After some pretty dire financial troubles for MGM, the holder of the James Bond franchise, they finally got around to producing and releasing the newest iteration in the series, Skyfall, with Daniel Craig reprising the role in time for the 50th Anniversary of Bond movies. The reviews have been pretty spectacular, and as I enjoyed the previous outings, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, I expected to be blown away. To be honest, I think it’s a very strong movie, perhaps the strongest in some key areas, but in the end, I still prefer Casino Royale, so far as Daniel Craig Bond movies go.
The movie is centered around an attack on MI6, the British secret service organization Bond works for. The “attack” in question spans multiple components, from collecting the secret identities of agents (and assassinating them), to a bombing, to targeting MI6 officials directly, and so on. In short: someone intimately familiar with the inner-workings of MI6 is out to get them (for reasons you can probably guess…), and it’s up to James Bond to stop them.
The trouble is, many of these attacks are built upon new ways of thinking. A brave new world of espionage that has emerged in the last decade, one that the Sean Connery-era James Bond wouldn’t know the first thing about how to deal with. It is this theme that permeates the movie, possibly most evident from his interactions with the new “Q” (Ben Whishaw), a much, much younger tech nerd who seems like more of a hacker than a gadget producer. There’s even a clever crack about how Q Branch doesn’t make exploding pens anymore, a callback to an earlier era where brute force and explosions were an effective deterrent to terrorists. In today’s world, however, the terrorists don’t have to come within a few hundred miles to wreak havoc: they can do it from any computer screen.
Thus, much of the movie centers around the theme of James Bond being old and broken, useless in a today’s world. At the same time, that “new world” doesn’t know how to deal with a relic like James Bond, so the tension rises accordingly, leading to a few striking action scenes and some strong (and creepy…) moments between Craig and the villain, played by Javier Bardem. To be honest, I wanted a bit more “action” out of this movie, as I thought the previous movies had more “Bond moments” and more spectacular sequences (don’t get me wrong, they’re still there, but there just aren’t as many). At the same time, as is the message for the movie, this is a different time and it calls for a different Bond. Less action, more intrigue, and surprisingly little “Bond Babe” activity. Indeed, Daniel Craig was shirtless for longer in this movie than there were actual romance scenes to hold it in, a far cry from previous films.
In some ways, I see this more as a Bourne Identity-style spy movie, where there are action scenes, but much of it centers on the story and the characters. This isn’t a bad thing by any stretch, but it isn’t necessarily a Bond thing, either.
So, that’s where I fall on it. As a “Bond Movie,” I prefer Casino Royale. As a movie, I think it was very strong, had good writing, had good action, had a good payoff in the end, and had some excellent callbacks to Dr. No. It’s absolutely worth seeing, Craig is still a wonderful James Bond, and the producers have proven they can not only make a whiz-bang action flick, but can also take a more serious look at where in the world the character of “James Bond” fits. If anything, it proves the character is still relevant, but also that an old dog can most definitely learn some new tricks.