films end without a clear-cut victory for the hero or villain.
Skyfall has grown on me while I've been working on this piece and also listening to Mendes' commentary. It couldn't recapture the experience of seeing Casino Royale but I would argue Skyfall is the best crafted Bond film. Roger Deakins' cinematography really is incredible and Mendes stages both the action and dialogue scenes tremendously. While the film has its story flaws- I think we needed more set-up early in the film for going to Skyfall, Bond's family home, Severine (Berenice Merlohe) feels wasted and is cruelly treated by the film, and Javier Bardem's Raoul Silva goes through a lot just to kill Judi Dench M. But the film is elevated by its craftsmanship, performances and some really good character moments.
If Craig's first two films were about his Bond becoming the more polished version of the character we know, Skyfall is about what it means to be James Bond, to have committed yourself to being a tool for Her Majesty's government. Eva Green's Vesper Lynd was a chance at a happy and normal life until her betrayal. Quantum ended with Bond leaving that part of himself behind, having received closure for Vesper's betrayal and death. M told him she needed him back, to which he replied he never left.
This is where Skyfall picks up. several years later, with Bond loyal to M and the service. But the film is largely concerned with Bond having to question that loyalty. In the pre-title sequence he's presumably killed while fighting a mercenary on a top of a train. This is due to M telling MI6 agent Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) to shoot the mercenary even though Bond could be hit, which he is. After years of service she still risked Bond to complete the mission, not trusting Bond to do it himself.
Bond stays "dead" for several months but he returns when MI6 is attacked. Bond was willing to retire in Casino Royale but now he doesn't have anything else but the service. The problem- as the film states quite frequently- is Bond is old and worn out. So is M, who's being pressured to retire by Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) due to her losing the list of undercover NATO agents in the pre-title sequence.
The man who has the list is the aforementioned Silva, a former MI6 agent who was given up by M to the Chinese government when he was discovered to be hacking them. This feels like the film is drawing from Goldeneye, where Bond faced off against a former MI6 agent turned bad, with the former agent a dark mirror version of Bond. And like Elektra King in The World is Not Enough Silva has a grudge against M
When Bond and Silva first meet Silva informs Bond he failed the fit for active duty tests but M sent Bond on the mission anyway. Both Bond and Silva are betrayed by M but one will remain loyal while the other seeks revenge. Silva's introductory speech is an analogy for him and Bond: on his grandmother's island, to stop rats from eating the coconuts they were captured and unable to escape began to eat each other When there were 2 survivors left they were let go but now they only ate rat. "You've changed their nature," he says. M has trapped them together and now they will be forced to metaphorically eat each other.
Bond and Silva are also contrasted by Silva being a technological villain whereas Bond is an old-school fists-and-guns hero. The first two films stripped Bond of his gadgets and in this film the new Q (Ben Whishaw) could be Bond's nephew, another reminder that Bond's getting antiquated. The theme of old vs. new comes to a head when Bond takes M to Skyfall, making the battlefield a place without technology. M does end up dying from her wounds, though after Bond kills Silva. The question is did Bond fail? Bond's old school tactics ended up not preventing his death, so is he irrelevant? The film doesn't give us the easy answer. Instead it ends with Mallory becoming the new M and Bond telling him he's ready to get back to duty. Bond's loyalty isn't just to one woman but to a whole country, even one that thinks it may not need him. And his relevancy is will be further questioned in the next film.
After Skyfall's financial and critical success it made sense for Mendes to be brought back to direct, the first director to do back-to-back Bond movies since John Glen in the 1980s. Spectre continues Skyfall's thematic arc regarding Bond's relevancy in the modern world. Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott), head of the merger between MI5 and MI6, wants to disband the "00" section and create the Nine Eyes Committee, an intelligence gathering alliance. He believes there's no use for field agents like Bond. It's later revealed that Denbigh is working with the terrorist organization Spectre and Nine Eyes will be used by Spectre to collect intelligence throughout the world. Spectre is headed by Bond's presumed dead foster brother Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz,) now calling himself Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Spectre was behind Quantum in the first two films and Blofeld- jealous of his father's love for Bond- has been taking his revenge on Bond since Casino Royale.
Making Blofeld Bond's foster brother- and having a vendetta against Bond- was a misstep. I have no problem with Blofeld operating in the shadows during Casino Royale and Quantum, since they established the whole shadowy organization thing. (I used to assume they would bring Blofeld back) And Blofeld works better when he is a mysterious figure in the shadows who we don't see, as in the early Sean Connery films. I find it's much less interesting for Blofeld to have done everything just to torture Bond. It's more compelling and sinister if Blofeld had no personal vendetta against Bond, for him to have just been caught up in Blofeld's impersonal machinations, with Blofeld never giving one thought to Bond and Vesper falling for each other. And retconning Silva in to having been part of Spectre feels odd because his motivation was so personal.
The best way the film ties the previous Craig films together is the inclusion of Mr. White from the first two films, dying of radiation poisoning inflicted on him from Blofeld because his crisis of conscious made him turn against Blofeld. The scene between White and Bond shows how much these two men have changed since they first met. It's surprising to see White so frail and disheveled. And it's clear these two men no longer have any reason to be enemies. White is much more human here and before he kills himself with Bond's gun he asks him to protect his daughter, Dr. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), from Spectre.
I do like Seydoux's performance and she and Craig have some good moments together but their relationship isn't developed enough to make the love story aspect of this film completely work, especially compared to the one in Casino Royale. Like Vesper, Madeleine comes in to the film later but her introduction lacks the impact of Vesper's, which changed that whole film's dynamic. The pacing of the film is another issue; it feels really drawn out . Though the over-extended running time makes this feel very much like like a Bond film. except I think it needed a lighter touch. It's not a humourless film but it lacks a certain pop.
Despite my criticisms I do like quite a bit of the film until until we get to Blofeld's compound. It's pre-title sequence is the best since Casino Royale, starting with a tracking shot that follows Bond through the Day of the Dead festival in to a hotel then out on its ledge. Then there's the fight inside a helicopter, with it turning upside down. Though visually, the Spectre meeting is the film's most visually striking sequence, compliments of Hoyte Van Hoytema's cinematography.
And Craig gives his most Bondian performance As with Skyfall he's grown so comfortable in the role that he just kind of is Bond. Watching the films close together it's been cool to see his Bond evolve from the rough around the edges assassin to the more polished secret agent we know and love. We get see what it took for him to get to this place and Vesper is never far from my thoughts when I see Craig's Bond.
I do like the idea of Bond having re-confront Vesper's legacy after supposedly putting it behind him. I believe Madeleine is supposed to be Bond's second chance at happiness after Vesper but I don't think film goes deep enough in to his thematic territory. The film doesn't commit enough to what it's doing, making it both the most ambitious of the Craig films but also the least interesting conceptually. And like Skyfall it doesn't really answer the Bond relevancy question. Though I like how Bond sparing Blofeld at the end calls back to what M told Denbigh about a licence to kill also being a licence not to kill. The human factor is lost when killing at a distance via a drone. The decision to kill or not is much more difficult up close.
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