I feel exactly the same about AVTAK - weakest of the lot, for sure, but I don't HATE it. In fact, the only Bond film I hate is Casino Royale '67, but that's not a real Bond film so it doesn't count as far as I'm concerned.
You don't even hate or strongly dislike, Never Say Never Again?
"Ahem, you know in the future if you're going to steal cars, don't dress like a car thief, man." - Spider-Man
I feel exactly the same about AVTAK - weakest of the lot, for sure, but I don't HATE it. In fact, the only Bond film I hate is Casino Royale '67, but that's not a real Bond film so it doesn't count as far as I'm concerned.
You don't even hate or strongly dislike, Never Say Never Again?
it doesn't even make me angry - it just bores me because it never engages me and lacks any kind of centre - its awkward and disjointed like something put together by a committee
That about sums it up for me, as well. It's not that I hate it, but it just left me cold.
Here's a litany of my complaints:
1) IT'S DEPRESSING
It's depressing as hell. Bond and Company consistently fail at everything in the film.
- Bond fails to stop the villain from making off with the hard drive in the pre-title sequence.
- 'Eve' fails to shoot the right guy, and plugs a hole in our hero.
- Mi6 explodes.
- Bond fails his evaluation tests.
- Bond fails to stop an assassin from taking out security guards and the assassin's target, despite being *right there* the whole time. I kept waiting for him to do something before the sniper took his shot, but nope...
- Bond gets Severine killed after promising to keep her safe 5 minutes prior. Nice going, hero...
- The entirety of Mi6 fail to stop the escape of Silva from their fortified underground facility.
- Bond fails to stash M anywhere other than where the final showdown will take place. You had one job, Bond, and that was to stop Silva from killing M. Why don't you drop her off at a bed and breakfast with some cash, instead of taking her to the place where you're intentionally leading the villains? There wasn't one safe place to stash her along the 8 hour route between London and Glencoe?
- And was there nobody else you could trust to help fight during the showdown? Not a single virtuous fellow Mi6 agent that will help protect their Chief? What about Eve? She's proven that she can hit a target from hundreds of yards away - just don't stand too close to the target! )
Yeah, he put a knife in Silva's back in the end, but RIGHT BEFORE that moment, Silva was about to take his own life (along with M's, with one bullet). In other words, if Bond hadn't shown up in time to knife him, it would have ended the same way.
I'm not saying everything should be sunshine and rainbows for Our Heroes. Casino Royale and OMHSS both had tragic endings, but in the 'Big Picture' that M liked to remind Bond about, the villains' plans were ultimately foiled. And having some of the failures in this list remain would be fine, but put it all together, and it's a far-too-long list of failures and no real successes.
2) IT'S TOO META
The movie was too self-referential. They undid a lot of the 'freshness' of the reboot by referencing the franchise in awkward ways, which led to things that didn't make much sense, like:
- Bond owning a 1964 Aston Martin with machine guns and an ejector seat.
- Bond being treated as an 'old dog' who is past his time, when one movie ago, he was still a rough-around-the-edges newbie. (I say 'one movie ago' because CR and QoS took place literally back-to-back in the timeline). In Quantum, he was still a brand-new 00-agent; now he's basically fighting retirement.
I know why they did this - it was the filmmaker's meta-commentary on the franchise being 50 years old, and the theme they were going for was a sort of message saying, 'the Bond franchise is old, but it's still relevant', etc. The problem is that taken at face value, it just sounds like they're piling on Daniel Craig's age for no particular reason, and it led to a lot of awkward dialogue. The most cringeworthy part of this was the 'sexy shave' scene with Eve. 'Sometimes old ways are the best ways!' (echoed later by the caretaker of the Skyfall estate). 'Old dog... new tricks!'
It all just came across as very WRONG, as we're still fresh into the timeline of the franchise reboot.
- Return of Q, Moneypenny, and gadgets (though toned down). This is mostly just down to my preference - these were mostly inventions of the pre-reboot movies, barely mentioned in the books at all, and I happen to be a fan of the books first and movies second. I would have preferred that they were left with the old movies. There was even the inclusion of the old trope that Q happens to give him just the perfect gadget for the job. Of course a henchman got a hold of Bond's fingerprint gun...
3) THE PLOT IS A MESS
I'm not going to go too deep into this one, because everyone's read these criticisms already, so I'll just summarize. Aside from the plot problems I mentioned earlier (Bond's wacky 'final battle' plan which includes bringing M along, and the 'old man Bond' meta stuff):
- Silva's plan is convoluted and wacky. It relies on him being able to predict future events which can't be predicted. He's somehow able to predict that Bond will capture him (and recover the hard drive, which is now booby-trapped). He predicts exactly where his prison will be, the fact that he'll be running from Bond under a moving train at just the right moment to detonate explosives under it, and that M will be facing an inquest at that very moment, etc. The only thing he apparently couldn't predict was Bond's 'shoot the fire extinguisher' trick.
- It abuses the use of computers (which admittedly many movies do). Silva's apparently the stereotypical 'super hacker' type (though we never actually see him use a computer). Skyfall's in a 'Die Hard 4' universe in which hacking will somehow allows you to create a gas explosion at Mi6, unlock cell doors, etc. In other words it's one of those movies that treats computers as magic, which is just a little lazy.
There's a lot more to write here, but I touch upon some of it in my other points and I don't want to be redundant. Mostly little odd choices, like having Bond jump in the shower uninvited with a woman he just found out was a former sex slave. Seems more than a little rapey there, Bond...
4) THE MUSIC SCORE IS DULL, GENERIC, AND LIFELESS
Bring back David Arnold, please. The only memorable part of the score was the brief Bond theme cue that played with the reveal of the DB5 - which was lifted from the Casino Royale soundtrack!
5) WE WERE ROBBED OF A GREAT TRILOGY
I know Quantum of Solace gets a lot of hate, but it's one of my favorite in the entire franchise. I think it's a perfect companion piece to Casino Royale. It's a lean, tight revenge flick that continued Casino Royale's themes in an appropriate way. I especially liked that it was the first direct sequel in the franchise's history. I was looking forward to the new Bond films being a sort of continued saga, at least for a while. They developed QUANTUM as an ominous SPECTRE-like organization in CR, and Bond began his assault of the organization in Quantum. I was really hoping that Silva was going to be a part of QUANTUM and that we might even see Mr. White again, because I'm eager to see a follow-up on that story. I really hope they get back to it now that they've had their '50th Anniversary Tribute Movie'.
Final thoughts: I know I said that I didn't 'hate' the film when I started this post, which might be hard to believe now that I've bitched so hard about it in this post, but frankly, even with these complaints, I'd rather watch it than some of the other stinkers in the franchise. It's beautifully shot, the acting is good, the action is great, etc.
But my biggest problem with the film is the first thing on my list - it's depressing. I didn't leave the theater with that excited feeling I took away from the first two Craig films. It's just a big downer. I could forgive much of the other problems if this one wasn't so pronounced.
In fact, it even kept me away from these boards for a long time. I was very active here before Skyfall's release, but I couldn't muster up the willpower to write a review on it when it came out, and it's only now in 2014 (when I finally decided to give it another watch) that I've really had a go at it. I mostly avoided the board altogether rather than talk about the film.
As to the original question about the best film of 2012? Hmm... I think my favorite movie that year was actually 'Cabin in the Woods' because it was the biggest surprise delight for me. In the action-movie category: 'Looper' was excellent, as was Jack Reacher, and 'The Avengers' was of course highly-entertaining.
it doesn't even make me angry - it just bores me because it never engages me and lacks any kind of centre - its awkward and disjointed like something put together by a committee
That about sums it up for me, as well. It's not that I hate it, but it just left me cold.
Here's a litany of my complaints:
1) IT'S DEPRESSING
It's depressing as hell. Bond and Company consistently fail at everything in the film.
- Bond fails to stop the villain from making off with the hard drive in the pre-title sequence.
- 'Eve' fails to shoot the right guy, and plugs a hole in our hero.
- Mi6 explodes.
- Bond fails his evaluation tests.
- Bond fails to stop an assassin from taking out security guards and the assassin's target, despite being *right there* the whole time. I kept waiting for him to do something before the sniper took his shot, but nope...
- Bond gets Severine killed after promising to keep her safe 5 minutes prior. Nice going, hero...
- The entirety of Mi6 fail to stop the escape of Silva from their fortified underground facility.
- Bond fails to stash M anywhere other than where the final showdown will take place. You had one job, Bond, and that was to stop Silva from killing M. Why don't you drop her off at a bed and breakfast with some cash, instead of taking her to the place where you're intentionally leading the villains? There wasn't one safe place to stash her along the 8 hour route between London and Glencoe?
- And was there nobody else you could trust to help fight during the showdown? Not a single virtuous fellow Mi6 agent that will help protect their Chief? What about Eve? She's proven that she can hit a target from hundreds of yards away - just don't stand too close to the target! )
Yeah, he put a knife in Silva's back in the end, but RIGHT BEFORE that moment, Silva was about to take his own life (along with M's, with one bullet). In other words, if Bond hadn't shown up in time to knife him, it would have ended the same way.
I'm not saying everything should be sunshine and rainbows for Our Heroes. Casino Royale and OMHSS both had tragic endings, but in the 'Big Picture' that M liked to remind Bond about, the villains' plans were ultimately foiled. And having some of the failures in this list remain would be fine, but put it all together, and it's a far-too-long list of failures and no real successes.
2) IT'S TOO META
The movie was too self-referential. They undid a lot of the 'freshness' of the reboot by referencing the franchise in awkward ways, which led to things that didn't make much sense, like:
- Bond owning a 1964 Aston Martin with machine guns and an ejector seat.
- Bond being treated as an 'old dog' who is past his time, when one movie ago, he was still a rough-around-the-edges newbie. (I say 'one movie ago' because CR and QoS took place literally back-to-back in the timeline). In Quantum, he was still a brand-new 00-agent; now he's basically fighting retirement.
I know why they did this - it was the filmmaker's meta-commentary on the franchise being 50 years old, and the theme they were going for was a sort of message saying, 'the Bond franchise is old, but it's still relevant', etc. The problem is that taken at face value, it just sounds like they're piling on Daniel Craig's age for no particular reason, and it led to a lot of awkward dialogue. The most cringeworthy part of this was the 'sexy shave' scene with Eve. 'Sometimes old ways are the best ways!' (echoed later by the caretaker of the Skyfall estate). 'Old dog... new tricks!'
It all just came across as very WRONG, as we're still fresh into the timeline of the franchise reboot.
- Return of Q, Moneypenny, and gadgets (though toned down). This is mostly just down to my preference - these were mostly inventions of the pre-reboot movies, barely mentioned in the books at all, and I happen to be a fan of the books first and movies second. I would have preferred that they were left with the old movies. There was even the inclusion of the old trope that Q happens to give him just the perfect gadget for the job. Of course a henchman got a hold of Bond's fingerprint gun...
3) THE PLOT IS A MESS
I'm not going to go too deep into this one, because everyone's read these criticisms already, so I'll just summarize. Aside from the plot problems I mentioned earlier (Bond's wacky 'final battle' plan which includes bringing M along, and the 'old man Bond' meta stuff):
- Silva's plan is convoluted and wacky. It relies on him being able to predict future events which can't be predicted. He's somehow able to predict that Bond will capture him (and recover the hard drive, which is now booby-trapped). He predicts exactly where his prison will be, the fact that he'll be running from Bond under a moving train at just the right moment to detonate explosives under it, and that M will be facing an inquest at that very moment, etc. The only thing he apparently couldn't predict was Bond's 'shoot the fire extinguisher' trick.
- It abuses the use of computers (which admittedly many movies do). Silva's apparently the stereotypical 'super hacker' type (though we never actually see him use a computer). Skyfall's in a 'Die Hard 4' universe in which hacking will somehow allows you to create a gas explosion at Mi6, unlock cell doors, etc. In other words it's one of those movies that treats computers as magic, which is just a little lazy.
There's a lot more to write here, but I touch upon some of it in my other points and I don't want to be redundant. Mostly little odd choices, like having Bond jump in the shower uninvited with a woman he just found out was a former sex slave. Seems more than a little rapey there, Bond...
4) THE MUSIC SCORE IS DULL, GENERIC, AND LIFELESS
Bring back David Arnold, please. The only memorable part of the score was the brief Bond theme cue that played with the reveal of the DB5 - which was lifted from the Casino Royale soundtrack!
5) WE WERE ROBBED OF A GREAT TRILOGY
I know Quantum of Solace gets a lot of hate, but it's one of my favorite in the entire franchise. I think it's a perfect companion piece to Casino Royale. It's a lean, tight revenge flick that continued Casino Royale's themes in an appropriate way. I especially liked that it was the first direct sequel in the franchise's history. I was looking forward to the new Bond films being a sort of continued saga, at least for a while. They developed QUANTUM as an ominous SPECTRE-like organization in CR, and Bond began his assault of the organization in Quantum. I was really hoping that Silva was going to be a part of QUANTUM and that we might even see Mr. White again, because I'm eager to see a follow-up on that story. I really hope they get back to it now that they've had their '50th Anniversary Tribute Movie'.
Final thoughts: I know I said that I didn't 'hate' the film when I started this post, which might be hard to believe now that I've bitched so hard about it in this post, but frankly, even with these complaints, I'd rather watch it than some of the other stinkers in the franchise. It's beautifully shot, the acting is good, the action is great, etc.
But my biggest problem with the film is the first thing on my list - it's depressing. I didn't leave the theater with that excited feeling I took away from the first two Craig films. It's just a big downer. I could forgive much of the other problems if this one wasn't so pronounced.
In fact, it even kept me away from these boards for a long time. I was very active here before Skyfall's release, but I couldn't muster up the willpower to write a review on it when it came out, and it's only now in 2014 (when I finally decided to give it another watch) that I've really had a go at it. I mostly avoided the board altogether rather than talk about the film.
As to the original question about the best film of 2012? Hmm... I think my favorite movie that year was actually 'Cabin in the Woods' because it was the biggest surprise delight for me. In the action-movie category: 'Looper' was excellent, as was Jack Reacher, and 'The Avengers' was of course highly-entertaining.
There I go, rambling again...
Finally! Someone who understands me! SpectreBlofeld if we lived in the same town I'd buy you a drink mate.
You have perfectly echoed much of what I said and hate about SF myself. And the theme of "failure" in SF really hits the nail on the head. Bond has his set backs but he is essentially a winner and he does not belong in a plot universe where failure is the order of the day.
You cannot stretch an established icon like Bond in any direction you like and expect it to retain its identity and appeal - everything that makes Bond Bond was twisted out of shape in SF. He's completely shapeless now and there is nothing to like about him anymore. The film franchise has a set of genre conventions and all of the films barring the last 2 have worked within those conventions. Every Bond film should use the conventions in new and interesting combinations - new villains, new gadgets, new femme fatales, new plots to destroy the world - but once you start deconstructing Bond (which began with GE) you are undoing the fundamental structure of the franchise.
As you say, the films have become too META and self-referential and the use of the Aston Martin from GF in SF was just awful. In DAD it was Ok to show all the gadgets from previous films as a kind of homage but unfortunately that was the thin end of the wedge and it didn't stop there.
I got the feeling from Skyfall and all the mentions of old ways and tradition. Was a way of
showing how a field agent still has relevance in this era of satellites and drones for
gathering information.
Even the committee M had to go through was about how old fashioned and out of date
field work and agents looked to the politicians. By the end of Skyfall Bond had proven how
useful a field agent was. -{
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Comments
You don't even hate or strongly dislike, Never Say Never Again?
Nope!
watch is the 67 CR, which is just awful.
That about sums it up for me, as well. It's not that I hate it, but it just left me cold.
Here's a litany of my complaints:
1) IT'S DEPRESSING
It's depressing as hell. Bond and Company consistently fail at everything in the film.
- Bond fails to stop the villain from making off with the hard drive in the pre-title sequence.
- 'Eve' fails to shoot the right guy, and plugs a hole in our hero.
- Mi6 explodes.
- Bond fails his evaluation tests.
- Bond fails to stop an assassin from taking out security guards and the assassin's target, despite being *right there* the whole time. I kept waiting for him to do something before the sniper took his shot, but nope...
- Bond gets Severine killed after promising to keep her safe 5 minutes prior. Nice going, hero...
- The entirety of Mi6 fail to stop the escape of Silva from their fortified underground facility.
- Bond fails to stash M anywhere other than where the final showdown will take place. You had one job, Bond, and that was to stop Silva from killing M. Why don't you drop her off at a bed and breakfast with some cash, instead of taking her to the place where you're intentionally leading the villains? There wasn't one safe place to stash her along the 8 hour route between London and Glencoe?
- And was there nobody else you could trust to help fight during the showdown? Not a single virtuous fellow Mi6 agent that will help protect their Chief? What about Eve? She's proven that she can hit a target from hundreds of yards away - just don't stand too close to the target!
Yeah, he put a knife in Silva's back in the end, but RIGHT BEFORE that moment, Silva was about to take his own life (along with M's, with one bullet). In other words, if Bond hadn't shown up in time to knife him, it would have ended the same way.
I'm not saying everything should be sunshine and rainbows for Our Heroes. Casino Royale and OMHSS both had tragic endings, but in the 'Big Picture' that M liked to remind Bond about, the villains' plans were ultimately foiled. And having some of the failures in this list remain would be fine, but put it all together, and it's a far-too-long list of failures and no real successes.
2) IT'S TOO META
The movie was too self-referential. They undid a lot of the 'freshness' of the reboot by referencing the franchise in awkward ways, which led to things that didn't make much sense, like:
- Bond owning a 1964 Aston Martin with machine guns and an ejector seat.
- Bond being treated as an 'old dog' who is past his time, when one movie ago, he was still a rough-around-the-edges newbie. (I say 'one movie ago' because CR and QoS took place literally back-to-back in the timeline). In Quantum, he was still a brand-new 00-agent; now he's basically fighting retirement.
I know why they did this - it was the filmmaker's meta-commentary on the franchise being 50 years old, and the theme they were going for was a sort of message saying, 'the Bond franchise is old, but it's still relevant', etc. The problem is that taken at face value, it just sounds like they're piling on Daniel Craig's age for no particular reason, and it led to a lot of awkward dialogue. The most cringeworthy part of this was the 'sexy shave' scene with Eve. 'Sometimes old ways are the best ways!' (echoed later by the caretaker of the Skyfall estate). 'Old dog... new tricks!'
It all just came across as very WRONG, as we're still fresh into the timeline of the franchise reboot.
- Return of Q, Moneypenny, and gadgets (though toned down). This is mostly just down to my preference - these were mostly inventions of the pre-reboot movies, barely mentioned in the books at all, and I happen to be a fan of the books first and movies second. I would have preferred that they were left with the old movies. There was even the inclusion of the old trope that Q happens to give him just the perfect gadget for the job. Of course a henchman got a hold of Bond's fingerprint gun...
3) THE PLOT IS A MESS
I'm not going to go too deep into this one, because everyone's read these criticisms already, so I'll just summarize. Aside from the plot problems I mentioned earlier (Bond's wacky 'final battle' plan which includes bringing M along, and the 'old man Bond' meta stuff):
- Silva's plan is convoluted and wacky. It relies on him being able to predict future events which can't be predicted. He's somehow able to predict that Bond will capture him (and recover the hard drive, which is now booby-trapped). He predicts exactly where his prison will be, the fact that he'll be running from Bond under a moving train at just the right moment to detonate explosives under it, and that M will be facing an inquest at that very moment, etc. The only thing he apparently couldn't predict was Bond's 'shoot the fire extinguisher' trick.
- It abuses the use of computers (which admittedly many movies do). Silva's apparently the stereotypical 'super hacker' type (though we never actually see him use a computer). Skyfall's in a 'Die Hard 4' universe in which hacking will somehow allows you to create a gas explosion at Mi6, unlock cell doors, etc. In other words it's one of those movies that treats computers as magic, which is just a little lazy.
There's a lot more to write here, but I touch upon some of it in my other points and I don't want to be redundant. Mostly little odd choices, like having Bond jump in the shower uninvited with a woman he just found out was a former sex slave. Seems more than a little rapey there, Bond...
4) THE MUSIC SCORE IS DULL, GENERIC, AND LIFELESS
Bring back David Arnold, please. The only memorable part of the score was the brief Bond theme cue that played with the reveal of the DB5 - which was lifted from the Casino Royale soundtrack!
5) WE WERE ROBBED OF A GREAT TRILOGY
I know Quantum of Solace gets a lot of hate, but it's one of my favorite in the entire franchise. I think it's a perfect companion piece to Casino Royale. It's a lean, tight revenge flick that continued Casino Royale's themes in an appropriate way. I especially liked that it was the first direct sequel in the franchise's history. I was looking forward to the new Bond films being a sort of continued saga, at least for a while. They developed QUANTUM as an ominous SPECTRE-like organization in CR, and Bond began his assault of the organization in Quantum. I was really hoping that Silva was going to be a part of QUANTUM and that we might even see Mr. White again, because I'm eager to see a follow-up on that story. I really hope they get back to it now that they've had their '50th Anniversary Tribute Movie'.
Final thoughts: I know I said that I didn't 'hate' the film when I started this post, which might be hard to believe now that I've bitched so hard about it in this post, but frankly, even with these complaints, I'd rather watch it than some of the other stinkers in the franchise. It's beautifully shot, the acting is good, the action is great, etc.
But my biggest problem with the film is the first thing on my list - it's depressing. I didn't leave the theater with that excited feeling I took away from the first two Craig films. It's just a big downer. I could forgive much of the other problems if this one wasn't so pronounced.
In fact, it even kept me away from these boards for a long time. I was very active here before Skyfall's release, but I couldn't muster up the willpower to write a review on it when it came out, and it's only now in 2014 (when I finally decided to give it another watch) that I've really had a go at it. I mostly avoided the board altogether rather than talk about the film.
As to the original question about the best film of 2012? Hmm... I think my favorite movie that year was actually 'Cabin in the Woods' because it was the biggest surprise delight for me. In the action-movie category: 'Looper' was excellent, as was Jack Reacher, and 'The Avengers' was of course highly-entertaining.
There I go, rambling again...
Finally! Someone who understands me! SpectreBlofeld if we lived in the same town I'd buy you a drink mate.
You have perfectly echoed much of what I said and hate about SF myself. And the theme of "failure" in SF really hits the nail on the head. Bond has his set backs but he is essentially a winner and he does not belong in a plot universe where failure is the order of the day.
You cannot stretch an established icon like Bond in any direction you like and expect it to retain its identity and appeal - everything that makes Bond Bond was twisted out of shape in SF. He's completely shapeless now and there is nothing to like about him anymore. The film franchise has a set of genre conventions and all of the films barring the last 2 have worked within those conventions. Every Bond film should use the conventions in new and interesting combinations - new villains, new gadgets, new femme fatales, new plots to destroy the world - but once you start deconstructing Bond (which began with GE) you are undoing the fundamental structure of the franchise.
As you say, the films have become too META and self-referential and the use of the Aston Martin from GF in SF was just awful. In DAD it was Ok to show all the gadgets from previous films as a kind of homage but unfortunately that was the thin end of the wedge and it didn't stop there.
Great post mate. Love your work.
showing how a field agent still has relevance in this era of satellites and drones for
gathering information.
Even the committee M had to go through was about how old fashioned and out of date
field work and agents looked to the politicians. By the end of Skyfall Bond had proven how
useful a field agent was. -{