Skyfall

My roommate wanted to see Skyfall and I haven’t seen a Bond movie in theaters before.  Kind of surprising, considering I’ve seen a lot of the movies, both old and newer.

Origin stories are definitely on the rise for entertainment; Daniel Craig is doing for 007 what Christian Bale did for Batman.  And the writing is some of the best yet.

There is so much I could praise about this movie: the villain may be the best one in all the Bond series, this is definitely Judi Densh’s best performance as M, and that third act at Bond’s family mansion was incredible.

And I especially loved the nods to the prior Bond movies.  The Daniel Craig trilogy may have reinvented the whole series, but that doesn’t mean they can’t acknowledge the long heritage.  My favorite line is when Bond meets with Q, gets a specialized gun and tiny radio, he asks if that’s it.  Q: “Were you expecting an exploding pen?  We don’t do that anymore.”

You know that line wasn’t meant for Bond.  That was told directly to the audience, letting us know they’ve grown up and moved past the childish things.  They are making better stories than ever before.

Alas, there is one black mark to Skyfall and it does ruin the movie for me.  Those who don’t like spoilers, don’t read the rest, although since this particular scene happens in the middle of the movie and doesn’t reveal any major plot twists.

Bond meets a beautiful woman (as usual) and has sex with her five minutes later (as usual.)  She works for the villain and leads Bond to him.  They’re both captured and after a few tense minutes, the villain plays a “game” with Bond.  The girl has a glass of liquor set on top of her head and the game is to shoot it off.

Bond is forced to play because the villain has four lackeys pointing guns at him.  Bond misses the girl and glass entirely (whether by accident or purposely is difficult to say) but the villain takes his turn and shoots the girl dead.  This was inevitable but still heart-wrenching.  In the few minutes she had on screen, I could understand her fear, saw how vulnerable she was, how she was clinging to Bond to save her, or at least have her life mean something.  And she dies without even a hope of any of that happening.

Here’s the part that bugs me: the villain asks how Bond feels and Bond says, “What a waste of good Scotch.”  Then he beats the crap out of everybody who was still pointing a gun at him.

I detached from that moment and couldn’t care less about what happened to Bond from that point on.  He sees how terrified this woman is, he makes love to her, and then he sums up her life with a little quip about the spilled drink.  No mention was made of the woman afterwards, no sign of remorse, not even once (despite the fact that she was the best actress in the whole film and the one I cared about most.)

I hated Bond from that point on.  All the good things I said about the movie are still true.  The story even got better and more powerful afterwards.  But I didn’t care and still don’t care because I think the hero is scum, as callous and cruel as the people he’s fighting.  I hold my good guys to a higher bar than what was given here.