Skyfall
Year: 2012
Rating: PG-13
Length: 143 minutes / 2.38 hours
To me, one weakness of the James Bond franchise has always been the detached nature of the timeless character of James Bond (Daniel Craig) to anything from his past. He’d go off on some globetrotting mission to save the world while never having the stakes come anywhere close to where he lived—whether currently or when he was growing up. As such, the character of James Bond always felt like a caricature. An invincible man who always packed his plot armor before jetting off to a tropical paradise to deal with some megalomaniacal genius.
I feel Skyfall (2012) is the absolute pinnacle of Bond films because it makes the main character human. The brilliant way Sam Mendes used Javier Bardem as the antithesis to Craig’s Bond to highlight how loyalty is a two-way street is such a chef’s kiss that I can’t even begin to explain how it broke the mold for Bond villains. Visually, Skyfall benefits again from Mendes’ vision as a director who already made Academy Award-winning films. Aside from Bardem, the casting of new characters Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) were welcome additions to the now-established fold of Craig’s Bond and Judi Dench’s M.
While most Bond films stand as their own separate piece of British spy craft, it wasn’t until the last moments of this film that I came to realize (with a gasp) that the Daniel Craig movies up to this point in the franchise were merely prequels to established canon. There is certainly some nostalgia for the classic elements from the Sean Connery and Roger Moore eras, but adding in some heavy backstory about Bond’s origins placed this movie firmly in modern action territory.
The absolute best Bond film, I give Skyfall 5.0 stars out of 5.
This film appears in the following posts:
Cinema Connections #240. Sam Mendes
Cinema Connections #241. James Bond
