I have seen it THREE times now since Saturday.
Still love it. decided on the following ratings for Craig's three movies.
QoS 8 out of 10
Skyfall 9 out of 10
CR 10 out of 10
Love them all
)
I'm only on 2 viewings to date (possibly a 3rd now due over the weekend), but I have the same ratings as your good self - I'd maybe even possibly push SF up to 9.25, but that's just me splitting hairs!
As for the Oscars. I can see nominations for Roger Deakins (Cinematography) and Adele for her title song. Javier Bardem is less likely, some powerful scenes but not enough screen time.
Anthony Hopkins only had 16 minutes of screen time in "Silence of the lambs" but won the Oscar so you never know.
When, in 'Skyfall', M makes a knowing reference to the vintage Aston Martin DB5's ejector seat, it's almost as if she's realigned herself with 'pre-reboot' continuity. Come to think of it: is the DB5 in 'Skyfall' meant to be the same one that the newly promoted 007 of CR won from Alex Dimitrios, with a few modifications added? Or is it, by a sleight of merged continuities, meant to be the same vehicle in which the earlier Bond raced around during TB and GE, preserved in MI6 storage?)
It is the car from Goldfinger BMT 216T NOT the one from Goldeneye BMT 214T. That was the only thing that really jolted me from the ride. The empty rush hour tube could just pass by. I didn't need to know why Silva paid an expensive international assassin to break into an empty office. cut a whole in the single glazed (!!??) window in order to shoot someone with a rifle when he already had 3 or 4 people in the room with the victim, all with guns! That is just the way with Bond. But the Goldfinger Aston did make me try to make excuses for it instead of enjoying the ride.
When Silva kills Severine Bond makes a quip about waste of good whisky.
There have been plenty of Bond quips when a baddy gets killed, but I cannot think of another one where the doomed girl is offed.
PS - not sure if I was distracted and missed it but I dont recall seeing Bond running through London training in tracksuit as we saw in trailer???
EDIT: The PTS was very good but I felt like I had already seen it hence was not jaw dropping - this was my fault due to the fact the entire sequence when pieced together had been show in various clips. Damn I wish I had a total blackout until seeing the movie but its difficilt in this day and age!!
I don't remember the running either. I didn't watch any trailers until after seeing the film.
I also sat in the cinema for about 10 minutes with my eyes shut so that I didn't have to see clips from the film in the adverts. They paid for the film to be made - why try to spoil it for me when I come to watch it?
I saw it again, the running scene was cut from the final edit.
Also you right about the ads for Skyfall product, it went on and on and on. I was in the cinema for 40 mins before the film started, that many ads and then the trailers etc
As well as the running scene, there's a line that was shown in the trailer but cut from the film - it's when he says "trust me" before turning the steering wheel of the Land Rover in to the black Audi in the PTS. Also think there's another line when M is speaking to Mallory about Bond being somewhere in the South China Seas, (or something like that), that didn't make the cut too.
Well, as you may have judged by some of my comments today, I saw the film last night and didn't rate it. I met up with Strangeways - by the way, I keep meaning to ask you SW, are you aware your moniker is 'wrong' and it should be Strangways, or is that deliberate? - and he was on his third viewing. Mind you, he was saying it's fab - I wouldn't want to be innocent and in the dock with him offering a testimonial. In fact, having seen the movie after listening to his glowing tributes, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out he's straight, and his idea of heaven is a trip to B&Q on a Sunday morning with the wife and kids before heading out with the lads to watch Milwall...
Anyway... where to start? Skyfall is a bit like Adele's song. Her song is sumptuous, lush, well produced and impressive - it's just not a good tune really. Not one for the iPod. You wouldn't listen to it twice if it weren't a Bond song. Not like the brilliant songs of yesteryear, Nobody Does It Better, DAF, any of them really. I heard YOLT played on the radio straight after Skyfall, now that's a song, works as a song in its own right.
So it is with this film. It looks sumptuous, thanks to Roger Deakin's cinematography, and it has scope and ambition. It just isn't a good movie. It doesn't click for me. In a way it was the same with the director's other films, The Road to Perdition. It looked great, it was heavy with intent, and had a few fantastic scenes in it, but it just doesn't move along. In a way, SF made me think better of QoS, but not much. At least that is relatively grounded, but actually SF is the film QoS might have been had they finished the script and dumped the Bourne-style camera work. Which might be, you'd think, a great Bond film. But no, it has pretensions. These directors shouldn't be let near a Bond film. They can't tell which implausiblities you can get away with, and which you can't. I sense a slumming it vibe, as if to say, well, if this doesn't make sense who cares - it's only a Bond film. Both men are big on symbolism, which I hate in movies when it doesn't connect on its own surface meaning.
When did it mess up? Early on. Bond is on a bike, so far so good, except he's left an agent to die, another charming Mathis moment. He'll disobey M's order when he likes, but not in this case of course! We have a name for a bloke like this in England - jobsworth. Maybe that could be the name of the next Bond film, sung by Adele:
Jobsworth!
Get the T-shirt
From the foyer
That'll be another 15 pounds please
Anyway, big fail is when he has to get onto a moving train. Now, if you've ever watched Octopussy and thought that it badly needed a shot of Berkoff's General Orlov in a fight on the train in West Berlin, well, you're in luck as that's pretty much how Craig looks. He moves like a bloody crab and it's like it's meant to be like that... Anyway, most of us would pull up to the bridge and jump off, but our man crashed headlong the bike into the bridge and goes flying over, just hoping this will see him land on the train roof. Like you do. Perhaps Moore's Bond could have just crashed his dismantled car into the Pont Neuf and gone through the windscreen.
It goes on like this, silly stuff with the digger on the train takes this far away from the grounded quality of Casino Royale and really they're falling back on the old outrageous Bond stunts/routine to reel us in now. M is the professional irritant, but if Bond is not dead why does he look it when he falls into the water, because he has the camera on him? I mean why would you try to look dead if you're not actually? Shades of Bourne again... Lavish credits of the 'if you didn't like that one, here's another' variety overkill.
I'll keep it short. This is the Craig and Dench show. Both their characters are talked down - with total justification as far as I can see! They both seem to be idiots. Craig is said to be old and past it - only two films back they were trying to make out he was the young kid on the block! So when M is sad she thinks he's dead, why should she care? This isn't the Bond of legend, he's only been on two missions, not world beaters by any standard. This is one way the film tries to tap in to Bond's iconography at the expense of him as a real person. He just isn't a real guy in this film. Sure, Craig has white beard growth and looks 60 - he's good at that - but it's all a nonsense really.
I did like the scene where he is chilling and downing shots with the scorpion, that was cool. But we don't really know how long that has gone on for, weeks or months? Or how he survived the shot. I mean, he was shot wasn't he? Or, we are thinking, was it an elaborate hoax?
Then... how does he break into M's flat again, does she really have no security - and at a time like this, too, when someone is after MI6 and M specifically.
I think the nadir is when he cockily says he can save the trapped girl in Shanghai. Righty-ho! Sneaks on her ship, easily done. Walks naked into her shower, without a by your leave. Oh, the daft scene when he lets the black gal shave him - though he doesn't really know her and may well be a double agent at this stage in the game, ludicrous. Anyway, he thinks he can just show up on his own to meet the villain. Like you do. I mean, good luck with that. It starts to feel like The Man with the Golden Gun at this point, in terms of general believability - yet this is the rugged, credible Craig we're meant to go with.
CGI buildings on the island, like The Expendables 2.
Bond is shown to be morally repugnant of course when he is forced to shoot the drink off her head. It's just a nasty situation, are we meant to empathise and cherish a sociopath. Apparently, because he's British. There's no moral outrage in the bloke, like when he sees the receptionist get shot earlier. He just seems mildly interested. Anyway, at that point the helicopters show up to rescue Bond and there's this daft jubilant bit of brass! Like, hey ho, he's safe! No matter the girl he went out to save is, er, dead!
The villain, well, some sort of Lector/Joker hybrid rip off. During his opening monologue, you'd want Bond to interrupt and say 'Is this going to take long?' The film is littered with dialogue nods to other movies, 'Bring it back in one piece', 'the old ways are the best' and so on, I suppose like when you're banging a minger you might want the memory of past shags to carry you through...
Rubbish! Bond on the rush hour with unconvincing passengers, nothing like as credible as Bourne Supremacy. A tube train crashes - but no one is in it! The team lacked balls, they thought if something went off in Olympic year, they'd be stuffed. So it's the only tube train in rush hour not packed.
Bond of course has the chance to shoot Silva but doesn't, as you do. Bond runs like a robot in this, like Kryton from Red Dwarf. In the boat going across to the Shanghai casino, he looks like a tailor's dummy... But is it deliberate, perhaps? To show how heartless he is?
So it is with Dench's M, everyone calls her 'maam' in this, on and on it goes, is it meant to sound like 'mum'? Is it some ruse by the director, to make her seem a maternal figure? Or just irritating. Dench does her usual blather she's been on since GE about how there are no nations anymore, the villains are in the shadows. This tranlsates as 'We're too PC to make extremist Islam the bad guys'... and I guess she's not heard of Iran. Or Putin's Russia. Burma. China. Course not. Blimey, she deserves to be fired!
FFS! The Aston has an ejector seat. Erm... Don't think so. Or maybe the guy Bond won it off in CR was part of Q branch and had it installed. My mind was just whirling by this point.
To me, the director may be a fan boy, but so was Lee Tamahari. These types just fling a lot of stuff at the wall and hope it sticks.
So off to Scotland, to face up to the villain on your own, like you do. This maybe a metaphor for the Uk attitude to Europe. Or it may not, it may just be rubbish scriptwriting. Who knows? Logan signposts everything a great deal, there's a lot of talk and rubbish obvious exposition throughout the film, all tell don't show. Ooh, what a surprise that Mallory is not such a bad guy after all!
Off to Gotham Towers, for a standoff like the final scene of Bourne Identity, er, but that made sense cos Bourne really was on his own against the forces, whereas Bond isn't, it's just done for dramatic effect. Doesn't phone ahead, oh no. Finds out there are no guns, it all got sold off - cos they thought he was dead? It's a lot of info to take in. It's a different movie by this stage, I couldn't take it in.
M and new pal wandering about in the dark with a frickin torch! Like you would. You know, stay out of sight. Bond going in chase, though he doesn't know Silva is chasing them, for all he knows he's dead. Doesn't bother to pick up a gun from anonymous henchman before running into chapel. Shiny new tombstone from his parents on site. Bond closes his bosses eyes a bit quick, maybe it was wishful thinking! Silva, who seems suicidal, gets his wish to kill M. Bond is the Wayne Rooney of MI6, everyone talks him up, and he cocks it all up. Like in CR, when the villains get away with the money at the end, and the girl dies! What a man! So he takes it upon himself to 'protect' M and use her as bait, and she dies. Mallory gets the top job, which is what he wanted - no wonder he's so happy to see Bond at the end.
To cap it all? Bond: 'I didn't catch your name again... ' No? I mean, I haven't let Strangeways shave me, and I haven't shagged him either, we've met three times but I do know his name actually. I mean, you tend to introduce yourself, that's the way it goes. But Bond has done all that but he doesn't even know this bird's name, bloody hell, at least he knew Agent Fields' surname, if not that she was called Strawberry.
The message at the end is, right, after the revamp we've taken three films to get back to where we were before Dench arrived on the scene, with a secretary and a male boss. Though what Fiennes is doing in this, along with Ben Whishaw, I don't know, it's like a retirement home for theatre thesps looking to pay off a mortgage, they all seem a bit sheepish.
All in all, this film is as believable as Bond's stunt with the Queen for the Olympics, but more pretentious and not as funny.
a good review mirroring many of my feelings...thought this might be the film that wins me over to the rebooted craig era but i was wrong...the flaw i noticed was right at the start why did eve not just blast away the bad guy after jb fell off the train?...she had plenty of time...hardly an oswald shot...a very holey script throughout with some severely overwritten sequences
It starts to feel like The Man with the Golden Gun at this point, in terms of general believability - yet this is the rugged, credible Craig we're meant to go with.
I didn't realise at first but Skyfall has more than just a nod to The Man With The Golden. The villain has an island lair. Bond is led to the villain from Macau by the girlfriend Severine/Andrea who is in fear of her life. The girlfriend is shot dead by the villain. There is also a shower scene involving Bond and the girlfriend. A tracking device is used Bond/Goodnight which locates the island. The Shanghai scene with Bond stalking Patrice through the glass doors could be a nod to the hall of mirrors.
Moore Not Less 4371 posts (2002 - 2007) Moore Than (2012 - 2016)
the flaw i noticed was right at the start why did eve not just blast away the bad guy after jb fell off the train?...she had plenty of time...hardly an oswald shot.
I don't really see that as a flaw. Eve is a field agent but not a good one. When she shoots Bond she is in a state of shock. If the position was reversed, even an experienced elite agent like Bond would hesitate momentarily after shooting a friend rather than foe. This momentary hesitation would probably cause Bond to lose his focus and the bad guy (Patrice) might still have escaped.
The real flaw at the start is not showing or explaining how Bond survived after being shot by Eve. At the end of the PTS he is literally dead in the water sinking to the bottom of a river. Am I supposed to believe that when Bond sank to the bottom he regained consciousness, straightened his tie, adjusted his cuffs, and then swam to the surface and waved a fish at any onlookers.
Moore Not Less 4371 posts (2002 - 2007) Moore Than (2012 - 2016)
LOL !!! @ 'Am I supposed to believe that when Bond sank to the bottom he regained consciousness, straightened his tie, adjusted his cuffs, and then swam to the surface and waved a fish at any onlookers.'
So it is with Dench's M, everyone calls her 'maam' in this, on and on it goes, is it meant to sound like 'mum'? Is it some ruse by the director, to make her seem a maternal figure? Or just irritating.
It would sound silly for them to call her Sir :-) It is the appropriate term to use in addressing a female superior. I refer you to HBC in TKS
The first hour left me and my company pretty cold and we had a 15 minute break just before the yacht reaches the island.
It was not bad, but we have not been sucked into all the action.
After the break things changed and I have enjoyed the movie a LOT!
The London action is great, the Scotland scenes are awesome!
Daniel did a very good and dedicated job - but he looked pretty old.
Dame Judy was incredible - what a farewell for her!
Severine was pretty and played extremely well
Bardem is probably my favorite villain of all time - what a play!
Eve was totally annoying imo
Q was great and refreshing
The music was average.
They could have done more out of the Shanghai location and the Macau Casino set looks somehow cheap and small.
Sam Mendes did a very good job, we have enjoyed the movie a lot but CR is the better movie imo - though it has larger flaws than SF (I am talking about bodyworld and the Miami scenes).
But its strenghts outweight its weakness.
Good that QoS can be forgotten yet and EON made a very good anniversary movie -{
James Bond will return
President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Overall I found 'Skyfall' an enjoyable experience but your damning review is well argued. I've been tinkering with edits to my own review over the course of this week, trying to clarify my initial observations, but I'm going for a second viewing this weekend and I'll bear in mind your criticisms as I'm watching.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
This tranlsates as 'We're too PC to make extremist Islam the bad guys'... and I guess she's not heard of Iran. Or Putin's Russia. Burma. China. Course not. Blimey, she deserves to be fired!
With the exception of FYEO there has never been a "real world" villain in the films. SMERSH was replaced by SPECTRE in FRWL and the nearest it has come to real world baddies is a rouge element ie OP, TLD etc. FYEO was the only time that the real KGB was in competition to Bond for the main plot. Even them it was more about a battle with and between semi freelance subsidiaries of the main intelligence agencies.
Well, as you may have judged by some of my comments today, I saw the film last night and didn't rate it. I met up with Strangeways - by the way, I keep meaning to ask you SW, are you aware your moniker is 'wrong' and it should be Strangways, or is that deliberate? - and he was on his third viewing. Mind you, he was saying it's fab - I wouldn't want to be innocent and in the dock with him offering a testimonial. In fact, having seen the movie after listening to his glowing tributes, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out he's straight, and his idea of heaven is a trip to B&Q on a Sunday morning with the wife and kids before heading out with the lads to watch Milwall...
Anyway... where to start? Skyfall is a bit like Adele's song. Her song is sumptuous, lush, well produced and impressive - it's just not a good tune really. Not one for the iPod. You wouldn't listen to it twice if it weren't a Bond song. Not like the brilliant songs of yesteryear, Nobody Does It Better, DAF, any of them really. I heard YOLT played on the radio straight after Skyfall, now that's a song, works as a song in its own right.
So it is with this film. It looks sumptuous, thanks to Roger Deakin's cinematography, and it has scope and ambition. It just isn't a good movie. It doesn't click for me. In a way it was the same with the director's other films, The Road to Perdition. It looked great, it was heavy with intent, and had a few fantastic scenes in it, but it just doesn't move along. In a way, SF made me think better of QoS, but not much. At least that is relatively grounded, but actually SF is the film QoS might have been had they finished the script and dumped the Bourne-style camera work. Which might be, you'd think, a great Bond film. But no, it has pretensions. These directors shouldn't be let near a Bond film. They can't tell which implausiblities you can get away with, and which you can't. I sense a slumming it vibe, as if to say, well, if this doesn't make sense who cares - it's only a Bond film. Both men are big on symbolism, which I hate in movies when it doesn't connect on its own surface meaning.
When did it mess up? Early on. Bond is on a bike, so far so good, except he's left an agent to die, another charming Mathis moment. He'll disobey M's order when he likes, but not in this case of course! We have a name for a bloke like this in England - jobsworth. Maybe that could be the name of the next Bond film, sung by Adele:
Jobsworth!
Get the T-shirt
From the foyer
That'll be another 15 pounds please
Anyway, big fail is when he has to get onto a moving train. Now, if you've ever watched Octopussy and thought that it badly needed a shot of Berkoff's General Orlov in a fight on the train in West Berlin, well, you're in luck as that's pretty much how Craig looks. He moves like a bloody crab and it's like it's meant to be like that... Anyway, most of us would pull up to the bridge and jump off, but our man crashed headlong the bike into the bridge and goes flying over, just hoping this will see him land on the train roof. Like you do. Perhaps Moore's Bond could have just crashed his dismantled car into the Pont Neuf and gone through the windscreen.
It goes on like this, silly stuff with the digger on the train takes this far away from the grounded quality of Casino Royale and really they're falling back on the old outrageous Bond stunts/routine to reel us in now. M is the professional irritant, but if Bond is not dead why does he look it when he falls into the water, because he has the camera on him? I mean why would you try to look dead if you're not actually? Shades of Bourne again... Lavish credits of the 'if you didn't like that one, here's another' variety overkill.
I'll keep it short. This is the Craig and Dench show. Both their characters are talked down - with total justification as far as I can see! They both seem to be idiots. Craig is said to be old and past it - only two films back they were trying to make out he was the young kid on the block! So when M is sad she thinks he's dead, why should she care? This isn't the Bond of legend, he's only been on two missions, not world beaters by any standard. This is one way the film tries to tap in to Bond's iconography at the expense of him as a real person. He just isn't a real guy in this film. Sure, Craig has white beard growth and looks 60 - he's good at that - but it's all a nonsense really.
I did like the scene where he is chilling and downing shots with the scorpion, that was cool. But we don't really know how long that has gone on for, weeks or months? Or how he survived the shot. I mean, he was shot wasn't he? Or, we are thinking, was it an elaborate hoax?
Then... how does he break into M's flat again, does she really have no security - and at a time like this, too, when someone is after MI6 and M specifically.
I think the nadir is when he cockily says he can save the trapped girl in Shanghai. Righty-ho! Sneaks on her ship, easily done. Walks naked into her shower, without a by your leave. Oh, the daft scene when he lets the black gal shave him - though he doesn't really know her and may well be a double agent at this stage in the game, ludicrous. Anyway, he thinks he can just show up on his own to meet the villain. Like you do. I mean, good luck with that. It starts to feel like The Man with the Golden Gun at this point, in terms of general believability - yet this is the rugged, credible Craig we're meant to go with.
CGI buildings on the island, like The Expendables 2.
Bond is shown to be morally repugnant of course when he is forced to shoot the drink off her head. It's just a nasty situation, are we meant to empathise and cherish a sociopath. Apparently, because he's British. There's no moral outrage in the bloke, like when he sees the receptionist get shot earlier. He just seems mildly interested. Anyway, at that point the helicopters show up to rescue Bond and there's this daft jubilant bit of brass! Like, hey ho, he's safe! No matter the girl he went out to save is, er, dead!
The villain, well, some sort of Lector/Joker hybrid rip off. During his opening monologue, you'd want Bond to interrupt and say 'Is this going to take long?' The film is littered with dialogue nods to other movies, 'Bring it back in one piece', 'the old ways are the best' and so on, I suppose like when you're banging a minger you might want the memory of past shags to carry you through...
Rubbish! Bond on the rush hour with unconvincing passengers, nothing like as credible as Bourne Supremacy. A tube train crashes - but no one is in it! The team lacked balls, they thought if something went off in Olympic year, they'd be stuffed. So it's the only tube train in rush hour not packed.
Bond of course has the chance to shoot Silva but doesn't, as you do. Bond runs like a robot in this, like Kryton from Red Dwarf. In the boat going across to the Shanghai casino, he looks like a tailor's dummy... But is it deliberate, perhaps? To show how heartless he is?
So it is with Dench's M, everyone calls her 'maam' in this, on and on it goes, is it meant to sound like 'mum'? Is it some ruse by the director, to make her seem a maternal figure? Or just irritating. Dench does her usual blather she's been on since GE about how there are no nations anymore, the villains are in the shadows. This tranlsates as 'We're too PC to make extremist Islam the bad guys'... and I guess she's not heard of Iran. Or Putin's Russia. Burma. China. Course not. Blimey, she deserves to be fired!
FFS! The Aston has an ejector seat. Erm... Don't think so. Or maybe the guy Bond won it off in CR was part of Q branch and had it installed. My mind was just whirling by this point.
To me, the director may be a fan boy, but so was Lee Tamahari. These types just fling a lot of stuff at the wall and hope it sticks.
So off to Scotland, to face up to the villain on your own, like you do. This maybe a metaphor for the Uk attitude to Europe. Or it may not, it may just be rubbish scriptwriting. Who knows? Logan signposts everything a great deal, there's a lot of talk and rubbish obvious exposition throughout the film, all tell don't show. Ooh, what a surprise that Mallory is not such a bad guy after all!
Off to Gotham Towers, for a standoff like the final scene of Bourne Identity, er, but that made sense cos Bourne really was on his own against the forces, whereas Bond isn't, it's just done for dramatic effect. Doesn't phone ahead, oh no. Finds out there are no guns, it all got sold off - cos they thought he was dead? It's a lot of info to take in. It's a different movie by this stage, I couldn't take it in.
M and new pal wandering about in the dark with a frickin torch! Like you would. You know, stay out of sight. Bond going in chase, though he doesn't know Silva is chasing them, for all he knows he's dead. Doesn't bother to pick up a gun from anonymous henchman before running into chapel. Shiny new tombstone from his parents on site. Bond closes his bosses eyes a bit quick, maybe it was wishful thinking! Silva, who seems suicidal, gets his wish to kill M. Bond is the Wayne Rooney of MI6, everyone talks him up, and he cocks it all up. Like in CR, when the villains get away with the money at the end, and the girl dies! What a man! So he takes it upon himself to 'protect' M and use her as bait, and she dies. Mallory gets the top job, which is what he wanted - no wonder he's so happy to see Bond at the end.
To cap it all? Bond: 'I didn't catch your name again... ' No? I mean, I haven't let Strangeways shave me, and I haven't shagged him either, we've met three times but I do know his name actually. I mean, you tend to introduce yourself, that's the way it goes. But Bond has done all that but he doesn't even know this bird's name, bloody hell, at least he knew Agent Fields' surname, if not that she was called Strawberry.
The message at the end is, right, after the revamp we've taken three films to get back to where we were before Dench arrived on the scene, with a secretary and a male boss. Though what Fiennes is doing in this, along with Ben Whishaw, I don't know, it's like a retirement home for theatre thesps looking to pay off a mortgage, they all seem a bit sheepish.
All in all, this film is as believable as Bond's stunt with the Queen for the Olympics, but more pretentious and not as funny.
Mr Plural has pointed out a number of inconsistencies and shortfalls. To my mind a good example is the use of the DB5 I agree with everything he said ( is this the same car as in GF ? Or the one from CR) but it just didn't bother me. Like wise the timeline, I just assumed that in the period between movies Bond has been on a number of missions and become the pre CR seasoned agent. I also find Craig far more convincing as the old lag than the young buck.
I guess it boils down to whether you think the film takes more liberties than it's entitled to. I may also be suffering from a form of anti QOS euphoria, in as much as anything that was not that gets a disproportionately favourable ride. I disagree about Severine, as I think she knew that she was going to her death but the desire to ensure Silva's demise was stronger.
What I really like about Skyfall is that there's enough for us to discuss, disagree with and argue about until 24.
I do think that they have potentially backed themselves into a corner for 24 unless we get a new actor (which is unlikely) as Skyfall feels equally like an ending or a beginning to me.
Mr Plural has pointed out a number of inconsistencies and shortfalls. To my mind a good example is the use of the DB5 I agree with everything he said ( is this the same car as in GF ? Or the one from CR) but it just didn't bother me.
There have been inconsistencies and credulity challenges since the books were being written. Some I find more troubling than others. The worst in the books for me was the declaration in FRWL that Bond had never killed in cold blood. Now this makes the character more interesting and means that for example in FYEO he makes them shoot at him before he carries out his assassination mission "in self defence". But it flatly contradicts CR where he had to kill in cold blood to get his OO. Personally I found the introduction of the GF car troubling as I had to try to work out how it fitted in with the declared continuity.
There have been a few credulity challenges over the years. I note that the film makers modified the plot of GF to make it more plausible. The suggestion in the book that they could expect to use a small atom bomb to blow the doors off of Fort Knox... I can hear Charlie Crocker now.
Like wise the timeline, I just assumed that in the period between movies Bond has been on a number of missions and become the pre CR seasoned agent. I also find Craig far more convincing as the old lag than the young buck.
Yes. Probably wrapping up the remains of Quantum, whose other thrilling global plots to run utility companies were obviously not considered worth filming ) In any case he photographed them all at the opera so they had a full list of names.
I do think that they have potentially backed themselves into a corner for 24 unless we get a new actor (which is unlikely) as Skyfall feels equally like an ending or a beginning to me.
If CR was a reboot, I think SF is a rewind, and in that way all the changes over that past however many films were reversed. There are shadows. There is a need for Bond. There is a place for a classy gadget or two... M needs his traditional office and a Miss Moneypenny.
Now I feel tempted to write an antidote to Nap's review, but tbh I really cba.
As I pointed out over a few glasses of wine after the showing, SKYFALL is a masterpiece. Don't take my word for it, look at the facts:
- biggest Saturday take for any film ever.
- Five stars from Total Film, four stars from Empire (that's huge).
- Rave reviews in all the presses.
- Oscar winning director, several oscar winning actors.
The problem here with those fans who just don't SKYFALL it is that it's not Goldfinger or TSWLM (both of which I love). Well of course it's not. Any film series that lasts 50 years HAS to change with the times or die! There's no other evidence of this because there is no other film series that has lasted so long. After 23 films the series needed to change if it was going to compete with Mission Impossible, Bourne and others and so it has. If so called fans can't see this then maybe they should be like ex fans or something. I love the fresh modern feel, love Craig, love that there were no real gadgets (exploding pen anyone?) but it is still BOND, and like a child he needs out love and support. I loved Bond in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and post 2000s, Bond will live on forever!
PS - The thought of going to B&Q on a Sunday fills me with dread...but Millwall boys...now you're talking! Yum!
I will refrain from writing my review until I have seen it a second time. Right now I'm not sure what to think. I liked the movie as a whole and think there are some great moments in it. However, the movie also has plot holes big enough to drive a truck through..... sideways! So I think Ill catch a morning screening next week to watch it again before I make a definitive stand.
I don't quite understand why everyone is getting so mardy about the 'changes' to the DB5. If it IS the same car as that in CR, then I assume Bond has had some 'optional extras' installed. Most probably 'off record' from Q-Branch, or even (less plausibly) by his own hand. I vaguely remember one of the Benson (I'll have to check that) books mentioning Bond having had Q-Branch tinker with his own personal vehicle.
And if it isn't the same car, well, it must have been issued to him in the four years between QoS and SF.
Am I missing something here? Because it really doesn't strike me as particularly gaping plot hole.
Yep, the car is the same from CR. GF never happened in the craig universe. The fact that the car has the same features as GF is purely coincidental, and obviously put in for the viewers as a nod to GF, nothing more.
(Although it would have been nice if it was the same car.... I was never one for the reboot!)
Yep, the car is the same from CR. GF never happened in the craig universe. The fact that the car has the same features as GF is purely coincidental, and obviously put in for the viewers as a nod to GF, nothing more.
(Although it would have been nice if it was the same car.... I was never one for the reboot!)
Not the same car as CR. Right hand drive for one thing, plus all the other mods. It doesn't seem like Craig's Bond to get all those items put in for his own amusement.
Presumably a Q branch special from that era. Has same features and number plate so same car in parallel continuity. (Like Judi Dench's M, although there may be some differences between her characters.) Maybe he liked the one in CR but rather than ship it home bought this one 2nd hand at a Q Branch Clearance sale. M is familiar with the features so it suggests a Department standard rather than Bond's personal mods.
Did anyone else feel the joke Bond tells in the family chapel at the end of the movie.
Is out of place, as this is a dramatic moment and I though it didn't sit well in the scene.
I enjoyed the Lighter Craig's take on Bond. But thought this Joke, just wasn't Needed.
The line about Deep water
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Did anyone else feel the joke Bond tells in the family chapel at the end of the movie.
Is out of place, as this is a dramatic moment and I though it didn't sit well in the scene.
I enjoyed the Lighter Craig's take on Bond. But thought this Joke, just wasn't Needed.
The line about Deep water
Well, it wouldn't be a Bond film if some of the lines/quips/jokes didn't sit well. The three that stood out to me were.
At the lodge before the attack Bond says, "A storm is coming." It took me right out of the moment and I then half expected Batman to appear on the horizon.
Also at the lodge when it goes up in flames. Bond says words to the effect, "I always hated that place." Maybe he did hate the lodge but the timing and the way he said it didn't sit well.
On Hashima Island after Silva shoots Severine, Bond makes a quip about a waste of whisky, or something like that. Bond cared about Severine, I would have expected him to make a quip that insulted Silva.
Moore Not Less 4371 posts (2002 - 2007) Moore Than (2012 - 2016)
If CR was a reboot, I think SF is a rewind, and in that way all the changes over that past however many films were reversed. There are shadows. There is a need for Bond. There is a place for a classy gadget or two... M needs his traditional office and a Miss Moneypenny.
I think this might be right. It explains the reintroduction of MI6’s old HQ pre-GE. It is as if the producers want to erase the Dench/Brosnan era from the “timeline”.
If CR was a reboot, I think SF is a rewind, and in that way all the changes over that past however many films were reversed. There are shadows. There is a need for Bond. There is a place for a classy gadget or two... M needs his traditional office and a Miss Moneypenny.
I think this might be right. It explains the reintroduction of MI6’s old HQ pre-GE. It is as if the producers want to erase the Dench/Brosnan era from the “timeline”.
no, you're both missing the point.
CR was a reboot, a fresh start, a clean slate.
DN - DAD 'doesn't exist' in our brave new world.
The way I see it, SF is the final step in resetting the world our new Bond lives in. CR was the introduction of our new Bond, showing him gain his 00 status and being sent on his first mission to Montenegro. QoS was our favourite secret agent being sent out after the Quantum organisation and finding some closure on losing Vesper.
SF is a final step in the chain, we see Bond losing and regaining his touch, and then everything coming full circle as it were at the end. A new M, a new office, a new Moneypenny. This now sets the scene for a real fresh start, where Bond can now get down to business in bond 24.
Just thinking about M's office, we've seen plenty. The office in GE was reused in TWINE and DAD, and CR, but in QoS she had an open plan office shared with Tanner, then in SF we see a new larger office shared by Tanner and a few other analysts.
Who's to say that Mallory's office at the end of SF isn't a temporary one while Vauxhall cross is rebuilt?
Anyway, SF isn't a prequel to CR, a rewind or a retake on anything, its the final step in the reboot.
Who's to say that Mallory's office at the end of SF isn't a temporary one while Vauxhall cross is rebuilt?
This is a possibility, though not a great one, as Mallory’s office was made a big deal out of in SF. I don't think they’d do that if it were temporary.
Comments
Still love it. decided on the following ratings for Craig's three movies.
QoS 8 out of 10
Skyfall 9 out of 10
CR 10 out of 10
Love them all
I'm only on 2 viewings to date (possibly a 3rd now due over the weekend), but I have the same ratings as your good self - I'd maybe even possibly push SF up to 9.25, but that's just me splitting hairs!
Anthony Hopkins only had 16 minutes of screen time in "Silence of the lambs" but won the Oscar so you never know.
It is the car from Goldfinger BMT 216T NOT the one from Goldeneye BMT 214T. That was the only thing that really jolted me from the ride. The empty rush hour tube could just pass by. I didn't need to know why Silva paid an expensive international assassin to break into an empty office. cut a whole in the single glazed (!!??) window in order to shoot someone with a rifle when he already had 3 or 4 people in the room with the victim, all with guns! That is just the way with Bond. But the Goldfinger Aston did make me try to make excuses for it instead of enjoying the ride.
There have been plenty of Bond quips when a baddy gets killed, but I cannot think of another one where the doomed girl is offed.
I don't remember the running either. I didn't watch any trailers until after seeing the film.
I also sat in the cinema for about 10 minutes with my eyes shut so that I didn't have to see clips from the film in the adverts. They paid for the film to be made - why try to spoil it for me when I come to watch it?
Also you right about the ads for Skyfall product, it went on and on and on. I was in the cinema for 40 mins before the film started, that many ads and then the trailers etc
Anyway... where to start? Skyfall is a bit like Adele's song. Her song is sumptuous, lush, well produced and impressive - it's just not a good tune really. Not one for the iPod. You wouldn't listen to it twice if it weren't a Bond song. Not like the brilliant songs of yesteryear, Nobody Does It Better, DAF, any of them really. I heard YOLT played on the radio straight after Skyfall, now that's a song, works as a song in its own right.
So it is with this film. It looks sumptuous, thanks to Roger Deakin's cinematography, and it has scope and ambition. It just isn't a good movie. It doesn't click for me. In a way it was the same with the director's other films, The Road to Perdition. It looked great, it was heavy with intent, and had a few fantastic scenes in it, but it just doesn't move along. In a way, SF made me think better of QoS, but not much. At least that is relatively grounded, but actually SF is the film QoS might have been had they finished the script and dumped the Bourne-style camera work. Which might be, you'd think, a great Bond film. But no, it has pretensions. These directors shouldn't be let near a Bond film. They can't tell which implausiblities you can get away with, and which you can't. I sense a slumming it vibe, as if to say, well, if this doesn't make sense who cares - it's only a Bond film. Both men are big on symbolism, which I hate in movies when it doesn't connect on its own surface meaning.
When did it mess up? Early on. Bond is on a bike, so far so good, except he's left an agent to die, another charming Mathis moment. He'll disobey M's order when he likes, but not in this case of course! We have a name for a bloke like this in England - jobsworth. Maybe that could be the name of the next Bond film, sung by Adele:
Jobsworth!
Get the T-shirt
From the foyer
That'll be another 15 pounds please
Anyway, big fail is when he has to get onto a moving train. Now, if you've ever watched Octopussy and thought that it badly needed a shot of Berkoff's General Orlov in a fight on the train in West Berlin, well, you're in luck as that's pretty much how Craig looks. He moves like a bloody crab and it's like it's meant to be like that... Anyway, most of us would pull up to the bridge and jump off, but our man crashed headlong the bike into the bridge and goes flying over, just hoping this will see him land on the train roof. Like you do. Perhaps Moore's Bond could have just crashed his dismantled car into the Pont Neuf and gone through the windscreen.
It goes on like this, silly stuff with the digger on the train takes this far away from the grounded quality of Casino Royale and really they're falling back on the old outrageous Bond stunts/routine to reel us in now. M is the professional irritant, but if Bond is not dead why does he look it when he falls into the water, because he has the camera on him? I mean why would you try to look dead if you're not actually? Shades of Bourne again... Lavish credits of the 'if you didn't like that one, here's another' variety overkill.
I'll keep it short. This is the Craig and Dench show. Both their characters are talked down - with total justification as far as I can see! They both seem to be idiots. Craig is said to be old and past it - only two films back they were trying to make out he was the young kid on the block! So when M is sad she thinks he's dead, why should she care? This isn't the Bond of legend, he's only been on two missions, not world beaters by any standard. This is one way the film tries to tap in to Bond's iconography at the expense of him as a real person. He just isn't a real guy in this film. Sure, Craig has white beard growth and looks 60 - he's good at that - but it's all a nonsense really.
I did like the scene where he is chilling and downing shots with the scorpion, that was cool. But we don't really know how long that has gone on for, weeks or months? Or how he survived the shot. I mean, he was shot wasn't he? Or, we are thinking, was it an elaborate hoax?
Then... how does he break into M's flat again, does she really have no security - and at a time like this, too, when someone is after MI6 and M specifically.
I think the nadir is when he cockily says he can save the trapped girl in Shanghai. Righty-ho! Sneaks on her ship, easily done. Walks naked into her shower, without a by your leave. Oh, the daft scene when he lets the black gal shave him - though he doesn't really know her and may well be a double agent at this stage in the game, ludicrous. Anyway, he thinks he can just show up on his own to meet the villain. Like you do. I mean, good luck with that. It starts to feel like The Man with the Golden Gun at this point, in terms of general believability - yet this is the rugged, credible Craig we're meant to go with.
CGI buildings on the island, like The Expendables 2.
Bond is shown to be morally repugnant of course when he is forced to shoot the drink off her head. It's just a nasty situation, are we meant to empathise and cherish a sociopath. Apparently, because he's British. There's no moral outrage in the bloke, like when he sees the receptionist get shot earlier. He just seems mildly interested. Anyway, at that point the helicopters show up to rescue Bond and there's this daft jubilant bit of brass! Like, hey ho, he's safe! No matter the girl he went out to save is, er, dead!
The villain, well, some sort of Lector/Joker hybrid rip off. During his opening monologue, you'd want Bond to interrupt and say 'Is this going to take long?' The film is littered with dialogue nods to other movies, 'Bring it back in one piece', 'the old ways are the best' and so on, I suppose like when you're banging a minger you might want the memory of past shags to carry you through...
Rubbish! Bond on the rush hour with unconvincing passengers, nothing like as credible as Bourne Supremacy. A tube train crashes - but no one is in it! The team lacked balls, they thought if something went off in Olympic year, they'd be stuffed. So it's the only tube train in rush hour not packed.
Bond of course has the chance to shoot Silva but doesn't, as you do. Bond runs like a robot in this, like Kryton from Red Dwarf. In the boat going across to the Shanghai casino, he looks like a tailor's dummy... But is it deliberate, perhaps? To show how heartless he is?
So it is with Dench's M, everyone calls her 'maam' in this, on and on it goes, is it meant to sound like 'mum'? Is it some ruse by the director, to make her seem a maternal figure? Or just irritating. Dench does her usual blather she's been on since GE about how there are no nations anymore, the villains are in the shadows. This tranlsates as 'We're too PC to make extremist Islam the bad guys'... and I guess she's not heard of Iran. Or Putin's Russia. Burma. China. Course not. Blimey, she deserves to be fired!
FFS! The Aston has an ejector seat. Erm... Don't think so. Or maybe the guy Bond won it off in CR was part of Q branch and had it installed. My mind was just whirling by this point.
To me, the director may be a fan boy, but so was Lee Tamahari. These types just fling a lot of stuff at the wall and hope it sticks.
So off to Scotland, to face up to the villain on your own, like you do. This maybe a metaphor for the Uk attitude to Europe. Or it may not, it may just be rubbish scriptwriting. Who knows? Logan signposts everything a great deal, there's a lot of talk and rubbish obvious exposition throughout the film, all tell don't show. Ooh, what a surprise that Mallory is not such a bad guy after all!
Off to Gotham Towers, for a standoff like the final scene of Bourne Identity, er, but that made sense cos Bourne really was on his own against the forces, whereas Bond isn't, it's just done for dramatic effect. Doesn't phone ahead, oh no. Finds out there are no guns, it all got sold off - cos they thought he was dead? It's a lot of info to take in. It's a different movie by this stage, I couldn't take it in.
M and new pal wandering about in the dark with a frickin torch! Like you would. You know, stay out of sight. Bond going in chase, though he doesn't know Silva is chasing them, for all he knows he's dead. Doesn't bother to pick up a gun from anonymous henchman before running into chapel. Shiny new tombstone from his parents on site. Bond closes his bosses eyes a bit quick, maybe it was wishful thinking! Silva, who seems suicidal, gets his wish to kill M. Bond is the Wayne Rooney of MI6, everyone talks him up, and he cocks it all up. Like in CR, when the villains get away with the money at the end, and the girl dies! What a man! So he takes it upon himself to 'protect' M and use her as bait, and she dies. Mallory gets the top job, which is what he wanted - no wonder he's so happy to see Bond at the end.
To cap it all? Bond: 'I didn't catch your name again... ' No? I mean, I haven't let Strangeways shave me, and I haven't shagged him either, we've met three times but I do know his name actually. I mean, you tend to introduce yourself, that's the way it goes. But Bond has done all that but he doesn't even know this bird's name, bloody hell, at least he knew Agent Fields' surname, if not that she was called Strawberry.
The message at the end is, right, after the revamp we've taken three films to get back to where we were before Dench arrived on the scene, with a secretary and a male boss. Though what Fiennes is doing in this, along with Ben Whishaw, I don't know, it's like a retirement home for theatre thesps looking to pay off a mortgage, they all seem a bit sheepish.
All in all, this film is as believable as Bond's stunt with the Queen for the Olympics, but more pretentious and not as funny.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I didn't realise at first but Skyfall has more than just a nod to The Man With The Golden. The villain has an island lair. Bond is led to the villain from Macau by the girlfriend Severine/Andrea who is in fear of her life. The girlfriend is shot dead by the villain. There is also a shower scene involving Bond and the girlfriend. A tracking device is used Bond/Goodnight which locates the island. The Shanghai scene with Bond stalking Patrice through the glass doors could be a nod to the hall of mirrors.
I don't really see that as a flaw. Eve is a field agent but not a good one. When she shoots Bond she is in a state of shock. If the position was reversed, even an experienced elite agent like Bond would hesitate momentarily after shooting a friend rather than foe. This momentary hesitation would probably cause Bond to lose his focus and the bad guy (Patrice) might still have escaped.
The real flaw at the start is not showing or explaining how Bond survived after being shot by Eve. At the end of the PTS he is literally dead in the water sinking to the bottom of a river. Am I supposed to believe that when Bond sank to the bottom he regained consciousness, straightened his tie, adjusted his cuffs, and then swam to the surface and waved a fish at any onlookers.
Very Sir Rog
It would sound silly for them to call her Sir :-) It is the appropriate term to use in addressing a female superior. I refer you to HBC in TKS
The first hour left me and my company pretty cold and we had a 15 minute break just before the yacht reaches the island.
It was not bad, but we have not been sucked into all the action.
After the break things changed and I have enjoyed the movie a LOT!
The London action is great, the Scotland scenes are awesome!
Daniel did a very good and dedicated job - but he looked pretty old.
Dame Judy was incredible - what a farewell for her!
Severine was pretty and played extremely well
Bardem is probably my favorite villain of all time - what a play!
Eve was totally annoying imo
Q was great and refreshing
The music was average.
They could have done more out of the Shanghai location and the Macau Casino set looks somehow cheap and small.
Sam Mendes did a very good job, we have enjoyed the movie a lot but CR is the better movie imo - though it has larger flaws than SF (I am talking about bodyworld and the Miami scenes).
But its strenghts outweight its weakness.
Good that QoS can be forgotten yet and EON made a very good anniversary movie -{
James Bond will return
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Overall I found 'Skyfall' an enjoyable experience but your damning review is well argued. I've been tinkering with edits to my own review over the course of this week, trying to clarify my initial observations, but I'm going for a second viewing this weekend and I'll bear in mind your criticisms as I'm watching.
With the exception of FYEO there has never been a "real world" villain in the films. SMERSH was replaced by SPECTRE in FRWL and the nearest it has come to real world baddies is a rouge element ie OP, TLD etc. FYEO was the only time that the real KGB was in competition to Bond for the main plot. Even them it was more about a battle with and between semi freelance subsidiaries of the main intelligence agencies.
You didn't like it then?
I guess it boils down to whether you think the film takes more liberties than it's entitled to. I may also be suffering from a form of anti QOS euphoria, in as much as anything that was not that gets a disproportionately favourable ride. I disagree about Severine, as I think she knew that she was going to her death but the desire to ensure Silva's demise was stronger.
What I really like about Skyfall is that there's enough for us to discuss, disagree with and argue about until 24.
I do think that they have potentially backed themselves into a corner for 24 unless we get a new actor (which is unlikely) as Skyfall feels equally like an ending or a beginning to me.
There have been inconsistencies and credulity challenges since the books were being written. Some I find more troubling than others. The worst in the books for me was the declaration in FRWL that Bond had never killed in cold blood. Now this makes the character more interesting and means that for example in FYEO he makes them shoot at him before he carries out his assassination mission "in self defence". But it flatly contradicts CR where he had to kill in cold blood to get his OO. Personally I found the introduction of the GF car troubling as I had to try to work out how it fitted in with the declared continuity.
There have been a few credulity challenges over the years. I note that the film makers modified the plot of GF to make it more plausible. The suggestion in the book that they could expect to use a small atom bomb to blow the doors off of Fort Knox... I can hear Charlie Crocker now.
Yes. Probably wrapping up the remains of Quantum, whose other thrilling global plots to run utility companies were obviously not considered worth filming
I am enjoying that too. The fact that it is a film you want to talk about afterwards is a very good sign.
If CR was a reboot, I think SF is a rewind, and in that way all the changes over that past however many films were reversed. There are shadows. There is a need for Bond. There is a place for a classy gadget or two... M needs his traditional office and a Miss Moneypenny.
As I pointed out over a few glasses of wine after the showing, SKYFALL is a masterpiece. Don't take my word for it, look at the facts:
- biggest Saturday take for any film ever.
- Five stars from Total Film, four stars from Empire (that's huge).
- Rave reviews in all the presses.
- Oscar winning director, several oscar winning actors.
The problem here with those fans who just don't SKYFALL it is that it's not Goldfinger or TSWLM (both of which I love). Well of course it's not. Any film series that lasts 50 years HAS to change with the times or die! There's no other evidence of this because there is no other film series that has lasted so long. After 23 films the series needed to change if it was going to compete with Mission Impossible, Bourne and others and so it has. If so called fans can't see this then maybe they should be like ex fans or something. I love the fresh modern feel, love Craig, love that there were no real gadgets (exploding pen anyone?) but it is still BOND, and like a child he needs out love and support. I loved Bond in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and post 2000s, Bond will live on forever!
PS - The thought of going to B&Q on a Sunday fills me with dread...but Millwall boys...now you're talking! Yum!
And if it isn't the same car, well, it must have been issued to him in the four years between QoS and SF.
Am I missing something here? Because it really doesn't strike me as particularly gaping plot hole.
(Although it would have been nice if it was the same car.... I was never one for the reboot!)
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
Not the same car as CR. Right hand drive for one thing, plus all the other mods. It doesn't seem like Craig's Bond to get all those items put in for his own amusement.
Presumably a Q branch special from that era. Has same features and number plate so same car in parallel continuity. (Like Judi Dench's M, although there may be some differences between her characters.) Maybe he liked the one in CR but rather than ship it home bought this one 2nd hand at a Q Branch Clearance sale. M is familiar with the features so it suggests a Department standard rather than Bond's personal mods.
Is out of place, as this is a dramatic moment and I though it didn't sit well in the scene.
I enjoyed the Lighter Craig's take on Bond. But thought this Joke, just wasn't Needed.
Well, it wouldn't be a Bond film if some of the lines/quips/jokes didn't sit well. The three that stood out to me were.
Also at the lodge when it goes up in flames. Bond says words to the effect, "I always hated that place." Maybe he did hate the lodge but the timing and the way he said it didn't sit well.
On Hashima Island after Silva shoots Severine, Bond makes a quip about a waste of whisky, or something like that. Bond cared about Severine, I would have expected him to make a quip that insulted Silva.
I think this might be right. It explains the reintroduction of MI6’s old HQ pre-GE. It is as if the producers want to erase the Dench/Brosnan era from the “timeline”.
no, you're both missing the point.
CR was a reboot, a fresh start, a clean slate.
DN - DAD 'doesn't exist' in our brave new world.
The way I see it, SF is the final step in resetting the world our new Bond lives in. CR was the introduction of our new Bond, showing him gain his 00 status and being sent on his first mission to Montenegro. QoS was our favourite secret agent being sent out after the Quantum organisation and finding some closure on losing Vesper.
SF is a final step in the chain, we see Bond losing and regaining his touch, and then everything coming full circle as it were at the end. A new M, a new office, a new Moneypenny. This now sets the scene for a real fresh start, where Bond can now get down to business in bond 24.
Just thinking about M's office, we've seen plenty. The office in GE was reused in TWINE and DAD, and CR, but in QoS she had an open plan office shared with Tanner, then in SF we see a new larger office shared by Tanner and a few other analysts.
Who's to say that Mallory's office at the end of SF isn't a temporary one while Vauxhall cross is rebuilt?
Anyway, SF isn't a prequel to CR, a rewind or a retake on anything, its the final step in the reboot.
Bond 24 will be when Bond gets down to business.
Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
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This is a possibility, though not a great one, as Mallory’s office was made a big deal out of in SF. I don't think they’d do that if it were temporary.