Actually, the more I think of it (I've seen it yesterday and haven't stopped thinking about it since), the more I guess this did to me what OHMSS must have done to the viewers back then: a very odd Bond experience, light-years away from what they knew or expected, yet in the end a true masterpiece.
OHMSS had some genuine Bond moments, and just because it had Bond showing some feelings doesn't make it a radically different experience. On the contrary, it is, to me at least, the perfect Bond movie (or one of the few).
On to my Skyfall review; or rather thoughts collected.
Just saw Skyfall. Ok, too lazy and tired (movie started at midnight) to write a full on review about it. Some thoughts though, that just came to me.
I'm not sure what this movie was about. I thought the plot for this film had more holes and was more unstable than a house of cards. First, we see Bond being shot twice, once hitting organs (as hinted at later), falling 500 meters to his demise, drowning on top of that. 10 minutes later, we see him banging a woman on some beach, conveniently focusing on the wound at his shoulder and forgetting the one that seems to have punctured his liver, and back in action. Gloss over much?
All of a sudden, the premise of Die Another Day, that Bond is captured because Colonel Moon's father can drive a cohort of trucks through a minefield even though it was established that this is only possible using hovercrafts, and Colonel Moon himself pulling himself out of a waterfall, walking back through the minefield, and collecting diamonds that were blown all over the place to pay for gene therapy that seems to make you a foot taller, suddenly sounds plausible.
Then the title sequence. IMO the worst of the Kleinmans. Looks so awfully much like CGI. I realise the previous ones had it too, but they still stayed with very basic shapes. But this one looks like from a Tim Burton animated film, complete with tombstones.
Then back to MI6.
First, we need to recover a list, then, we forget about that rather quickly, when we meet Silva after a scene of a Komodo dragon biting a fat Chinese guy in the leg and eating him - something that would have been one of the silliest Roger Moore moments. Silva, mostly unexplained, wants some mayhem with the list, but more importantly, wants M. He gets captured. Deliberately. Then he escapes, also planned (let's forget for a minute that his escape seems to rely on the assumption that MI6 would hire exactly the guy who invented Silva's choice software for encryption), and I ask myself why he wants to get captured in the first place; apparently, to see M. But since he seems to know out of nowhere where and when she will have a semi-public hearing (that coincidentally happens when he gets captured), why would he bother?
Then Bond grabs M, hops into the old Aston Martin that seems to be parked randomly in the city (is it Bond's? Is it an MI6 emergency car? M certainly doesn't seem to know about it). They drive all the way to Scotland (with all the strange things happening I gues we're lucky there isn't a scene of Bond and M stopping for coffee) and play some Bond Home Alone, with Albert Finney playing the role of old man Marley.
They fend off Danny DeVito, Bond blows up his home (something that could have improved Home Alone) and chases Silva, who for some unexplained reason not only wants to kill M, but also himself, and does not directly shoot Kincaid even though he killed an innocent girl for sports half an hour earlier.
Bond, after fighting a goon underwater and strangling this drowning man - no idea how you can strangle a man to death under water and why you would even try that - hits Silva with the dagger just as M is about to go to hell (I don't think anyone was surprised Bond would save in time) and not with a final payoff line - or a very lame one - and M is dying in his arms.
And he cries and kisses M on the forehead. Really.
No, really.
I mean, making Bond more emotional is one thing, turning him into a wimp another. This certainly isn't the man who threw Mathis' body into a garbage can. Which is amazing because it was just in the last movie.
At some point I was praying that Kincaid wouldn't lead M to Bond's room and show baby pictures or a photo of his parents dancing in falling leaves.
With the foot chase through the London Underground, Bond has finally turned into Bourne, only that Bourne did this stuff better.
It all goes very quickly at the end, and the movie not so much ends as it just stops. Awkward transition to the gunbarrel, also thanks to the music.
Ah, the music.
Simply put, I think this is the worst James Bond score of the past ... 25 years. Including License To Kill, which at least had some fun and cool action tracks.
The constant pounding of electronics and relentless chopping of strings goes way beyond the tolerance level. At some moments at the Skyfall lodge, I thought the music is bursting out into Zimmer's two note Batman theme any second.
There are some nice moments in the bike chase at the beginning, but from then on, it goes steadily downhill. And the spotting is all over the place, absolutely atrocious. When Bond goes out on deck to see Silva's island, and you hear Newman's blaring horns and the percussion ... I'm not exaggerating when I say that to me, this sounded embarassingly wrong in that scene.
Not to mention the omnipresent ethnic wailing, no matter if we are in Hong Kong, London or bloody Scotland.
I remember thinking during the pre-titles sequence "Good god, Newman, find a melody already!"
Funnily enough, in some moments, I thought of what Barry would have done for a certain scene, and played some Bond cues of his in my head.
For example the scene when Bond is following Patrice and sees him make the kill, I thought of how bad Newman's tension building is. I immediately thought about Gumbold's Safe Break and how something in the same vein would work perfectly with the scene. A score that sneaks into the film and doesn't annoy the hell out of you.
The following fist fight with the drums was like something straight out of The Matrix, only worse.
When people complain about David Arnold slipping into melodrama once in a while, I find Bond holding the dead M in his arms with something like "Mother" playing on top of it far worse. Would have been a good call not to use any music.
Ralph Fiennes as the new M is great, and Moneypenny being back as well. The new Q might work if he is given less screen time. I miss the days when Bond had a good pretitle sequence and then walked right into the office to learn his mission. Should be exactly that next time. That doesn't mean the movies can't be down to earth as they are now, and Bond sticking to Fleming's characterisation, but Bond being personally involved in everything is getting weary.
