SkyFall

I did not enjoy this film.

Okay, so before you shoot me down, let me explain why I didn’t like Skyfall. It’s not because I’m just trying to be different or anything, I have actual legit reasons as to why I didn’t like Skyfall. First off I think my major issue with Skyfall is James Bond. Walking into Skyfall, I was anxious, I wanted to like James Bond, I wanted to be part of this massive fandom that adores James Bond, but I just can’t.

My problem is that there are too many moments in the film where the makers of the film have been a little lazy, too many times in the film I just had to sit back and say “because it’s James Bond”. For example, when the keys are already in a random motorbike “because it’s James Bond”, when a JCB is already switched on on a train “because it’s James Bond”. I get that that’s Bond’s thing and that films aren’t supposed to be all that realistic, but I feel that the writers relied on this too often and got lazy. A very prominent section of the film that annoyed me was how thw writers seemed to shoehorn a completely irrelevant poem in so they could play a montage of clips over the top. The character “M” at one stage reads out a poem by Alfred Tennyson almost at random.

Another major annoyance in James Bond is just how British it is, everything about it is stereotypically British. I’m pretty sure every British character says either “bloody” or “Christ”. Every single character. When you go to see Skyfall, make a note of how many times they same “bloody” or “Christ”, I’m surprised I didn’t hear words like “balderdash” or “fiddlesticks”. Although no one asked for any crumpets, one of the characters asks for a cup of “Earl’s Grey”.

I’m not sure if this is because I have a deep affection for “The Dark Knight” but did anyone else see the similarities between these two films? The villain being captured because he wanted to. Certain phrases, certain lines in the film just seemed to match up. I’m not sure if it’s me being paranoid and a huge batman fanboy, or if there is actually some truth to what I thought.

Maybe I’m being too harsh, there were some good parts to Skyfall. The whole film was generally epic, you could tell a large amount of money had gone into it and there were some nice explosions going on at some points. Some scenes were captivating and I actually stared at the screen for a while. The villain, I thought, was pretty darn good, probably one of the only redeeming qualities of Skyfall. He was smart, kind of scary and his reason for killing people was totally logical. The tragedy at the end gave me a little tinge of regret that I hadn’t watched the other Bond films and I actually connected with the characters on screen.

Although it was an “epic” film filled with lots of explosions and cool scenes, it failed to engage me and keep me interested. Many of the scenes were just too far fetched for me and although I didn’t really buy into the film whilst I was there, after review something is telling me in the back of my mind to watch more Bond films. I rate Skyfall a 5 out of 10 for it’s great villain and annoying British stereotypes.