Just a quick thought about the new James Bond movie, Skyfall…
In last week’s episode of the podcast, Benjie and I looked on the Daniel Craig movies in a different light from each other, not just which of the movies we favored over the other, but whether Craig’s films could be considered soft reboots or soft prequels. Either point is not a big deal, especially since we’re not nazis about “canon,” but I would take the view that either argument could be valid, though I still lean towards the idea of them being pseudo-prequels.
A prequel vs. reboot argument is detrimental to a film review, usually, so that’s why I’m saying this here, to not get in the way of us talking about Skyfall in the next episode of Time Travel Murder Mystery. Without going into any spoilers here whatsoever except that: I really think that with the ending of Skyfall, you could park it right before Dr. No and say that the film series starts right over and that the next Daniel Craig-starring installment could could go just about anywhere. There would be little inconsistencies, of course, but every Bond film has more than just a few little inconsistencies. That’s the price of escapist espionage fare.
And seemingly no one seemed to complain about the same thing being done in that terrible X-Men: First Class film. And I’m not looking to have a conversation on the timeline of these films because it’s not interesting beyond mere trivia.
Anyway. Beyond all that, Skyfall is an interesting entry into the series. Being a 50th anniversary film, it’s got a lot of subtle little nods to the rest of the series, acknowledging them and their value while still not quite committing to being a sequel or a prequel, and there’s even nice nods to the books as well. That’s all I’ll say for now, reserving any other comments for the next episode of the podcast. Plus, I think Benjie and I have an extra little surprise up our sleeves for this week…
