Skyfall: I Can’t Bond with 007 Anymore

Those shmucks.

You know those corporate shmucks, the ones that come and try to reboot a movie series so that they can milk more money out of that movie series that was doing quite fine without their intervention but still they go ahead with a new lead and try to eliminate, one by one, most of the characters that made the original movie series great? Yeah, them, they should just die.

Without further ads, I present:

The latest Bond film that spectacularly failed despite all the money, Daniel-Craig-ness and French heroines thrown at it.

Oh you don’t agree?

Are you one of the fancy shmancy reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes that lack the brain power to just, maybe, think for once that you’re reviewing a stupid movie? That you could have come up with a better catch-phrase than “putting the ‘intelligence’ back in MI6”?

(Seriously, man, that was a horrible catch-phrase!)

Even if you’re not, I’m going to give you a nice numbered list of failures, starting with:

Failure 007: The Girl Was Not Enough

Being a Bond Girl generally jump-starts your acting career (mostly because you’re on the top anyway), but I don’t see much happening to Bérénice Marlohe’s career. One speculative reason might be the difficulty of pronouncing her name, but Skyfall didn’t help in any way – it barely featured her.

She walks in with a ginormous wannabe-panache walk wearing a weird and complicated dress and nails longer than any Obama speech. (See that thing on the left?)

DUDE! What happened to the standard Bond entrance: emerging from the seas in a bikini – in slow motion – to a smirk from Mr. Bond while he holds his mojito?

And then they have an inane conversation with tidbits like:

James Bond: I know you already.
Sévérine: What do you know?
James Bond: Well, it takes a certain type of woman to wear a backless dress with a Beretta 70 strapped to her thigh.

After that scene she disappears from the map, only to reappear later with the villain (she’s his muse after all). And then a few gunshots here and there, she’s dead. Halfway through the movie. (It also explains why no other prominent female actor decided to take this role.)

I don’t blame Miss Marlohe here. Especially when the scriptwriter inserts a steamy scene between Bond and Sévérine as shown in the picture on the right.

Wow. Look. Steam. Literally.

Somewhere, somehow, Sam Mendes and his team forgot the concept of imagination.

Literally.

Failure 008: Gadgets Are Forever

Just the other day, Die Another Day was coming on TV. The movie wouldn’t have been the same were it not for the Aston Martin Vanquish: the car that turned invisible! Imagine the coolness, the awesomeness, and the absolute mindlessness of an invisible car? That’s what Bond stood for.

I was still a kid when I saw The World is Not Enough and, gosh, I just wished I could get my hands on Bond’s eye-glasses. It had X-Ray vision, doofus, and for a young teenager that was a priceless gem that no MasterCard could buy.

So what did Skyfall give us? A gun, and a radio. To be more precise, a useless gun and a particularly uninspiring radio that are probably available online anyway.

Le Sigh.

If you’re going to rewrite the typical Bond film at least rewrite it with some “oeuvre”. (Thanks Peter for expanding my vocabulary). I DON’T WANT SHIT GADGETS IN MY BOND MOVIE.

Failure 009: Licence To Thrill

Skyfall also disappointed in the action department. Sure, if you saw the trailer, you would think that I’m wrong. There’s a bike flying in the air, there are gunshots, there’s a railway car ripped apart. Explosions! Bang Bang! Fist Punches!

Sorry to burst your bubble, but all that happens in the first fifteen minutes. After that it’s a long boring two and half hours with understated tears and a disappointing lack of gadgets. (Blimey, I shouldn’t complain twice.)

There was no how-did-gee-doo-dat? moment. Punches were calculated, surprises were minimal. At max Bond jumped and avoided an oncoming subway train. Yawn. Compare this to the ridiculousness of previous Bond movies. Pierce Brosnan would jump into a nose-diving plane, take control of the cockpit, and save it from crashing. Now that, Sam Mendes, IS WHAT 007 DOES IN A BOND MOVIE!

The only saving grace was that, in the end, the main building came crashing down. (In almost every movie the villain’s lair is destroyed. Of course Bond and Bond Girl would be miraculously saved in multiple how-did-gee-doo-dat? moments). Literally, Skyfall fell.

(Yet another example of lack of imagination.)

GoldenBye

Was this so-called movie review biased? Sure! Do I give a rat’s ass? No!

What I wanted was a Bond film. Instead I was charged for a transition movie to dump the old characters and renew with new ones, with a flimsy after-thought action scene rubbed in. Sam Mendes broke almost all Bond traditions, in effect making this the blandest Bond ever.

Ever.

Daniel Craig ji, for God’s sake please …

… use that gun against the REAL villain of Bond …

Skyfall the movie! Wipe it off from the face of this Earth!

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P.S: This post had spoilers.

I should’ve told you before I started, right? Oh well.