Skyfall

The wife and I ventured out to the movies last weekend, something we don’t normally do because, well, we have children … and babysitting’s expensive ... and so’s the movies …

Well, anyway, we wanted to see Lincoln. But as we were spending the holiday weekend with my parents out in the woods of northeastern Pennsylvania, where it’s at least a half-hour drive to get to anything, Lincoln wasn’t playing at the nearest movie theater. So we saw the next best thing: Skyfall.

What did Hopper think?

(spoilers)

- Still not convinced of Daniel Craig as James Bond. Perhaps this is due to watching countless reruns with Sean Connery as 007 on teevee as a kid or watching Roger Moore as Bond in the movies in the 70s. Craig is of a more Bourne-ian mold, and we all acknowledge that Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne revolutionized the spy flick a decade ago.

- Javier Bardem as the bad guy, Silva, is way underused, undervalued, and underappreciated, by the screenplay. Surely here’s a man capable of playing a megalomaniacal villain! But all he wants is simple revenge. Revenge through an intricate plot of split-second timed events and Rube Goldberg logistics. All to put a bullet in someone’s brain.

- Liked Bond’s backstory, as revealed in the final third of the movie, when he, M, and a figure from his past await the villain’s henchmen in a home for wayward youth Bond spent his, er, youth in. An old, abandoned mansion in the dreary, rain-soaked fields called Skyfall.

- Absolutely loved Bardem’s reason for revenge: being given up by M, and forced to endure the aftereffects of an ineffective cyanide pill and years of Chinese torture. Lots of channeling of Hannibal Lecter here, as well as Heath Ledger’s Joker in a later scene (where he’s in disguise as a policeman).

- Needs more gadgets! Needs more science fiction!

- Liked the youthful Q. At first didn’t, but his verbal sparring with Bond eventually won me over, as well as the scenes where he’s dueling in cyberspace with Silva.

- But didn’t like how Silva suddenly became a member of the top 5 terrorist hackers on the planet. I thought he was a field agent? A field agent who lost his mind? A field agent bent on cold-blooded revenge?

- Liked the komodo dragon kill. Komodo dragons are nasty, dangerous creatures, but for some reason, Hollywood never uses them. Kudos for the komodo! I anxiously await the komodo dragon / slasher / genetic mutation movie franchise!

- Heard on another website that there’s a preponderance of Catholic symbolism in the flick. Not sure about that, or how deliberate it was, but you can note the following: a Judas-like betrayal, a resurrection, Bond emerging from the waters (twice) a la baptism, “priest holes” in Skyfall mansion, the conclusion set in the small Catholic church. Interesting …

- My favorite poem is quoted by M during the (British equivalent of) Senate hearings – “Ulysses”, by Tennyson. Those final few lines are among the greatest, most transcendent, lines in the English language, a tribute to all that’s great in Man’s soul.

- Only once have I ever drank a glass of whisky with a scorpion on the back of my hand. The movie makes it appear as if this is a common thing to do in beach bars.

- At the very end, in new M’s office, as Bond thumbs the dossier on the desk – I would have had him open it to the picture of a bald nasty and the word “Blofeld” typed somewhere on the data sheet. Blofeld! Bring him back, badder than ever! Of course, the next movie doesn’t have to have Ernst as a bad guy, but since everything else in the final scenes are “retro” or “throw back,” why not update on old villain?

Verdict: The movie moved, never dragged, though I wished it was meatier, grander, greater. Badder, in a good way.

Grade: B.