In the first 10 minutes of Skyfall, James Bond is killed. Five minutes later he has risen from the dead and goes off on a big adventure like nothing ever happened. Occasionally he remembers to wince and rub his shoulder, or he stares at the scar from the bullet that “killed” him in the mirror. He encounters another famous actor, Javier Bardem, who says that he was the previous number one secret agent. They fight, Bond wins, and at the end of the movie he meets a new M and a new Miss Moneypenny, whose interactions always kicked off James Bond movies.
This is not what actually happens. What actually happens is that at the beginning of Skyfall James Bond dies. The rest of the movie is his time in hell, reviewing the events of his life (getting shot at, mostly), regressing to childhood, and meeting the ghosts of former James Bonds. It’s no accident that Javier Bardem looks like a decadent, dandified cross between Roger Moore and George Lazenby, and that he sports hair as artificial as Sean Connery’s toupee.
At the end of the movie, the faces of the actors have changed, but their names are the same. Bond ritualistically enters M’s office, flirts joylessly with Moneypenny, and gets his mission from M who asks if he’s ready for action. He’s trapped in an eternal loop, his only reward for successfully defending Britain is to be asked, again, to successfully defend Britain. There is no escape, no hope, no change, no exit.
“Ready for a mission, Bond?” M asks.
“It’s a pleasure,” Bond mumbles grimly, the light fading from his eyes. “It’s…a…pleasure…”
Then the screen goes black and it threatens, “James Bond will be back,” before reminding us that Bond has been trapped in this hell for 50 years. His fate is an eternity of conflict, duty, gunshots, and bullet wounds. A long line of dead girlfriends and endless betrayals. More than Superman, James Bond is now trapped in the Phantom Zone. What we’re watching is his zombie, going through familiar rituals, drawn to places and people he remembers from life, humping fresh meat, and no matter how many times he’s shot, he never dies.
Neat concept, though it sounds like you’d like Bond to die permanently. I’m not exactly sure that Bond wins against the villain, since the latter achieves his goal by the end. And the ritualistic ending of the film seems especially realistic because the past two Bond films did away with those traditions. Most of Bond’s life, especially during the Roger Moore years, seemed more like a silly romp than hell. It’s only recently that series has gone emo, with a heaviness that was absent the last time Bond actually displayed human feelings, in 1969′s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, still the best of the Bond films.
Agreed on HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. When I saw that as a kid my brain exploded and made my eyeballs fall out. Soooo heavy.
James Bond might even have been dead since the first movie? Can you imagine?
“I dated some girls, then they died, then I dated some more girls, they died, I killed a lot of people, I owned a car, then another car, then a submarine car, then I was Roger Moore for 15 years, then I was a bunch of people real fast, now I’m me and…oh god! Where am I? What is this place? Somebody help!”
All kidding aside, and also putting aside the Phantom Zone (which is really funny and true), this film actually managed to feel like a film all by itself. It was beautifully done. I know there was overkill in many ways (like the subway train, wtf!?), but the relationship between Bond and M was intriguing and for once he is shown to feel things beyond all the self-gratifying emotions he usually entertains in the films and which usually consume him. It’s now my one of my favorites, the other being the one mentioned in the two previous comments.
It’s worth noting, as well, that the Bond in the films is very different from the Bond in the books. I think in Skyfall, we get a side of the character that the films manage to never show. I like that Bond better, the human one, who wonders if he can do what he sets out to do and who speculates about whether what he’s doing is moral.