Face-Off: Skyfall vs. Casino Royale

Daniel Craig as James Bond
Judi Dench as M
Naomie Harris as Eve
Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva
Ralph Fiennes as Gareth Mallory
Berenice Marlohe as Severine
Ben Whishaw as Q

Sam Mendes had a mission to dig deep into the characters of this Bond world in hopes of mining some impactful, emotional moments, and that he succeeded is one of the movie’s greatest accomplishments. He utilized the talented band of actors at his disposal to get out rich character dynamics and terrific performances, especially from Dench and Bardem. On top of that, he delivered impeccable action sequences and worked with DP Roger Deakins to establish a visual palate that is completely jaw-dropping.

A mission in Madagascar goes terribly wrong when Bond is accidentally shot on the orders of MI6 head M, sending him tumbling down and presumed dead. After MI6 is attacked by a rogue former agent, Bond suits back up for duty. But what role does Bond have to play in a world where classic espionage no longer has a place among the tech? As well, the new foe represents a mirror image of Bond, one who felt betrayed by M and used the anger to fuel his revenge. Can Bond confront his past and find his place in this world? Stay tuned to find out!

Bond vets Neal Purvis and Robert Wade teamed with John Logan (THE AVIATOR, HUGO) to write the script, and it’s one that really cuts to the core of Bond in an emotional, gripping way. More characters are at play in more engaging ways, and it was a bold move depicting Bond as a somewhat broken man, removed his confident poise. And, even after all these years and so many villains, they managed to craft the series’ most complex and dangerously unhinged one yet.

Craig’s turn as Bond in SKYFALL is a much more humanizing portrayal than in past Bond movies. He’s still devilishly charming as all hell, but he’s defeated and conflicted. His drinking and danger-seeking are not just the thrilling acts of a gentleman spy, but the indulgences of a man who is still trying to figure out what he’s fighting for and fighting his own inner battles. What is his place in all this espionage business? Is he simply cattle for M as she tries to achieve a higher goal, or is he more? Craig does a terrific job here as this more vulnerable Bond and proof he was the right choice for the job all those years ago.

Bond in the Shadows

Chase Through the Market

Motorcycles Across the Rooftops

Crane Skills

Train Fight!

Bond Down

Opening Credits

M and Mallory

MI6 Goes Boom

Bond in Paradise

Bond and the Scorpion

M: “Where the hell have you been?”

Bond: “Enjoying death. 007 reporting for duty.”

New Digs

Broken Bond

Word Association

Meet Q

Q: “Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that anymore.”

Tracking the Target in Shanghai

Sillouette Throwdown

A Sexy Shave

Casino Night Entrance

Severine: “How much do you know about fear?”

Bond: “All there is.”

Severine: “Not like this.”

Fight Among the Dragons

Sneaking into the Shower

Mallory: “For Christ’s sake, listen to yourself! We’re a democracy, and we’re responsible to the people we’re supposed to defend! We can’t keep fighting in the shadows, there are no more shadows!”

Abandoned City on the Island

Meet Silva

Silva: “Hello, James. Welcome. Do you like the island? My grandmother had an island. Nothing to boast of. You could walk around it in an hour, but still it was, it was a paradise for us. One summer, we went for a visit and discovered the place had been infested with rats. They’d come on a fishing boat and gorged themselves on coconut. So how do you get rats off an island? Hmm? My grandmother showed me. We buried an oil drum and hinged the lid. Then we wired coconut to the lid as bait and the rats would come for the coconut and… they would fall into the drum. And after a month, you have trapped all the rats, but what do you do then? Throw the drum into the ocean? Burn it? No. You just leave it and they begin to get hungry. And one by one…[makes rat noise] they start eating each other until there are only two left. The two survivors. And then what? Do you kill them? No. You take them and release them into the trees, but now they don’t eat coconut anymore. Now, they only eat rat. You have changed their nature. The two survivors. This is what she made us.”

Gun Game

Bond: “Latest thing from Q Branch! It’s called a radio!”

Silva’s Story

Hacked

Silva’s Escape

The Pursuit

Bond: “It won’t open.”

Q: “Of course it will, put your back into it.”

Train Crash

M: “Chairman, Ministers, today I’ve repeatedly heard how irrelevant my department has become. “Why do we need agents, the 00 section? Isn’t it all rather quaint?” Well, I suppose I see a different world than you do and the truth is that what I see frightens me. I’m frightened because our enemies are no longer known to us. They do not exist on a map. They’re not nations, they’re individuals. And look around you. Who do you fear? Can you see a face, a uniform, a flag? No! Our world is not more transparent now, it’s more opaque! It’s in the shadows. That’s where we must do battle…

Shootout at the Hearing

Return of the Astin Martin

Bond and M

M: “How old were you when they died?”

Bond: “You know the answer to that. You know the whole story.”

M: “Orphans always make the best recruits.”

Skyfall

Prepping for Battle

Battle of Skyfall

F**ked with the Wrong Car

Bond: “I always hated this place.”

Blowing up the House

Escaping the Frozen Lake

Silva: “Do you see what comes of all this running around, Mr. Bond? All this jumping and fighting, it’s exhausting! Relax. You need to relax… Ah well, mother’s calling. I will give her a good-bye kiss for you.”

The Church

Silva: “You’re hurt. You’re hurt! What have they done to you? What have they done to you?”

Stabbed in the Back

Goodbye, M

M’s Gift

The New Crew/p>

Mallory: “So, 007… Lots to be done. Are you ready to get back to work?”

Bond: “With pleasure, M. With pleasure.”

The Bond movies have always had quick-paced scores to highlight the action, and with SKYFALL Thomas Newman does this while also giving Bond a bold, new sound. There’s a ton of different sounds here, including heart-thumping, powerful pieces (“Silhouette”), ominous compositions (“Skyfall”), and good old-fashioned, romantic scores (“Severine”). Newman certainly earned his Oscar nomination here, delivering a score as complex as the movie itself. As for the Bond song, Adele crushed it with the title track, and much like Newman, earned her Oscar attention.

The big action sequence that starts off the movie is indeed an absurdly entertaining piece of action filmmaking, one that utilizes a tremendous level of scope and setting. After that, the scenes are more intimate, and though not as purely entertaining as the opening number, have much more weight behind them. A very, very, very, very large kudos for this goes to cinematographer Roger Deakins, who brings his legendary use of light and color to Bond and shoots some of the most impressive scenes on his career. The scenes with Bond fighting a thug in a Chinese skyscraper or when Silva is shooting up Bond’s childhood home are elevated to high art thanks to Deakins. High art may not give you the edge of your seat thrills some of the stuff in CASINO does, but it’s a tremendous watch nonetheless.

Holy shit, Javier Bardem! The moment his blonde-haired, eccentrically-dressed villain comes walking from the other side of that room, expertly delivering that insane but prophetic monologue there was no way he wasn’t walking away from this as anything less than the star of the show. With Raoul Silva, Bardem gave us what may perhaps be the greatest Bond villain, and certainly the most complicated and endlessly fascinating. Here is where the bar rests for the future Bond villains, and one even the great Christoph Waltz had trouble topping in SPECTRE.

Oscars:

Won:

Best Original Song

Best Sound Editing

Nominated:

Best Cinematography

Best Original Score

Best Sound Mixing

Golden Schmoes:

Nominated:

Favorite Movie of the Year

Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem

Best Supporting Actress: Judi Dench

Best Action Scene: “Entire Opening Sequence”

Best Trailer of the Year

Best T&A of the Year: Bérénice Marlohe

Best Music

Most Memorable Scene: “Silva’s Intro”

**67 Wins & 119 Nominations (per IMDB)**

Praise

Rotten Tomatoes: 92% (Audience Score: 86%)
IMDB: 7.8
Metacritic: 81 (User Score: 7.7)

Money:

$304 million domestic ($1.1 billion global)