Skyfall +Bond's name and continuity (God help us all)

[Bombadil]

Spoilers ahead,

I just finished listening to the Skyfall MSP and I wanted to expand on a few things and see what evferyone else thinks.

Heres my take.  Stephen said that he felt it was a deconstruction of a Bond movie.  I don’t know if I would go that far, but then I’m not learned on the technical side of movies so I may just lack the proper terminology.  I felt it was a ‘passing of the torch’ movie.  In general Bond movies have been spectacles, and getting more ridiculous as the years went on.  Now this didn’t happen in the books, from what I have read.  For example, in Diamonds are Forever the book, some bad guys try to steal some diamonds…so the can have lots of diamonds.  In the movie they make a death ray satellite with them and blow up some rockets.   There were some more down to earth ones like OHMSS but by the time we get to Brosnan he is drivfing across a glacier as another death satellite tracks him in a real-time remote control from a villain who cant sleep so uses a dream mask machine.  Casino Royal did a great job of cutting the fat on how crazy these films were getting to top one another.  New Bond, new style and best of all.  It worked.  QoS was alright but it proved the more ‘realistic’ Bond viable.  I take Skyfall as a sign that this new style of Bond movie is here to stay. This is the transitional movie that heralds in the new style of Bond. Ironicly 3 movies in, but I think they wanted to make sure that the style worked and people kept buying tickets.  With that I couldn’t be happier.

So deconstruction.  Passing of the torch.  Whatever you call it.  Awesome.  I knew minutes into the movie M was going to die.  When retirement talk plus a new guy above her named !!! ‘M’alloy !!!  Might as well had her cough up blood and hide it from her friends it was foreshadowed so hard.  Also I don’t know who caught it but Bond asks if Rosin was killed in the explosion, I could be wrong but I assume this was ‘R’ the boring replacement to the beloved ‘Q’.  Stephen covered in the podcast all the changes in gadget ideology and the car and whatnot.  Even the villain was holdover from a bygone era. 

There were complaints about the subway explosion.  Heres the thing.  This is also a holdover from the old style.  Here we have the villain, who is enacting a grandiose plan.  He’s timed the chase and the explosion in a spectacle event to get Bond.  Silva is an ‘old style’ Bond villain in his grand plots and devices and admits so himself in the dialogue about bygone eras, none of the rats alive and so on.  He lives on an Island fortress for crying out loud! Ultimately he is killed by the ‘old ways’ (not to be confused with my ‘old style Bond’) which is a knife to the back,  for all the grandeur of the old Bond villains its simple and practical and plain method that wins out. 


Now for some Bond continuity speculation.  There has been a theory for a while that ‘James Bond’ is a codename.  Its picked up by different people in different eras.  This makes a lot of sense when you think about it.  Bond name drops himself in every movie usually freely.  The other characters age and are replaced like M and Q retired on screen which was pretty emotional.  M and Q and everyone always refers to eachother in codenames as well.  Everyone around Bond has a life cycle except Bond who just starts over it seems.  If it were just a moniker that came with the 007 title this works out fine.  It works so well that I wish they would have run with it.  Casino Royal gave a almost literal reboot to the franchise except we still had M there, it all fits oh so pretty if this is a new agent who just got the Bond title and is out to make his way.  It just goes on from there with QoS.

Enter Skyfall.  When Silva is captured he tells M to say his name, when she starts he erupts, “MY REAL NAME’  At this point I was in nerd heaven.   This theory was going to be confirmed!  Silva got his name the same way the Bond title is passed!  But no later, Kincade calls him James Bond and the tombstones name his surname Bond.  Its telling that when Silva sees the tombstones he laughs a bit insanely because he realizes that Bond is a real name.  So that is a hard blow to the nice pretty code name continuity.  It is possible that Bond has seen Kincade or corresponded or told him of his name change.  Its also possible that Bonds name is coincidental, it is not confirmed that his first name was James.  This is of course me fighting against what was in the movie because I really want the Bond continuity title to exist.  Otherwise we just have hand waving “who cares it’s the same guy”/"Its just a movie"/"dont worry about it" continuity.  It should be noted too that Moneypenny would also be a codename winked to by “Eve *smile* Moneypenny”.

They got frustratingly close with Silva’s having an agent codename and doing a proper passing of the M guard instead of just a new M in the next movie.  Now it remains that James Bond is apparently in his 70-80s while the universe changes as a normal rate.  It could have been so pretty, and with the new style practical bent the films are going for, I fail to see why they didn’t go whole hog. 

[Gaumer]

Sorry. I haven't found James Bond relevant or remotely interesting in over a decade.

[Revenant Sorrow]

In the interest of True continuity and personal continuity. I was first introduced to James Bond as Peirce Brosnan. Until I found out that every actor was playing the same guy I had always assumed that James Bond was the name attached to who ever was in the 007 role. Now I realize this is not how the stories play out. I've never read the stories and there for those don't factor into my continuity.

To me each actor Plays a different James Bond rather than them all being the same Character in different stages of life. Watching the movies assuming that everything Sean Conery did had nothing to do with what Roger Moore does and so on. I've never felt there was anything missing. It also makes the transition from Bond to Bong easier because to me it's not the same character. It's a different person inhabiting the 007 persona in which they lose their name and personal history and become James Bond (Men in Black style).

I didn't read your post because I don't want to be spoiled but that's my take on the 007 universe.

[Gaumer]

I find it easier to watch them going from Bong to Bond

But a Bong after a Bond is usually a good thing too

[Alisha Mynx]

Sorry. I haven't found James Bond relevant or remotely interesting in over a decade.

I've personally looked at the Bond movies of the last couple of decades as something akin to sending a card to a family member you don't really know but you feel some weird family duty to do it because they were nice to you when you were a kid.  I still rather enjoy the classic stuff just because it is so weird and crazy, but the new stuff doesn't thrill me on even a cheesy level (although some of the Bond girls are quite nice to look at).

[Gaumer]

but the new stuff doesn't thrill me on even a cheesy level (although some of the Bond girls are quite nice to look at).

My point exactly: The whole series is stinky gouda. If its not a metal mouth giant or a hat tossing Asian, its a leap from a 200 foot high crane (for what reason, I'll never know. Was that terrorist not going to have to climb down the same damned crane??) or a correction of the tie after a jet-ski chase.

Now they want me to take it seriously when the trailer shows nothing has changed except the people working on the move now think the cheese is appropriate?

Its like Dick Tracey but we're supposed to take The Brow and Flattop seriously now.