Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Skyfall or Skyfail?

Skyfall has set the record for highest opening for the Bond franchise. So, yeah, I'd call that a Skywin.


Kudos to the acting, story, and amusing gadgets; they all worked for this film.

A theme I kept noticing throughout the film was this notion of "new versus old". This is easily highlighted with Bond and Q's meeting, but I think we see it throughout. Fun exercises: If you haven't seen the film (or plan to see it again) take note of all the little "new vs old" observations. I thought it was there in the use of guns, cars, even staff.

A bigger observation was the story between the two best agents in the film. A friend pointed out the character differences between Bond and Silva.

Both served as secret agents, both highly skilled and very valuable. Both traded (betrayed) for a greater good. However, Bond's allegiance is tied to country whereas Silva's allegiance is tied to the job. When Silva was betrayed, he took it personal and did everything he could to extract revenge. When Bond was betrayed, he layed low for a bit and only resurfaced to redeem his country and employer, M.

And that's interesting to me. I read a (Christian) review that suggested M was mirroring a role of God and Bond the role of humanity. But in that instance when we see Bond "resurrect" himself maybe it's more like the rest of humanity is Silva. We do what we think is right, play by the rules, but at the end of the day all is vanity.

No comments:

Post a Comment