(no subject)
Just a(nother) thought on M’s role in Skyfall..
She sort of got the storyline almost always assigned to a male character, didn’t she? The return of the abandoned son, the tension with the favoured son, the stoic death in battle, the token from beyond the grave…
Bloody hell, Skyfall was almost (almost!) a mother-son story. Which is rare to say the least. Silva even calls her ‘mother’. And when we see Bond’s parent’s graves, his mother was Monique, another M…I sort of thought that the final ‘battle’ of the film was basically Bond protecting his surrogate parents, making up for not being able (whatever the story is there) to save his real parents. Kincade as a surrogate father -the man who taught him to shoot- and M as a surrogate mother -the woman who basically made him what he is.
I have no knowledge of the Bond franchise whatsoever, so all that could be wrong for all I know. But damn, I can see why people keep comparing it to Batman…
November 16, 2012 @ 1:12 am
i’ve always heard the comparisons but they never seemed quite so obvious until this one especially with the blowing up of the childhood home he never liked and the frozen water and I believe James said “storm is coming” which I was like…isn’t that Selina’s line? Plus, the way M said “Orphans make the best agents”…Silva was an orphan, too.
November 16, 2012 @ 8:20 pm
I think it’s now a requirement that blockbuster films include the line “A Storm Is Coming” – Sherlock Holmes did it too! M is a fascinating character, I would LOVE to see a prequel about the story with her and Silva….
November 16, 2012 @ 5:05 am
Within the Craig!Bond continuity it makes sense. M in the older Bonds is really just Bond’s boss (and is also a man). Judi Dench’s M and Pierce Brosnan’s Bond is a lot more hostile and their first meeting in Goldfinger is actually hilarious (Dench refers to him as a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” and pretty much hates him but puts up with him because he is James Bond). The Craig/Dench thing is a lot more mother-son and I think that’s on purpose.
November 16, 2012 @ 8:23 pm
Ah yes, I’ve heard of that scene! (And I suppose she wasn’t entirely far off the mark? Some people seem to like Bond because he’s a throwback to the time when Men Were Men…) Him closing her eyes and crying (was he crying? Can’t remember) over her dead body was geniunely sad, I don’t think he’s ever really cried over a woman, has he? (I saw Casino Royale, but I don’t remember him actually crying over Vesper…)
November 16, 2012 @ 11:16 pm
and by goldfinger I mean goldeneye. Stupid late night typing. Oh he was definitely tearing up with M and if he cried over Vesper we didn’t see it. I remember him doing (awful!) CPR and then it panning out. Then he just kinda fell on top of her and that was it. Nothing springs to mind with him crying over any other woman either.
November 19, 2012 @ 6:13 pm
I always get those two titles confused too! The main thing I remember about Vesper’s death is what he said afterwards- “the bitch is dead”. To another woman! Really brought home the kind of person Bond is, I guess.