Sam Mendes
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Connections, in both directions
A certain pretentiousness accompanies this transformation; it's possible there never again will be a James Bond movie with the snap of "Goldfinger" or the silliness of "The Spy Who Loved Me." ("Skyfall," however, does include a nice brief homage to Roger Moore's escape from the alligators in "Live and Let Die.")
That recalls the silliness of the earlier Roger Moore Bonds and the time that he jumped along the backs of alligators in "Live and Let Die."
These include a scene reminiscent of “Live and Let Die,” a joke involving a gearstick, and the film’s sole clunky CG shot involving a disfigurement (a great idea ruined by bad graphics).
The spectacular one-shot opening sequence during Mexico City's Day of the Dead celebrations recalls the voodoo of Live and Let Die while you could spend a lot of time googling things such as "fight on a train" and "1948 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith" to remind where you might have seen those things before.
With 007 (Daniel Craig) down Mexico way on the Day of the Dead, we get a brilliant tracking shot, a nod to Live and Let Die (there are plenty more classy tributes to other favourites to come), a hat on a bed, and a stunt to get even the sternest of set-piece scholars salivating.
Live and Let Die seems to be an inspiration for several winks – Bond’s carnival mask in the beginning is basically a riff on bond villain Baron Samedi and there’s a fight on the train taken straight from that movie as well.
It's the driest World War I movie since Gallipoli, the famous muck and rain and fog of the trenches replaced by a spring of wildflowers and chalk soil.
Construida sobre una premisa muy simple (que algo le debe a Gallipoli, 1981, de Peter Weir) –dos soldados ingleses son encomendados con la misión de alertar a un distante regimiento sobre un inminente ataque sorpresa de los alemanes–, la película es una aventura bélica que en mucho se parece a un videojuego, porque está filmada en lo que aparenta ser una sola toma continua.
While there are stylistic parallels to Christopher Nolan’s 2017 WWII drama, “Dunkirk,” there may be more similarities to director Peter Weir’s stirring 1981 Australian WWI film “Gallipoli,” starring Mel Gibson, which also hinged on the plot device of delivering a message to prevent a massacre of Allied troops.
(It would spoil the film to describe scenes that stretch time, but viewers may flash on the superior antiwar film, “Gallipoli,” in one instance).
Clearly much of 1917 is fictional, and the fact that one of the messengers has a brother in the first wave of the doomed attack is one of the notes that rings unnecessary and untrue here — it’s a bit like Gallipoli meets Saving Private Ryan, which detracts from the realism that is the film’s greatest strength.
There's an obvious parallel to 1917, and that's Gallipoli, Peter Weir's heartbreaking story of the doomed ANZAC campaign.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
influenced Spectre (2015), Skyfall (2012)
Characters
Skyfall is also the third film in the series starring Daniel Craig as Her Majesty’s favorite secret agent, a tricky position given that third films are often turning points in this franchise: While both Sean Connery and Roger Moore cemented their respective status as 007 with their third films, Goldfinger (1964) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), which were also the best films of their tenure, Timothy Dalton never made it to a third film after The Living Daylights (1987) and Licensed to Kill (1989) and Pierce Brosnan’s third outing as 007 in The World Is Not Enough (1999) suggested that the wheels were starting to come off the franchise (Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones—need I say more?).
A certain pretentiousness accompanies this transformation; it's possible there never again will be a James Bond movie with the snap of "Goldfinger" or the silliness of "The Spy Who Loved Me." ("Skyfall," however, does include a nice brief homage to Roger Moore's escape from the alligators in "Live and Let Die.")
The train fight recalls Sean Connery's similar fight in From Russia with Love (1963), and the relentless, seemingly unstoppable henchman (Dave Bautista) that trails after Bond reminded me of Richard Kiel's "Jaws" character in both The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).
Elsewhere, a drifty night-time car chase through the streets of Rome evokes memories of a much-loved child’s toy equipped with springy surprises and clip-on flames, while Dave Bautista’s Mr Hinx is essentially a latterday Jaws who gets to batter Bond on a train in a sequence that nods not only to The Spy Who Loved Me but also From Russia With Love .
Fans will feel a giddy rush seeing a villain's lair in a hollowed-out crater, a silent henchman with a brutal signature kill (Dave Bautista's Mr Hinx) and nods to everything from Goldfinger to The Spy Who Loved Me , but they paper over the cracks of a script that's big on plot - 148 minutes of it - and thrifty when it comes to character development.
Along the way they are both pursued by Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista), a burly Spectre operative in the mold of Richard Kiel’s Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)—only one of numerous allusions to the classic Bond canon.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced 1917 (2019), Road to Perdition (2002), Jarhead (2005)
Themes Visuals Plot
The greatest war films are those which capture the terrifying physical and psychological ordeal that soldiers face, along with the sheer folly and waste of it all – Paths of Glory, Come and See, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, most recently Dunkirk.
Director Sam Mendes, telling a tale based on stories that he heard in his youth from his grandfather (who at age 19 had been a messenger for the British Army during WWI) has here combined elements of “Dunkirk” and “Saving Private Ryan,” among others, and used Alejandro González Iñárritu’s single-shot storytelling method (used for “Birdman” and “The Revenant”) to create some impressive, innovative world-building.
This is Mendes’ Saving Private Ryan , albeit with a different war.
The latest from director Sam Mendes (Skyfall, American Beauty), 1917 ranks second only to Marriage Story as the best picture of 2019 and second only to Saving Private Ryan as the best war movie of the past quarter-century.
All war films, even before Saving Private Ryan's pants-shittingly intense opening sequence, have tried to put the audience in the trenches with the troops, often through bombastic sound design and onscreen chaos.
Mendes’ film cannot help but evoke a WWI version of Saving Private Ryan (predictably, that film’s director, Steven Spielberg, has heartily endorsed this film): an attempted mash-up of visceral war action to a mission with an emotional “this time, it’s personal” hook.
Goldfinger (1964)
Directed by Guy Hamilton
influenced Spectre (2015), Skyfall (2012)
Music Plot Visuals
Before we meet Bardem, in yet another bad coif — this one blond — there's an eye-popping opening credit sequence with a title song by Adele that recalls Shirley Bassey's signature Goldfinger theme.
Skyfall is also the third film in the series starring Daniel Craig as Her Majesty’s favorite secret agent, a tricky position given that third films are often turning points in this franchise: While both Sean Connery and Roger Moore cemented their respective status as 007 with their third films, Goldfinger (1964) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), which were also the best films of their tenure, Timothy Dalton never made it to a third film after The Living Daylights (1987) and Licensed to Kill (1989) and Pierce Brosnan’s third outing as 007 in The World Is Not Enough (1999) suggested that the wheels were starting to come off the franchise (Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones—need I say more?).
(Indeed, if one of the comments made about “Goldfinger” is “so ’60s!” and “Goldeneye” is “so ’90s!” the look and feel of “Skyfall” will one day read “so 2012!”) There’s a fight in a Shanghai skyscraper that is brilliantly rendered, as well as an assassination-in-disguise attempt that is like “Day of the Jackal” on speed.
Skyfall can take its place alongside From Russia with Love , Goldfinger , and On Her Majesty's Secret Service as the best Bond can offer.
If we could magically delete "Quantum" from the Bond repertoire, 2006's "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall" would be the greatest 007 one-two punch since "Goldfinger" followed "From Russia With Love" back in the 1960s.
In a post- Austin Powers world, where either homage or parody can sprout in the same fertile soil, how do you make a James Bond film that plays it as straight as the line of flesh left unpainted for safety’s sake on the actress gilded in Goldfinger ?
Even films that are more openly skeptical about the value of war for war’s sake, like Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now , show soldiers broken by fighting as callous dropouts or delusional murderers, not as complex men who suffer complex effects from fighting.
From time to time, memories surface of other films that involve life in the trenches or long journeys through perilous, death-strewn landscapes — Paths of Glory , most of all, but also Saving Private Ryan , Full Metal Jacket , A Very Long Engagement , Come and See — even if aesthetically it bears the most resemblance to the simulated continuous take style of Birdman .
The consensus great war movies and TV shows of the modern era come from wars we could see back home like World War II (“Saving Private Ryan,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “The Thin Red Line”), Korea (“M*A*S*H*”) and Vietnam (“Apocalypse Now,” “Full Metal Jacket”).
Part Full Metal Jacket , part Platoon , part Three Kings , Jarhead -- based on the memoirs of Gulf War veteran Anthony Swofford--examines what happens when men, primed for war, are thwarted from ever seeing any action.
It’s pointless to compare "Jarhead" with the host of late 20th century war genre classics that include "Apocalypse Now," "The Deer Hunter," "Platoon" and the end-all-be-all of Stanley Kubrick’s "Full Metal Jacket."
In that regard, Jarheads structure is quite similar to Kubricks approach in the more gratuitous war film Full Metal Jacket.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Directed by Peter R. Hunt
influenced Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015)
Characters Plot
No , Skyfall turns up the volume of those undertones, making Bond’s tortured history a major theme, finding a fragile humanity beneath the character’s usually unshakable exterior of the sort not seen since George Lazenby broke down in tears at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service .
Helmed by American Beauty and Revolutionary Road director Sam Mendes —an unusual but effective choice—and arriving 50 years after Dr. No, Skyfall turns up the volume of those undertones, making Bond’s tortured history a major theme, finding a fragile humanity beneath the character’s usually unshakable exterior of the sort not seen since George Lazenby broke down in tears at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Reactions are going to be mixed, I suspect, but one thing is certain: in attempting to pilot the franchise backward and forward simultaneously, the filmmakers have delivered the most unusual Bond film since the truly great (and truly bonkers) On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969.
Skyfall isn't strictly a "Bond formula" movie, there are no hollowed-out volcanoes, killer satellites or plans for world domination, instead it's more in the vein of the personal, character-driven outings like On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Casino Royale .
Skyfall , the 23rd official Bond film, is right up there with the very best in the series, on a par with Goldfinger , On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Casino Royale.
(I counted nods to Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and there are surely others).
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Directed by Jay Roach
influenced Spectre (2015), Skyfall (2012)
Visuals Characters
The key moments are romanticized to the point of stiffness calling attention to the formulaic nature of the series and skewing frighteningly close to "Austin Powers" territory.
After Mike Myers strip-mined the Bond franchise for his Austin Powers parodies, the Bond writers take a cue from The Spy Who Shagged Me and explore the idea: what would happen if James Bond lost his mojo?
For one, a shadowy company meeting of SPECTRE agents seated at a long wooden table is more reminiscent of a parallel scene in Austin Powers than the original it parodied from 1965’s Thunderball.
Utterly devoid of surprise If you’re hunting for spoilers, I’m going to make it real easy for you: this review isn’t going to discuss Ernst Stavro Blofeld (the character that’s historically served as head of Spectre — and inspired Austin Powers’ Dr. Evil), nor will it address whether anybody in the film ends up being Blofeld or not.
Such blasts from the past risk comparisons to a cat-stroking Austin Powers parody.
There were actual thinkpieces 10 years back about whether James Bond could exist in a post-Austin Powers world.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced Jarhead (2005), 1917 (2019)
Themes Visuals Music
The greatest war films are those which capture the terrifying physical and psychological ordeal that soldiers face, along with the sheer folly and waste of it all – Paths of Glory , Come and See , Apocalypse Now , Saving Private Ryan , most recently Dunkirk .
“1917” occupies a kind of unusual no-man’s land, somewhere between Kirk Douglas’ “Paths of Glory” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”
I make exceptions, however, for films which bring something unusual to the table: the horrific surrealism of Apocalypse Now, the wry revisionism of Inglourious Basterds, the utterly indescribable insanity of Fantasy Mission Force.
Even films that are more openly skeptical about the value of war for war’s sake, like Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now , show soldiers broken by fighting as callous dropouts or delusional murderers, not as complex men who suffer complex effects from fighting.
The result is a picture that blends the surreal nightmarescape of Apocalypse Now with the journey-quest of Saving Private Ryan , torqued up by a race against time—and, of course, by the rush of watching the filmmakers pull this off on a sheer technical level.
Apocalypse Now pioneered stereo sound that surrounded the audience in the chaos of airfare attacks.
Like Birdman and Rope before it, the “cheat” cuts in 1917 are easy to spot, but the act of looking for them amidst the soldiers’ trek across torched farmland and sniper-filled, bombed-out towns, and simultaneously taking in the endeavor’s overall technical marvel yields a sense of awe rarely achieved in film.
It’s a trick deployed before, by Alfred Hitchcock in the stage-born 1948 thriller “Rope” and Alejandro González Iñárritu in his 2014 Best Picture Oscar winner “Birdman.”
Essentially filmed in one long, two-hour shot, the film—which features the masterful cinematography of living legend Roger Deakins—is a cinematic feat rarely attempted, though not without precedent (Birdman, Rope, and Russian Ark are other examples of one-shot films).
These titles include Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, the Best Picture Oscar winner Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), and Russian Ark, the latter actually filmed in one single take rather than just being crafted to appear that way.
Add a self-styled auteur’s flourish—in this case, the cinematic-stunt illusion of the film’s two hours being shot in what appears to be two unbroken “takes,” or camera shots (achieved in large part by the brand of editing trickery seen in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Best Picture”-winning Birdman and as far back as Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope), and you have a recipe for Hollywood hype.
1917 evokes the relentless movement of Stanley Kubrick’s WWI drama Paths of Glory but commits to a video game’s ever-shifting environments.
His character is the closest the movie comes to suggesting the absurdity of war itself; you have to go back to a different era (Stanley Kubrick’s unforgettable WWI film “Paths of Glory,” for instance) for that.
The greatest war films are those which capture the terrifying physical and psychological ordeal that soldiers face, along with the sheer folly and waste of it all – Paths of Glory, Come and See, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, most recently Dunkirk.
“1917” occupies a kind of unusual no-man’s land, somewhere between Kirk Douglas’ “Paths of Glory” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”
Even films that are unambiguously anti-war – such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Paths of Glory (1957), and The Thin Red Line (1998) – include scenes where the drama of battlefield peril is designed to elicit excitement in the audience.
Certain scenes, though lovely in passing or elaborately ghastly, seem to place themselves in competition with Dunkirk or Paths of Glory or Alejandro González Iñárritu’s last two movies.
The list is exemplary: Apocalypse Now, A Bridge Too Far, The Thin Red Line, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Fury, Dunkirk.
The greatest war films are those which capture the terrifying physical and psychological ordeal that soldiers face, along with the sheer folly and waste of it all – Paths of Glory, Come and See, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, most recently Dunkirk.
Not since Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk has time itself been so foregrounded as a war film’s scariest foe.
Director Sam Mendes, telling a tale based on stories that he heard in his youth from his grandfather (who at age 19 had been a messenger for the British Army during WWI) has here combined elements of “Dunkirk” and “Saving Private Ryan,” among others, and used Alejandro González Iñárritu’s single-shot storytelling method (used for “Birdman” and “The Revenant”) to create some impressive, innovative world-building.
Mendes works closely with the legendary Roger Deakins, and wisely borrows Dunkirk editor Lee Smith, to build and keep a perspective that moves with his heroes throughout the movie.
But I can’t say how long it will stick in your mind compared to any of the idiosyncratic war films listed above– or Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s structurally adventurous World War II film with which 1917 shares a significant amount of DNA.
From Russia with Love (1963)
Directed by Terence Young
influenced Spectre (2015), Skyfall (2012)
Plot Visuals
The story trots from Turkey to London to Shanghai to Macao to Scotland, starting with a conscious throwback (the train sequence) to "From Russia With Love"-era Bond, moving on to grim acts of 21st century-brand urban terrorism (London under attack from Bardem's master sniveler) and culminating in a scene taking Bond and M to the wilds of Scotland.
But the stripped-down, slightly grittier feel of the movie carries us along - and, perhaps, even announces a direction for the series that's both new to young fans and as old as "From Russia With Love."
"Skyfall" easily moves into the top 5 of Bond movies ever, maybe even the top 3 with "From Russia With Love" and "Casino Royale."
Skyfall can take its place alongside From Russia with Love , Goldfinger , and On Her Majesty's Secret Service as the best Bond can offer.
If we could magically delete "Quantum" from the Bond repertoire, 2006's "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall" would be the greatest 007 one-two punch since "Goldfinger" followed "From Russia With Love" back in the 1960s.
Turkey plays a major role in the second, often most critically celebrated Bond film, “From Russia With Love,” which, like this one, includes a lethal fight on a train, a formidable blond male adversary and an island headquarters.
Little Children (2006)
Directed by Todd Field
influenced by American Beauty (1999), Revolutionary Road (2008)
Themes Characters
Suburbia is hell, and serious Hollywood movies from The Graduate to American Beauty have been there to point fingers on the lawns of the damned.
That overrated Oscar winner "American Beauty" set the template for funny-sad movies about angst-ridden denizens of the 'burbs, and now "Little Children" carries it forward.
Clucking hausfraus, midnight football matches and assorted American Beauty residue abounds: the mandatory scream falls to Haley, who is bound to get critical kudos just for the "daring" conception of his character, like Dylan Baker's grim-faced pederast in Happiness.
There are echoes of Magnolia in its winding through a community and American Beauty in addressing suburban angst, but it is more accurate in its subdued characterisations than either.
Its faithfulness to the book was ensured by Perrotta's collaboration on the screenplay and the result, for me, is closer to "American Beauty"'s warped depiction of family than his own "In the Bedroom" of 2001.
What then ensues is a tale of suburban ennui and domestic dissatisfaction that isn't exactly new ground for either Mr. (after his American Beauty ) or Mrs. (after her Little Children) Mendes, save for the 1950s setting.
I have no idea why the filmmakers decided to telegraph their ending this way,* other than the obvious reference to Sunset Boulevard, which was also narrated by a dead man.
In a nod to Sunset Boulevard, Kevin Spacey narrates from the hereafter, describing in hilarious deadpan the dreary suburban rituals that serve as a "commercial for how normal we are."
As the movie’s narrator, he tells the audience right away he is a dead man describing events leading up to his demise --- a cheap dramatic trick borrowed from Sunset Boulevard.
Like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, narrator Spacey informs us in the opening moments that he's dead, so the suspense emanates from seeing which contender will do him in.
In American Beauty, of course, Lester really is a corpse; as with Sunset Boulevard, the last weeks of a doomed protagonist’s life are narrated from the perspective of the dead man.
Most of those reactions center on Lester Burnham (Spacey), whom we meet in a "Sunset Boulevard"-like introduction in which he announces he's 42, lives on an attractive street in a good neighborhood, has a beautiful wife and daughter, and within a year he'll be dead.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
influenced 1917 (2019)
Visuals
Maybe because it sounds near-impossible to streamline the unpredictability of a live battlefield as opposed to, say, the urban Broadway-ness of Birdman or the Berlin nightlife of Victoria.
Like Birdman and Rope before it, the “cheat” cuts in 1917 are easy to spot, but the act of looking for them amidst the soldiers’ trek across torched farmland and sniper-filled, bombed-out towns, and simultaneously taking in the endeavor’s overall technical marvel yields a sense of awe rarely achieved in film.
One year later, Birdman, another film mostly presented as a single shot, would sweep the Oscars.
It’s a trick deployed before, by Alfred Hitchcock in the stage-born 1948 thriller “Rope” and Alejandro González Iñárritu in his 2014 Best Picture Oscar winner “Birdman.”
Essentially filmed in one long, two-hour shot, the film—which features the masterful cinematography of living legend Roger Deakins—is a cinematic feat rarely attempted, though not without precedent (Birdman, Rope, and Russian Ark are other examples of one-shot films).
Director Sam Mendes, telling a tale based on stories that he heard in his youth from his grandfather (who at age 19 had been a messenger for the British Army during WWI) has here combined elements of “Dunkirk” and “Saving Private Ryan,” among others, and used Alejandro González Iñárritu’s single-shot storytelling method (used for “Birdman” and “The Revenant”) to create some impressive, innovative world-building.
The scenes in the villa in Rome with Bellucci are shot as if something out of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist , with mirrors to the fore and the use of dark gilt furnishings.
And the Rome sequence, with Monica Bellucci as a mob widow who seems to have inherited the vintage lingerie style of Sophia Loren, in turn carries visual echoes of The Conformist , The Great Beauty , and The Italian Job .
Hoyte van Hoytema (who shot the very different espionage classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ) films the Italian sequences with a shadowy indulgence that recalls Vittorio Storaro’s work on The Conformist .
The Godfather (1972)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced Road to Perdition (2002), Spectre (2015)
Themes
Between 1972 and 1974 two distinctly different cinematic sagas took hold of opposing ends of the Pacific: "The Godfather" and its sequel in Hollywood and the half-dozen "Lone Wolf and Cub" films in Japan, sometimes better known stateside by their 1980 abridgement, "Shogun Assassin."
July 11, 2002 - The television ads billing it as the greatest crime drama since The Godfather are slightly off the mark as it lacks any of the intimate familial aspects of Coppola¹s epic.
Road to Perdition has some serious muscle in its corner -- there are nearly a dozen Oscars among the main players -- leading rasher critics to make quick comparisons to The Godfather.
But then "Road to Perdition" is one of the few gangster dramas of the last 30 years to break free of the shadow of "The Godfather."
I won't lie, if you like The Godfather, this film is for you.
It's even more extraordinary that Hollywood is treating Road to Perdition like the second coming of The Godfather.
Essentially filmed in one long, two-hour shot, the film—which features the masterful cinematography of living legend Roger Deakins—is a cinematic feat rarely attempted, though not without precedent (Birdman, Rope, and Russian Ark are other examples of one-shot films).
It is not the first time this gimmick was used in a film – Alexander Sokurov’s “Russian Ark” got there earlier in 2002.
These titles include Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, the Best Picture Oscar winner Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), and Russian Ark, the latter actually filmed in one single take rather than just being crafted to appear that way.
There have been a few similar experiments over the years (the breathtaking Russian Ark perhaps being the most famous example), but recent efforts have seen the trick very nearly becoming a genre unto itself.
In 2000, Mike Figgis released the experimental drama Timecode ; two years later Alexander Sokurov made Russian Ark , a lyrical one-take journey through Russian history composed of a single Steadicam sequence shot in almost constant motion that deserves substantial credit as 1917 ’s technical predecessor.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced Skyfall (2012), 1917 (2019)
Themes Characters Plot
Scripted by Bond specialists Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, this time with a significant assist from John Logan ("Hugo"; "The Aviator"), "Skyfall" cobbles together bits and pieces from many another thriller, sometimes more loosely than we might like, and draws in particular from "The Dark Knight" -- but for my money Mendes gets the balance between light and dark more nearly right than Christopher Nolan managed in this year's most overbearing blockbuster.
With Sam Mendes behind the camera, with the ridiculous collection of talent in front of it (including new additions Javier Barden, Ralph Fiennes , Albert Finney and Ben Whishaw from "The Hour"), and with a lot of talk about how this was going to be a more mature take on Bond (even more mature than the first two Daniel Craig films), I began to wonder if this was the film that had the ambition to be more than just a great James Bond movie, but to transcend its genre and series in the same way that "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" or "The Dark Knight" are just great films irrespective of their franchises.
He is truly scary, a brilliant psychopath Bardem makes even more frightening with a witty performance that recalls Heath Ledger as the Joker in "The Dark Knight."
Nonetheless, the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, further follows Batman's lead: After the lame Quantum of Solace, this new film is Bond's amalgam of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.
He brings the "Bond villain" archetype into the 21st century in much the same way that the Joker did it for Batman in "The Dark Knight."
He’s embraced the general super-ness of Bond and taken his inspiration from the best superhero flick of recent years: The Dark Knight.