Skyfall

[spaceviking]

I really enjoyed the film. Though it seemed weird that they never really finished the quantum arc. Was Silva a part of quantum? It has been a while since I saw the film.

[JME2]

I really enjoyed the film. Though it seemed weird that they never really finished the quantum arc. Was Silva a part of quantum? It has been a while since I saw the film.

No, he wasn't.

I'm hoping Bond 24 will wrap it up.

[Sea Skimmer]

Craig signed on for two more Bond films, so they might stretch it out. Though being not a fan of either of the last two movies, it took multiple attempts to watch Quantum of Solace all the way through, I wouldn't mind if they just moved onto something else. The shadowy we are everywhere enemy might have been more appealing if they could even start to guard a parking garage in the middle of the desert. Still, its not like proper writing couldn't get the whole thing moving again, I just don't see the loss of they didn't go that way.

[Elfdart]

His role in No Country For Old Men was absurd and this one is exponentially worse.

I know this is off topic, but what was your problem with Bardem in No Country?

I hated the movie in general, for reasons I mentioned here:

The main villain is a joke. Mr. Kidd and Mister Wint from Diamonds Are Forever are more convincing as heavies, have less pretentious dialogue and are better acted. In fact, the same could be said for most Bond heavies, none of whom were awarded Snob Hit Oscars.

To be fair, I don't know how much of this is on the actor and how much is on the filmmakers, since I haven't seen this actor in other films. Maybe he's brilliant and I just happened to catch him in two shitty roles. I used to consider Laurence Olivier a ridiculous, overrated, overacting ham since I had mostly seen his later films, but my opinion changed somewhat when I saw Wuthering Heights from early in his career. So maybe there's some movie out there with Javier Bardem that might change my mind, but this performance/role in this movie? Bad... just bad.

[JLTucker]

He's better in the foreign stuff, Elfdart. Check out The Sea Inside.

[Ziggy Stardust]

He was more of a walking gimmick than what he was supposed to represent - a professional killer.

To be completely fair, Chigurh in the novel more or less IS a walking gimmick/metaphor. Not saying that makes it better (or worse), but merely that this is a faithful adaptation of the book as opposed to poor film-making/acting per se.

The pseudointellectual nonsense? The fact that the writers thought he was saying something profound? He was boring?

I don't agree with you that he was boring. Or that the "writers" thought he was saying something profound; the entire point of Chigurh's conversation with Llewelyn's wife before he kills her is supposed to be showing how vacuous his "philosophy" is. I don't think the point of the movie was to portray him as profound.

To be fair, I don't know how much of this is on the actor and how much is on the filmmakers, since I haven't seen this actor in other films. Maybe he's brilliant and I just happened to catch him in two shitty roles.

I'm not really trying to defend Bardem, in all honesty, I think he is a massively overrated actor. But I at least liked him in "No Country for Old Men;" but, also, having read the novel, my reactions to the movie are largely fed off of (and feeding into) my reactions to the book as opposed to being objectively about the film as a work in and of itself.

[JLTucker]

I don't agree with you that he was boring. Or that the "writers" thought he was saying something profound; the entire point of Chigurh's conversation with Llewelyn's wife before he kills her is supposed to be showing how vacuous his "philosophy" is. I don't think the point of the movie was to portray him as profound.

What about when he flipped the coin for the store clerk? I guess the excuse for such stupidity is that the movie is a huge exercise in nihilism.

[Ziggy Stardust]

What about when he flipped the coin for the store clerk? I guess the excuse for such stupidity is that the movie is a huge exercise in nihilism.

I'm a bit confused by what you mean. What about that scene do you object to? Why is it so stupid? It isn't trying to be profound, it is only there as an introduction to Chigurh as a character ("show not tell"), and the dialogue in the scene is extremely well written.

It is pretty clear that the scene is meant only to demonstrate how psychopathic/sociopathic Chigurh is, and I don't see how it does a bad job in doing so. He is clearly ready to kill a random stranger apropos of nothing, and that is pretty much the point of that scene. And it demonstrates what Chigurh's "philosophy" or whatever you want to call it is ... and the parallel dialogue in the scene with Llewelyn's wife at the end clearly rejects this logic. So ... basically I'm not really sure what your problem with the scene is.

I don't particularly want to get into an engaged argument about the movie, but it isn't meant to be an exercise in nihilism, though there are certainly themes relevant to nihilism in the movie. There are a lot of reasons why it shouldn't be viewed as an exercise in nihilism (and if you take into account the intentions of McCarthy, who wrote the novel, it is actually meant as a parable that rejects nihilism in the form of a Greek tragedy ... but obviously it is arguable whether or not the movie succeeds in conveying this perspective).

[FaxModem1]

Chigurh just comes off as a boring and lame version of Two-Face, whereas instead of DID and being pieces of a broken whole, he's a guy with a bad haircut and the writer clearly loves him, as he gets away with everything.

In Skyfall, he was this offensive stereotype of the Depraved Homosexual/Bisexual who just came out of nowhere and had no setup, so that when he appeared, it was supposed to feel like a dramatic reveal, and instead feels like the movie is just telling us to settle for this guy. He didn't feel like a good villain, just that MI6 was that incompetent against him. To where M's last words about finally doing something right come off as comedic because she is portrayed as someone who doesn't know what she's doing.

[Stark]

The parallels with Bond were probably supposed to be obvious to the viewer.