Top Seven… Reasons Why Skyfall Really Isn’t Very Good At All
Only one man likes Bond films. His name is Alan Partridge. He doesn’t even exist. Beware of those who proclaim, ‘Oh, I bloody love James Bond movies. Bloody Bond, I bloody love ‘im’. They are liars. No one likes Bond films ***. They are films for people who don’t like films. Pre-packaged and flat-packed. Bond isn’t British. He’s Swedish. He is the Ikea of cinema.
We may love Bond themes or Bond openings or Bond stunts or Bond villains or Bond girls, but none of us is stupid enough to enjoy an entire Bond film. The bit where the car spins through the air in The Man With The Golden Gun, that’s brilliant. But would anyone want to sit through the rest of the film again? No thanks.
Bond movies are cynical exercises in marketing and little more. When Star Wars was a smash in the late 70s, it was time to put Bond into space in Moonraker. When the Bourne films went big, it was time to thrust Bond into incomprehensible action scenes too.
Skyfall has been proclaimed by many as the best Bond film ever. Which is a bit like saying Mitt Romney was the best Republican candidate in the US election race this year. Perhaps it is because its predecessor, Quantum Of Solace, was so unbelievably dull that it was universally agreed upon that Skyfall is brilliant. Well, it’s not. It’s a Bond film. With all that entails. But even in the history of Bond films, Skyfall fails to live up to the hype. Here’s why.
(**THERE ARE NO SPOILERS OF SKYFALL BELOW**)
007. The theme song
Sorry Adele, I love that one where you sing about fire and rain, even though James Taylor beat you to it by more than 40 years, but your Bond theme puts me to sleep. It lurches along and you wait for the big crescendo, à la Tina Turner with GoldenEye, but it never comes. As for the credit sequence, it has Bond battling seaweed. Great. Bond themes should rouse you for the film to come, not make you want to sink to the bottom of the ocean. When I was walking home from the cinema I was humming Tomorrow Never Dies by Sheryl Crow. That’s how nondescript Skyfall’s theme is.
006. Cyber-terrorism
Oh, the bad guy is a cyber-terrorist! Who would have thought it? Anyone who’s watched a movie made from 1995 onwards, that’s who. Didn’t the Bond makers see Die Hard 4? Or Sandra Bullock in The Net? Or this?
005. M, or rather, Judi Dench as M
The makers of Skyfall had obviously not seen The World Is Not Enough either. Which is probably just as well, because like all Bond films *** it is pretty rubbish, bar a great opening sequence in London (see 002 below). In The World Is Not Enough, someone from M’s past comes back to haunt her. Not in a ghostly way, in a blows up MI6 kind of way. In Skyfall, the exact same thing happens. My problem isn’t M as such – the character is ripe with possibilities – but Dame Judi Dench’s M. She has been in every Bond film since GoldenEye. That’s way too long. She was great in GoldenEye, of course, breaking Bond’s balls, calling him a dinosaur. But I don’t want to see a Bond film that revolves around her. I want to see a Bond film that revolves around Bond. If I want to watch an old woman in peril, I have the Spider-Man movies for that.
004. The Bond girls
Wow, we’ve come such a long way since Bond girls were called Pussy. Oh no, hang on, we haven’t. Naomie Harris and Bérénice Marlohe receive particularly short shrift here. The former’s only job is to give Bond a shave, while the latter is barely allowed to offer a tantalising glimpse of what could have been an excellent performance if stretched over the entire film. Doesn’t seem fair, given that Olga Kurylenko in Quantum Of Solace was given as much screen time as Daniel Craig himself. Remember that? ‘Course you don’t. It was rubbish. Could be worse though, I guess…
003. The action
Bond films are just action films with a character we’ve heard of before. That’s it. I have no problem with the plot suffering as a consequence, but at least give us a few ‘wow’ moments. The only time that happened in Skyfall was when Bond spontaneously hitched a ride on an elevator. The opening train/excavator bit looked like something left on the cutting room floor from a Fast And The Furious movie.
002. London
The only bit of Skyfall that held much interest for me was a visually startling – and crucially, quite original – sequence in Shanghai. However, most of the action takes place in London. I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. Bond films should start in London, but never be based there. I don’t want to see Bond pottering around Regent Street looking for suits. I want to see him get his orders, jet off somewhere exotic and keep going to places that are exotic. Although not fuel cell-powered hotels in the middle of nowhere. That was crap. In Skyfall, Bond gets the Tube (still trying to copy Bourne, who made a right mess at Waterloo Station). Getting the Tube is not exciting. There is no way it should be in a Bond film. I get it every day. It’s pretty dull. And it doesn’t get exciting just because James bloody Bond is in the next carriage. Even Rihanna and Roy Hodgson get it now. Of course, there are occasions when the Tube can be featured in movies…
001. Mccaulay Culkin
I’m not going to get spoilerific, but let’s just say the ending of Skyfall should have featured Kevin McCallister. It’s Home Alone-tastic.
*** Except GoldenEye. GoldenEye is just brilliant.
WHAT DID YOU THINK OF SKYFALL?
Ross v Ross 
November 7, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Haha, I can’t argue with most of your points but still I really liked Skyfall. It was different from previous Bonds, instead of an empty shell with the name Bond this movie shows him to be vulnerable (like the new Batman trilogy also did) and that he isn’t perfect.
November 7, 2012 at 2:32 pm
I have to say I liked it, I think for many of the reasons that you didn’t. What was interesting to me was that it subverted a lot of the cliches of the Bond films – eg having the action set in London was a deliberate choice to do the opposite of what Bond normally does, and introducing the mysterious femme fatale then shooting her in the face 10 minutes later was similarly something you wouldn’t expect.
Plus Javier Bardem was adorable in his first big scene on the Island – though, of course, no Sean Bean…
November 7, 2012 at 2:38 pm
no Sean Bean, no point
November 7, 2012 at 8:13 pm
Your really not feeling any love for Skyfall, I really enjoyed it! Love that Jumpin’ Jack Flash features in this post though!!
November 7, 2012 at 11:57 pm
didnt do it for me Caz. nowhere near as good as Jumpin Jack Flash
November 8, 2012 at 8:20 am
Finally, someone who can put into words everything I’ve been afraid to say as everyone around me raves about Skyfall. A classic Bond this ain’t. Seems to me it was just being used as a nostalgic showcase of the last 50 years of bond.
November 12, 2012 at 5:34 pm
I don’t get the raving for Skyfall either. Casino Royale was much better. It was a ‘good’ movie but not the ‘greatest’ Bond movie made. It felt like an homage to Judi Dench and if that was the purpose they succeeded. I won’t devolve into making a line by line post of why it wasn’t that great, this blog did a great job of that.
November 21, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Haha, Home alone was on my mind during the last scene as well. If only they’d had some marbles and tins of paint.
July 7, 2013 at 7:40 am
My issue is the whole Moneypenny side story. A trained field agent that is sent on a sniper mission that couldn’t fire 2 shots? A trained field agent that is demoted to PA, surely cries of sex discrimination. But most of she’s introduced as Moneypenny at the end in the traditional wooden clad office? Wasn’t Moneypenny present in the office of the original M, and in almost every other M’s office. Even Judi M had a Moneypenny. So why give a PA a code name? Why reboot a PA? What this did for me was completely disregard all of Brosnans Bond films and upset the continuity or the films. Drench should have been replaced in Casino Royale. Where has M (Admiral Sir Miles Messervy) gone? Forgotten in the reboot, discarded in re reboot.
Sky fall is another example of film makers believing we the public fans will accept changes in timelines, folklore and canon as acceptable! Sky fall for me is the “emperors new cloths” of all bond films, I didn’t see it at the cinema and chose to watch it on Sky. Yet another death nail in the Bond movie franchise!