I’ve greatly enjoyed Daniel Craig’s portrayal of James Bond, and I’ve been looking forward to Skyfall since the end of Quantum of Solace. My immediate reaction to leaving the theatre was that Skyfall did live up to my expectations. It was a thrilling spy movie with some stunning visuals, a creepy yet brilliant villain in Raoul Silva, exciting fight scenes, and a top tier cast. Daniel Craig’s Bond has more emotional depth and flaws than many of his predecessors and Skyfall did a good job exploring more facets of the character. The villain’s nefarious plan was smaller than the average Bond flick. Which fit well with the character driven aspects of the movie. However something struck me as off with Skyfall. It took me some time but finally realize what it was. Skyfall employed too many similarities to other contemporary movies a number of them from the Nolan Batman series.
To start things off Skyfall began with James Bond floating in a river left for dead, evoking images of the first Bourne movie. Silva captures Bond and runs down the list of everything wrong with him. It sounds sounds remarkably similar to the doctor trying to convince Bruce Wayne not to go paragliding in the Dark Knight Rises. Silva getting captured by MI-6 as part of a complex plan to take the heroes down from the inside is remarkably similar to The Joker in Dark Knight, and Loki in the Avengers. Helen McCrory’s character, Clair Dowar, had a fairly small role interrogating M in a public panel. In the few scenes she was in she had the same mannerisms and similar style to Dolores Umbridge of Harry Potter fame. It turns out that James Bond much like Batman lost his parents at an early age, which drives his actions his entire life. Like Batman he as a stately manor, attended to by a loyal manservant/surrogate father. Just as in Batman Begins the home is burnt down when the villain takes attacks it.
Perhaps I am being a little too critical of Skyfall’s similarities to other films. After all tropes exist for a reason. They work. The only one I won’t forgive is the villain being intentionally captured to get inside the hero’s base. Skyfall will be the third major blockbuster of 2012 to employ that plot point. Other than that Skyfall worked as an action adventure. Was it the best Bond movie, no, but it was still pretty good.
On a Scale of 1 to Epic (Epic = 10): 
