Brief notes on Skyfall

[firecat]

I really enjoyed Skyfall. It's very cool that they made a Bond film where...


...Bond and almost everyone else fail at almost everything they set out to do, and I'm still cheering and thinking Bond is the greatest agent ever. Also where M dies but I'm not pissed off because Judi got a co-starring role.

I liked how they played with the various Bond tropes. Also it passes the Bechdel test handily.

Comments

[snippy]

I liked it too. I want that estate in Scotland!

[flarenut]

Not after the hit team is through with it...

What got to me is that, although Bond is still alive at the end, the villain actually succeeds at what he ostensibly set out to do. Sure, he dies, but since he was only motivated by revenge it's not clear that's a big deal.

[firecat]

Yes, for me that was the cherry on the top of "Bond movie, where he fails at everything but still seems awesome somehow."

[jinian]

Tom Gauld posted a great cartoon that I think must've been inspired by that movie: http://myjetpack.tumblr.com/post/35049264972

[rhivolution]

The fact that both the 'Bond women' were women of colour, and Judi Dench is over 60 and still badass--I realized that that's pretty stunning.

[maize]

I've only seen the first Daniel Craig Bond, but my impression from that one and from the trailers for the other (two?) was that they were setting out to make a broken, flawed Bond. Which I have to admit is a lot more interesting than Bond-the-super-suavest-guy-who-ever-suaved.

[firecat]

Yeah. The flawed Bond is more like Ian Fleming's original character. Although the "broken" is more of a modern add-on.

re: Brief notes on Skyfall

[betonica]

Wait. A *Bond* movie passes the Bechdel test??

I knew I wanted to see this.

And Judy Dench.

Re: Brief notes on Skyfall

[selki]

I want to see it now (given Firecat's review and more comments here) enough to ask other locals if they want to go with me, instead of just "meh, if someone asks me I'll go."

[jiawen]

I'd heard that Bond has coercive sex with a woman, and that there are other messages in the film that are morally wrong. How much of that do you find to be true? (Bond movies are some of the few ones I ever see in the theater, so I'm hoping Skyfall is actually okay.)

[firecat]

That post has some excellent points. I didn't read the sex scene in question as coercive in the same way that he did (see this comment if you want to know how I read it), and I also didn't read the other relationship as "chaste" (see this comment). And yeah, there were certainly exploitative elements in the death scene he discusses; it further developed that Bond is unfit for duty, but that could have been developed another way.

It's weird. Normally that stuff bugs me. But in this movie it didn't bug me as much. I think the reasons are these: except for the sex worker character, all the women in the movie are powerful in the same way the men are (they fight and kill, they are in danger and they rescue people from danger, they have sexual agency, they give orders, they have public roles). Another reason is that almost all the characters, male and female, are incompetent at times in ways that have big plot consequences. And almost all of them act like assholes in ways that have plot consequences. So there isn't for me a sense that the movie is about men being agents while women are primarily there to be sources of manpain and/or to be baby vessels and/or to help/hinder in little ways behind the scenes, which is what bugs me about many movies.

[jiawen]

Thank you! That's all very helpful, especially about them all being powerful in the same ways -- I may have to see it in the theater after all.