Movie Catchup

A bit of ret-conning, since I couldn't easily add stuff about Skyfall and The Hobbit into the Christmas posting...

I took my folks to see Skyfall a couple of weeks after our Wales jaunt, because I know they're both keen on Bond, generally, but they never seem to get to the cinema under their own steam. They probably know they can count on me to pick up most of the interesting movies on DVD, but I've only ever bought one Bond DVD and, for the life of me, I can't think why... Other than it being the one where Robert Carlisle is not the villain. I kept meaning to pick up the first couple of Daniel Craig movies, because they're such a different take on Bond, but never got round to it. And I'd have to say that, 50th Anniversary or not, Skyfall probably isn't going to buck the trend.

That's not to say it's a bad movie - not even that it's a bad Bond movie - just that, in its own way, it's just as remarkable and unremarkable as virtually every other Bond movie ever made.

The main thrust of the story is about the internal machinations of the British Secret Service, and the effects it all has on their operatives. I've been a fan of Judi Dench as M since her first appearance, opposite Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye, but in Skyfall she gets to be positively badass. The long-overdue reintroduction of Q, in the form of Ben Whishaw, was welcome... but a little obvious, even clichéd, given the shift in perception of geeks in recent years. The only particularly original introduction was Ralph Fiennes as Gareth Mallory, clearly after M's job from the get-go... and yet surprisingly badass himself, rather than the usual all-smarm-no-backbone pencilpushing kind of character that would normally show up in these circumstances.

In many ways, the film suffered from trying to pay thorough homage to fifty years of other Bond movies. The reboot, starring Daniel Craig and beginning with Casino Royale was billed as Bond without the gadgets, grounded in reality, and from the very beginning. He started out as a thug, without any of the finesse for which Bond has been known since Sean Connery first portrayed him.

I'd hoped that Quantum of Solace and the later films would show the gradual refinement of Britain's most famous fictional spy, but there seems to have been a huge leap forward in time between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall - Bond has gone from impulsive raw recruit to washed-up has-been, leading many to theorise that Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace were set before Dr. No, and the events of Skyfall follow on from the full chronological progression of all the other Bond movies up to the reboot. It's a compelling theory, and all the Easter eggs (such as Bond's tricked out Aston Martin, won in Casino Royale, but accessorised by Q for Thunderball) could easily be confirmation, as could the frequent reference to Bond's age and ability to do his job (Daniel Craig has admitted that he's beginning to think he's too old for the role!). It's not impossible, I suppose.

The title itself is quite cleverly integrated into the story, though it's another tick in the 'too much Bond backstory' column. When the word 'Skyfall' is first mentioned, it seems to possess some weight, some significance... some hidden or coded meaning, perhaps evidence that Bond is no longer to be trusted... and yet, when its meaning is revealed, it's something of a let-down.

After the film my father asked if I'd spotted a blooper. There were a few continuity glitches that I saw, but he'd picked up on something specific: an heirloom was described as a "hunting rifle" when it was introduced, but had miraculously become a shotgun when it was actually used. Mind you, that he actually picked up on something like that kinda proves that he enjoyed the film - had he not, he wouldn't have bothered mentioning it.

There's actually an interesting contrast between the latest Bond franchise entry and a recent 2-part BBC drama, Restless... Starring Hayley Atwell (who appeared in the recent Captain America movie) and Charlotte Rampling (who surely stopped aging at least 15 years ago), it tells of a young, naive Russian girl drawn into the spying life - working for the British in the Second World War - by a smooth operator played by Rufus Sewell, and the parallel story of the former agent in her later life, trying to explain her story to an incredulous daughter and solve the mystery that sent her on the run after the Second World War. It was a decent, if predictable drama, not helped by some terribly obvious casting choices... after all, when was the last time Rufus Sewell played a good guy? And then, to have the older version of his character played by Michael Gambon..? Still, it was fun... And the idea that a plan set in motion to keep the USA out of World War II is almost accidentally turned around by the good instincts of someone who was basically still relatively new to espionage, and who had been set up by the Russians to be killed, only for the whole plot to be rendered moot by Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbour made an interesting backstory... it's just a shame that most of the stuff going on with the daughter was a means of progressing the WWII narrative, rather than being much of a story in its own right.

The Hobbit, meanwhile, began just as slowly as The Lord of the Rings, sending me to sleep ever so briefly before Bilbo finally ventured out with Gandalf, Thorin and company. Weirdly, I kept trying to compare it to the old Melbourne House adventure game on the Spectrum (just for the record, Thorin doesn't keep sitting down and singing about gold, nor does he continually tell Bilbo to "Hurry up"). The narrative was quite viciously pared down for that, however, considering it can be completed in less than ten minutes (arguably true of any Spectrum game from that time), whereas Peter Jackson's epic takes about three hours to get maybe halfway through the story. Once the story proper started, it progressed almost relentlessly and, by the end of it, I almost wished they'd left a few bits out, just to make the movie less of a rollercoaster... The way the group kept getting split up, only to find each other later on, and Gandalf's frequent disappearing acts weren't that well handled (the latter, in particular, turned into a game of "now you see him, now you don't", and the way he always seemed to turn up in the nick of time felt staged, rather than fortunate).

Also, considering how many of the beasties in Lord of the Rings were actually actors wearing prosthetics, it was deeply disappointing to see that most of their counterparts in An Unexpected Journey were CGI.

On the upside, while I'm not a massive fan of Martin Freeman, it was good to see him become absorbed into the role, and actually become Bilbo Baggins, a character from a story, rather than just coming across as the same old Martin Freeman character in Middle Earth Cosplay.

The big question is that, since part one (probably better subtitled "Half an Unexpected Journey") ends before they've reached their mountain destination, does this mean that the second movie will end on a massive cliffhanger purely to justify the third movie, which will then follow the pattern estblished by Lord of the Rings and take at least an hour to get to the final end of the story? I've heard rumours that part 2 (subtitled "There, and Back Again") will be the end of the Tolkien adaptation, and the third film will bridge the gap between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. If that's the case, then Peter Jackson's hexology of films will be this generation's Star Wars... only better.

And here's hoping that Disney's Star Wars Episode VII has more of a story than George Lucas's Episodes I-III...