skyfall

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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…

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I saw Skyfall today!

Loved it. It was very ‘James Bond via The Dark Knight. And HOT DAMN THE CINEMATOGRAPHY. It was SO PRETTY. Ahem.

I’m really glad no-one spoiled it for me, because I didn’t know M was going to die and that came as an actual surprise. Also, how good was Judi Dench? Very good. I’m sad she’s not going to be in it anymore.

Did the old guy at the end call her ‘Emma’? Is that her real name?

Note on the ‘waste of good scotch’ line that caused controversy: that part of the film was EXTREMELY problematic and I don’t like it. And in order for me to feel remotely sympathetic towards Bond for the rest of the film, I had to write that line off as “that’s just the way he deals with violent death”. But what I hated more was that we the audience don’t get to react to Severine’s death- she’s shot so quickly you barely see it, Bond delivers his line and starts beating people up and…that’s it. She’s just written off, not even mentioned again, and I didn’t like that at all.

Anyway-

This film passed the Bechdel test I think! Helen McCrory’s character and M. Okay, they were kinda making statements to the whole room when they were talking, but they seemed to be pretty much sniping at each other too.

I know almost nothing about James Bond’s cast of supporting characters so I had no idea that Naomi Harris was playing Miss Moneypenny, but I liked her a lot. She had that whole “not putting up with any of this bullshit” thing going on.

(I am pretty distressed to see people at the above link furious that she ended up as ‘just a secretary’ – I haven’t got any job, let alone being a secretary, how insulting must I be to women?

Sorry. Got turned down for another one just before writing this.)

There’s probably a lot more to be said about this film- like how much it promoted a sense of British patriotism and stoicism and the symbolism of the bulldog, but that should probably be left up to people who actually know the Bond franchise. One last thing, though-

-the bits involving the Tube really reminded me of 7/7? I think that’s maybe what they were going for? Otherwise, why even use the Tube…

I don’t know. But if anyone’s ever up for writing fanfic for this film, I’d love to read something about what the average Londoner made of that day. Transport ground to a halt, shootings in government buildings, terrorists apparently everywhere- it must have been horrible. Wonder how many civilians actually died, both in London and all the other places Bond went? I’d love to see a film dealing with that, but it will probably never be…