The theme of "failure" in Skyfall
Charmed & Dangerous
Posts: 7,358MI6 Agent
I've read a few posts recently from AJB'ers who deplore the fact that Bond "fails" so often in Skyfall. One of the reasons they love 'Classic Bond' is that he's a symbol of a man who 'wins' - knows the best wine, best food, always succeeds with women, always beats the villain. But in Skyfall he is seemingly outsmarted at every turn, failing to save Ronson, Severine, and ultimately M.
There's a quote from Stephen King (probably my favourite author apart from Fleming) in his excellent Danse Macabre which occurred to me a couple of nights ago:
"All fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically; mediocre fantasy fiction is about people who have it and never lose it but simply wield it." --Stephen King
One of the things I like most about Skyfall is that Bond has met his match in Silva and he can be outsmarted. After all, in the novels, Bond is a human character. Early on in Moonraker, for instance, we find out that while he's very good, Bond isn't the best shot in the Service. And Later on in the same novel, he fails to win over Gala Brand.
For me, for Bond to be a superman- unbeatable - there wouldn't be the necessary conflict and jeopardy to keep me interested and the films would simply devolve into comic book territory.
Stephen King makes the point that if the hero is the one who always has the power, then the hero of Lord of the Rings would be Sauron, not Frodo. So for me while Bond is an alpha male, he's all the more interesting because he's not infallible. But that's just my opinion... -{
There's a quote from Stephen King (probably my favourite author apart from Fleming) in his excellent Danse Macabre which occurred to me a couple of nights ago:
"All fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically; mediocre fantasy fiction is about people who have it and never lose it but simply wield it." --Stephen King
One of the things I like most about Skyfall is that Bond has met his match in Silva and he can be outsmarted. After all, in the novels, Bond is a human character. Early on in Moonraker, for instance, we find out that while he's very good, Bond isn't the best shot in the Service. And Later on in the same novel, he fails to win over Gala Brand.
For me, for Bond to be a superman- unbeatable - there wouldn't be the necessary conflict and jeopardy to keep me interested and the films would simply devolve into comic book territory.
Stephen King makes the point that if the hero is the one who always has the power, then the hero of Lord of the Rings would be Sauron, not Frodo. So for me while Bond is an alpha male, he's all the more interesting because he's not infallible. But that's just my opinion... -{
"How was your lamb?" "Skewered. One sympathises."
Comments
For me the reason I love Bond is because he's not a " Superman" ( especially in the books ).
He has to work to succeed and over come obstacles, whether it's out thinking a villain or
Surviving some sort of torture.
In Skyfall all the elements of Bond's character from the novels are on screen. There are
Many references to the old ways, which as it turns out is what Bond is. In a modern world
Of robotic drones and spy satellites, a field agent is considered unneeded by the committee
Grilling M. Yet in the end Bond comes through to prove that agents " in the field " can still
Be useful and are still needed. -{
He is played for something of a chump all through the movie . . .not as much as, say, Samuel L. Jackson in those crappy Star Wars movies, but more of chump than I ever remember in the other films. And it isn't so much that things are done to him as he just seems to fail to do anything to prevent so many problems or tragedies. That makes him less of a hero.
Bond could not have saved Severine. I don't think he expected Silva to kill her - he was expecting Silva to just be sadistically toying with both of them. His lack of emotion when she was shot was only his way of masking and controlling his anger so he could make his surprise attack. Yes, they could have written it so he did save her (and I would have preferred that), but.....
Bond's Skyfall plan at the end was made on the fly. He knew he couldn't rely on any resources from the Service (outside the COS, Q and Mallory) since he knew it wouldn't be authorized. His only goal was to get her away from a populated area to stop more collateral damage and get Silva in an area he was unfamiliar with and where his hacking would be useless.
It's true though he prevented Silva from killing M in the chapel, she died from her previous wound anyway and as such, ultimately failed to save her.
However, the whole point of it was for her to go out fighting like an old soldier.
I would have preferred she survived and then retired and had a scene of Bond visiting her in hospital (with her giving the ceramic dog to him there), but - no one asked me to write it!
The failures of Bond in the film is another reason I think the critics heaped on so many laurels. It gave the film more depth and emotion. Many Bond fans hate this concept - they prefer the old one dimensional Superman Bond who just takes out the bad guy using his Walther, Q's tricks and bad puns. I enjoyed those films as well, but it's nice to see a change in course (at least for a while) to raise the hero out of the comic book mold into one of more serious literature.
However, I believe in the novel Moonraker it is stated that Bond IS the best shot in the service but that only M and his chief of staff have that information.
But the, I'm one of those that is completely sick of the tragedy for tragedy's sake crowd like King and Martin and Kirkman and have decided to shrug off their work and find things that are better. Now, this is not saying Skyfall has become as bad as Game of Thrones... but there were several moments in the movie that were so.. not Bond.. that it turned me off from the movie.
+1
I would agree, we wouldn't want tragedy for tragedy's sake. We want Bond, not King Lear.
There have always been sacrificial lambs in Bond films, such as Paula in Thunderball, and Andrea Anders in TMWTGG, so Severine is not unique. And Ronson joins an equally long list of dead or dying agents from Strangways onwards, whose deaths are used to propel the plot forwards. M's death in a Skyfall is no more tragic - or contrived - than Tracey's in OHMSS. And when it comes to the dark side, I think LTK is darker, and certainly contains fewer light moments, than Skyfall.
Equally one could argue that Bond fails - or is played fir a chump - just as much in FRWL. Although M and Bond realise the whole plot around Tania and the Lektor is a trap, Bond fails to realise Nash is his enemy, and is pretty easily duped by him, and he fails to save Kerim Bey as well as nearly getting himself and Tania killed. But many would consider FRWL as 'classic Bond' ad it's never berated for showing Bond failing too easily....
A dark side is fine, if it's actually written well and not all about the darkness. I've read the books and while they can be dark, the general vibe of them do not come off as a tragedy in most of them. Granted, I've only read through them once, finding the movies to be a better experience myself, and that was years ago. I also used to think the Song of Ice and Fire was a well written series... so my opinions on the novels might have changed.
And tragedy for tragedy's sake means simply throwing tragedy in because "it makes better art!"... the truest sign of a mediocre writer. If tragedy happens organically (OHMSS and LTK) then it serves to build a better story that doesn't fall apart at the first prodding glance like Skyfall tends to do. You start questioning why the failure and tragedies are happening and the best answer you get is "it makes it more dramatic!". Not really an answer.
I don't mind Bond failing sometimes.. hell, Casino Royale and QoS are perfect examples of balancing tragedy, Bond's faults and strenghts, and pure fun in Bond quite well. Skyfall ignored that balance for the sake of fake depth and drama. There are quite a few points where suspension of disbelief becomes impossible without filling in dozens of gaping holes with a head cannon. And who knows, maybe the writers and such actually wrote a good story and whoever editted the film left large chunks of story that were necessary on the cutting room floor for whatever reason and that's why most of these failures and moments come off as contrived instead of organic.
But then, watching Skyfall only makes me angry and frustrated with the myriad of poorly developed plot points. If the lead in to these events were better, I might have been just fine with the darkness and tragedy. At least I can take solace that they didn't completely butcher the character like another series has recently. They just need to rebalance him after this stumble in my opinion.
Skyfall's plot holes make M seem reckless and Bond a bit stupid. Re M its understandable, because the film is doing a Lady MacBeth, undermining her position to discredit the character to usurp her. On that score the film works quite well.
However these films are not about M, overall they are about Bond. So some of his choices, such as going AWOL, Seravine's whole sub plot, and the strategy for eliminating Silva (Bonds plan, not M's to retreat to the Highlands) are all very suspect in this regard. It feels like trying to create drama for drama's sake.
Do I want Bond to always be right and never make mistakes? No. However I do want those failures and mistakes to make sense, it just doesn't feel satisfying otherwise.
Indeed one of the few suggestions I've head that might have further elevated FRWL (ok, apart from deleting the helicopter and boat chase) is that a final scene after the shot of Bond and Tania in the gondolier should have shown the real SMERSH holding a meeting at which they were celebrating having insinuated Tatiana into the UK as a double agent.
SMERSH were working SPECTRE and the British and James Bond throughout.
Too dark for 60s Bond. Connery-Bond could not have been a puppet. Seems these days, however, EON finds it perfectly acceptable for Craig-Bond to be a total muppet
I read Lord of the Rings when I was 13 years old and when Peter Jackson brought the trilogy to the screen I knew that he would fall well short of Tokien's vision and I was right. But I simply treated his cinematic interpretation and extrapolation of Tolkien as a separate thing. Jackson stomps all over Tolkien's carefully wrought metaphysics albeit for dramatic purposes, and leaves out Tolkien's most important message - there is a spiritual order to the universe, not just a physical one, and those who betray that order are bound to fail. When the Lord of the Nazgul destroys Gandalf's staff in the 3rd movie I cringed because it was a contradiction of the metaphysical order. Undead human spirits (eg the Lord of the Nazgul) cannot defeat demi-gods (the Maia, an order of beings which includes Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron and Radagast).
The cinematic Bond is not a superman but he is a winner which is a psychological type that thrives on excitement. Gustav Graves in DAD is a portrayal of the negative side of that character type. In Bioenergetic theory (Lowen and Keleman) it is the "rigid" character type.
Furthermore one of the genre conventions of Bond is his supernatural aid - Q - who like a wizard in a fantasy novel always gives him the right magic weapon to defeat his enemies. And sometimes he gets these things from other characters - such as the cigarette lighter given to him by Felix and Della in LTK which he uses at the end of the film to set Sanchez alight. These deux ex machina devices are one of the great joys of the Bond films. The underwater car in TSWLM is one the most exquisite uses of such a device - one minute Bond and XXX are being pursued by enemy agents, the next they are alone together in an underwater dreamland. Again this is romance not realism. There is none of this in the Fleming novels and that's fine - the two things should never be confused with each other and I think it is a mistake to try and align the cinematic Bond with the literary one - for me the cinematic one is far more interesting. The literary Bond is closer to being something realistic but the cinematic Bond (until recently) has always been a romance character.
And yet the literary Bond is introduced in exactly the same way - tuxedoed, at the gaming tables, having won (though perhaps a little more tired than Connery in DN). He walks out of the Casino Royale with similar confidence, through the exclusive resort town, and back to his 5 star hotel. Similarly coolly, he then checks his hotel room for intrusion in almost exactly the same way as paraphrased by Connery-Bond in DN. When he sleeps, his face "relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold" which could almost exactly describe the first shot of Connery in DN...
Though the entire film series has succeed historically and financially and even iconically far beyond other series that began in literature, the very nature of the way EON turned the Bond character into a two dimensional avatar of the literary three dimensional one and over the decades began to skim far too close the edge of parody, only succeed in pushing Fleming's Bond so far from the conscious of the cinema audience as to render him invisible. At the same time, taking a literary character and making it into a brand that could be served up every few years in the exact same way was what EON believed was only the formula that worked and would guarantee it's continued success and box office returns.
For many, that's fine. Like watching the Road Runner and his nemesis the coyote, the joy is knowing we are about to see the familiar - he outwits the coyote no matter how ingenious his plans and though the devices and scenery changes, the characters do not and we know how it will end.
Bond series fans who prefer the old EON series cinema Bond who never changes, never gets hurt (or if he does, shrugs it off with a quip and moves on) have a valid reason for disliking the reboot of the series. The films should not be about Bond's personal life. Only about his mission, the locales, the villain, the girl and the gadgets, and how he succeeds by defeating the villain by using the woman and the gadgets (and rescuing himself and the woman using Q's toys). The plot is secondary and only needs to be slightly plausible.
Here's where there is such a divide between those who wish Fleming's version were more on the screen and those who prefer EON's version. Connery was never the Bond of Ian Fleming’s books nor is Craig - even though he is terrific - for a man who rides motorcycles across rooftops and jumps 50 feet onto a moving train is the creation of the EON, not Fleming, but now they've given him a real personality.
Pre-booted film fans want to keep the two dimensional character and throw Fleming's three dimensional one back into the novels. Re-booted fans want to continue to see more of Fleming's three dimensional hero in the films. They want to see him get wounded and fail, get out of breath and stumble, feel emotion when a friend dies and drink bourbon (as he did in the novels) as much as he does the martinis. QOS and SF introduced too much of his angst for the pre-booted crowd and they want either a lot less of it or ditched all together. They also don't want to see him fail or get hurt and he should end up entwined in the sheets with the heroine at the end. Tragedy? In the early films, Connery/Moore showed remorse when an innocent/colleague died, but it was fleeting - they moved on. Lazenby/Dalton/Brosnan showed more and took it more personally, but it didn't change them.
The rebooted Craig brought in Fleming's 3D hero who changes over the films as in the novels.
He starts out as the cold assassin, is damaged by death and betrayal and torture; debates on leaving his profession on two occasions; is almost killed numerous times. We still have the villains and heroines, but now they are also more real as Bond is.
In the end, Bond still survives for the next mission. However, in the current version, EON is
drawing on the novel Bond for inspiration and many don't want him in the films. They want Connery and Moore, not Dalton or Craig.
In their eyes, SF failed because Bond is a flesh and blood character and fails too often throughout the film. They don't want to see a disgruntled, frowny faced, drunk or angry 007. They want to see the smirking, smug/self confident/know it all and done it all quipster who never gets hurt and gives the audience laughs and thrills - and they want him to look like Sean Connery, not Steve McQueen.
I personally have enjoyed the last three and EON bringing the literary character into the series. It's been nice seeing them go even beyond FRWL and OHMSS in trying to inject more facet's of Bond himself into the stories. It's why members like myself would really like to see him at his flat or playing golf in a future film to reveal even more of him - as long as those sequences have a logical connection to the plot and are brief.
However, now that EON has mined this area, I am with others - who prefer the series prior to Craig - in hoping EON will bring back a bit of the lighter elements of the old series in the vein of GF, TB, etc., and leave real tragedy out for a bit. We can still see Craig get hurt and stumble and still succeed - I just don't want to see him lose someone close to him again or have another female sacrifice.
+1 - I'm with you all the way.
I mean, I have nothing against the tragedies in films like LTK, CR, or the countless little failures that have led to multiple deaths over the years... but then, most of them felt like they organically happened in the story and not contrivances to get to a point the writer wanted to get to, natural progession be damned. When I have to build a mini story as to why characters are acting as they are and why things happen a certain way... that's a problem. In order to get Skyfall to work, I have to make up a lot of stuff to make it begin to work. I really never had to do that with most other Bonds... the few I did it was just suspension of disbelief because they went too much fantasy (Moonraker and DAD come to mind.. but those can be shrugged off and the films just taken for fun and not seriously. Skyfall fails because it's trying to be serious but requires to many logical head canons to get the film to work.
It's not all about the gadgets and the fun... my favourite Bonds all tend to be more serious takes on the character with Dalton and Craig taking two spots in a top 10 for me. I like a more human Bond. I just want that Bond to make sense... Skyfall made him a broken down man that really did lose control of himself. Give me the Bond from The Living Daylights or Licence to Kill or Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace... they weren't perfect by any stretch, but they weren't a soulless broken man. That I don't what to see and that is the biggest reason I feel Skyfall fails. The writing was bad yes... but I felt they took Bond too far and he wasn't Bond anymore. And I think that is what really inflames my anger when I tried to watch it recently... it wasn't Bond to me. It was something else.
Slightly repetitive, but I just wanted to clear it up that not all criticism is built off this Bond being "too literary", just that I felt it took that too far and went far past that point to where he was no longer the same character.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Three darn movies and EIGHT years now. I can understand Bond not saving every significant love of his life (Tracy, Aki, and Vesper) or every casual fling (Severine, Fields, Jill, Ms. Anders, ect.) considering his dangerous line of work, but throw a friggin bone to Craig Bond.
Im with you there Kabraxal - what I have always loved most about Bond is the joy - which comes from the locations, the gadgets, the women and the thrills - exploring Bond's pain interferes with that joy. Also, trying to make Bond more 3-dimensional is risky because as I have said before - there is no such thing as a nice assassin in real life - if you kill people for a living (even from the best of motives) then you will lose your soul. Thomas Harris is the greatest manipulator of psychological characterisation with his character Hannibal Lecter, a "likeable" cannibal. The cinematic Bond is a romance hero and thats why I like him.
A similar statement could be made for A View to a Kill, which is one of the reasons I like it so much.
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
It's a bit of a minefield. For every YOLT, where Bond shows pain at Aki's death but is able to move on without it seeming callous, there's a TND, where in one scene Bond mourns Paris Carver's death, yet a few "minutes" later he's chuckling when his Bmw dives off the car park roof- that chuckle always seemed a bit strange given he'd just witnessed the death of someone close.
However, when I watch the Sir Sean - Mr Brosnan films, its to be entertained, to have a smile on my face and to take pleasure from the sumtious locations, set pieces, gadgetry and Bond enjoying himself, having fun. LTK excepted. The Craig era films lack those last two elements. CR-06 has a tight storyline and good action, so I don't mind. QoS is a cold revenge fest, very grim for the most part and the humour is light, bordering on trite. By contrast though, there us a sense of ongoing gloom hanging over Skyfall, that makes it decent drama, good action but with a tired sense of apathy sitting over the characters throughout except Penny, Q and until he arrives in Scotland, Silva. All of them are a reworking of the past. Esp Silva as the delightfully twisted baddie. I loved the Sir Roger films as a kid, inc FYEO for the fun peppered through the drama. I am not sure the 8 year old me would feel the same about SF because of this sense of failure and fed up from the moment Bond is shot off that bridge!
I think it hasn't done Batman any favours either!
In the PTS, and then throughout the film. -{ . I even loved DC's expression after
Silva makes his speech to M and shows his facial features. Bond couldn't give
a toss, brilliant. -{
Quite agree.
After the loss of Vesper - which is part of the Fleming original so it doesn't count - Craig Bond has been almost the opposite to the Bond of the pre-DC films, a neutered Bond if you will. A Bond for these times who has no interest in women - a post modern Bond - isn't, IMHO, Bond at all, EON's or FLEMINGS...
And, of course, after QOS, Craig hinted that his next Bond would be less serious, more playful would, IIRC correctly, begin with Bond of a beech with a cocktail. That didn't happen, of course, with SKYFALL. I wonder if that was with the arrival of the "serious" director, Mendes, that the darkness, and gloom, failure and sexual unfulfilment continued?
M and Greene in Quantum of Solace taunted Bond over the death of Vesper and Fields for goodness sake. Severine died seemingly less than a day after Bond scored with her.
I think we need a relatively lighter, more formulaic (but a bit more solidly written) Bond movie as an antidote to the experimentation with QoS and Skyfall.