The pReview Re-viewing of..
Skyfall
CLICK THE TITLE TO VIEW THE TRAILER IN A SEPARATE WINDOW!
(it is highly recommended to view the trailer and THEN read)
(warning: Adele's doing the theme song.. So.. You know.. Get ready to cry a whole bunch, thinking about failed relationships.)
by Jeff Finck
written: 10/14/2012
Release Date: November 9, 2012
Near as I can tell about Skyfall, Mr. Bond Jamesbond is in for the fight of his life. It's going to be full of spying and shootouts and Sudoku puzzles and food fights and laser tag and hot chicks and Adele singing at us.. And then, when you think it can't get much more exciting.. He'll have to fight this guy:
The trailer for James Bond 23: Dr. No Presents: From Russia with a Goldfinger playing with a Thunderball because when You Only Live Twice On Her Majesty's Service, Diamonds Live and Let Die because the Man With the Golden Gun Loved the Spy who Moonraked Your Eyes Only for Octopussy who has a View to a Kill in the Living Daylights' License to carry a Killer Goldeneye but Tomorrow, Which Never Dies, the World is Not Enough to Die Another Day in the Casino Royale's Quantum of Solace under the Skyfall starts out with James being just a step behind some international plan to steal a list of every MI6 agent under cover in every criminal organization throughout the world. Being a step behind is pretty standard stuff for Bond, though, because now we get to spend the next two hours watching Daniel Craig fuck shit up like a human wrecking ball!
Tracking the list (very specifically) to the top of a speeding train, Bond resorts to suited fisticuffs to get it back! A fight that will, no doubt, result in some super excellent brawling, near death tunnel dodges, and James Bond tossing some ruffian right off the train and onto some waiting rocks-- And Naomie Harris just shot James Bond in the chest. What in all of the fuck?!
The next scene nearly confirms his death as M (Dame Judi Dench) is writing up his Mission Impossible Six obituary, wondering what she should say about him.. She lands on this, apparently:
But you'd think it would read more like this:
Commander James Bond
C.M.G., R.N.
O B I T U A R Y
He was a good man and a damn fine agent.
Holy fucking shit! We're fucked! James Bond is dead!
He was the best agent and now we're completely fucking fucked!
Then Ralph Fiennes shows up and berates M for losing the massive list of agents three months ago. In my opinion, waiting three months for reprimanding someone for that kind of transgression seems like waiting three hours to discipline your dog for pissing into your mouth.. You handle that shit right away. And I don't even know why he's yelling at her.. He should probably be looking for Julian Assange. Isn't he known for leaking stuff.. Like Wookies.. Or something.. ?
M quietly reflects on her failures when Bond magically appears back in her life after fucking about in Scorpion City.. A city so nice, they named it tw.. After a deadly arthropod! Scorpion City: The city of scorpions and drinking! Scorpion City: Where the citizens are there for two things.. Scorpions and drinking. And they're almost out of neither! Well, after winning at scorpions and drinking, Bond says, "Eff this noise." and heads back into the fray. Only to have Mr. Negativity, Ralph Fiennes (who is actually Mr. Mallory), continue bringing the whole mood down by second guessing Bond's skills. Though, to be fair, during target practice, Bond misses so hard that a building explodes and kills half a dozen people.
In the ashes of MI6, there must rise a phoenix! A new MI6! One of shared vision and an eye on the horizon.. Bond, M, Ralph Fiennes and some guy from Best Buy's Geek Squad will be that phoenix! Now, I don't mean that the new guy looks like an actual geek or hipster or anything.. But he definitely looks like he listens to the Black Keys and drives one of these bad boys:
He actually ends up being Q! Apparently, taking the comedic leap from Desmond Llewelyn to John Cleese was for a bygone Bond era. The newer, grittier Bond needs a younger, hipper Q, and so goes the task for part time hipster/full-time serial murderer, Ben Whishaw. Q, in true Q fashion, has a new toy for Bond.. It's a new take on an old classic: The Walther PPK! Fans of the video game Goldeneye may remember it as "that gun that you ditched every time you found a KF7 Soviet rifle." Or, from multiplayer: "That gun that no one used because we put it on all Rocket Launchers."
Bond then gets a lesson in fear after crossing the River Styx through a demon's mouth and has a lovely conversation with a lovely woman talking in a lovely accent about batshit crazy stuff. Enter: Javier Bardem. He plays Raoul Silva. Silva has Bond tied up in the Matrix before spouting off usual bad guy monologuish things about "Mommy" and hobby lobbies and the band Survivor.. Or something. It's during this exchange that we find out who James Bond actually is after he claims that his hobby is resurrection!
The action driven final act of the trailer is about as adrenaline fueled a ride as a trailer can give us: Bond running around shooting and punching evil in its dark, evil anus.. Vehicle chases that surely end in tiny bits of metal and testosterone littering whatever setting they take place in.. And, let's not forget sex with the Bond girls! The Bond girls, of course, giving it up to Bond because if they didn't, they'd just be called "girls."
Skyfall marks the 23rd time that Bond will have told us his name in his theatrical journey.. And running this journey is Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, and Jarhead). That will probably mean that Skyfall will have plenty of sarcastic drama, littered here and there with the main characters being bored for bouts of time, and it will have crippling metaphors for white suburbia. Probably. But Bond has come, in recent years, to never really be all action all the time, so stretches of drama shouldn’t be that out of place. It's about staying cool under pressure, uttering one liners, sleeping with beautiful women, the inner turmoil of a man coping with doing his job and living with those consequences.. And, in most cases, sleeping with beautiful women. I cannot wait to see this! Four years have passed since the last Bond flick and that's far too long, in my opinion. I also can't wait for what I expect to be the big series twist: We will finally know M's true identity. She is, in fact, actually Dame Judi Dench playing herself!