"Skyfall" was released on October 26, 2012 (it was already January 2013 when it was released in China), and "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" was just released that summer, Nolan's dark wind stimulated the audience Reaching its peak, "Skyfall" also took advantage of such a good time to be a great success. The global box office exceeded one billion US dollars in the Christmas schedule that year, which is comparable to "The Dark Knight Rises".
In the final analysis, the spiritual core of Skyfall and the reason for its success (to some extent these two are the same thing) are due to the film's combination of the ever-changing world without losing the tradition of 007. Audiences were pleasantly surprised to find that despite the changing world, 007 is still the same 007; at the same time, the film shows 007's past, and digs more into 007 as a person rather than a special agent, which also makes the film's theme more profound.
Why do you talk about "Skyfall" before talking about "Spectre"? Because before discussing whether "Spectre" is good or bad, you should first understand why it was shot like this: it is in the spirit of the previous "Skyfall", but this time it didn't play to everyone's satisfaction.
Unlike some Hollywood entertainment films, many of the scenes and plots of "Spectre" are meaningful, not random. For example, at the beginning of the film, the black screen is subtitled: The dead are alive. Immediately afterwards, the camera suddenly came to the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, where demons danced in the streets and alleys, with rhythmic but also strange drum beats.
Why type that sentence? Why on the Day of the Dead?
It can be found later that these symbols are all metaphors for Bond's past that haunts him like evil spirits. Even the title of the film and the villain "Spectre Party" in the film are puns: both the name of the villain and the ghosts from the past.
These ghosts of the past, including "Casino Royale" Bond love lost Linde Vespey in the past, the villain of the first three films, Mrs. M who died in Bond's arms in "Skyfall", and so on. They make up Bond's miserable past, so this time, Bond is finally "looking forward" by cleaning up the source of his misery - Spectre.
During the development of the plot, Sam Mendes, a literary fan, also discussed many topics that ordinary entertainment films would not pay attention to:
The first is to continue the discussion in the previous work "Skyfall": the world is changing with each passing day, for the sake of the country and people For the safety of the world, where should the soldiers of the hidden front go? This rapid change includes two aspects: anarchic terrorists who increasingly have no bottom line (the intelligence war between governments is to some extent a "gentleman's game" and has bottom lines), and the development of various modern counter-terrorism technologies.
As a result, the faction represented by Professor Moriarty who joined the Spectre Party—no, the director of the National Security Center, Mr. C—believes that modern counter-terrorism technology should be used to combat increasingly unscrupulous terror. molecular. The methods they advocate include drones, network monitoring, big data analysis, etc. At the same time, they believe that the 00 project, which takes "people" as the core to prevent terrorist attacks, is no longer suitable for the development of the times.
Mr. M of MI6 of course opposed this move. His classic line is: "It is a license to kill, but also a license not to kill. .)" This sentence is very similar to a dialogue between Bond and Mr. Q in "Skyfall", from which we can see the inheritance of the two films. When Q said that he caused more damage with his computer than Bond did in a year of fieldwork, Bond scoffed at why he still needed him, and Q replied: "Ever now and then a trigger has to be pulled. (Someone has to pull the trigger.)" To this, Bond immediately added: "or not pulled. (Or not deducted.)"
"License to kill" refers to the killing power of 007 and other 00 series agents. This power is above the law. It is not recognized or even criticized by mainstream values, but it has to exist. Mr. M pointed out that while a "licence to kill" is not something to advocate (because it is not bound by the law), agents must carefully gather intelligence, assess the target before killing a person, and finally look the target in the eye and pull the trigger ( It is similar to the Stark family in "A Song of Ice and Fire", "the person who condemns the death must personally execute the execution"), so more or less agents are bound by moral conscience, which is better than nothing. Be good. Especially the agents of the 00 series, although they can kill people, they will not kill people indiscriminately.
And those high-efficiency surveillance and killing machines have no moral concerns, and it is difficult for those who manipulate them to have feelings for their targets. After Bond said "or not pulled" above, he continued: "It's hard to know which in your pajamas. (You don't know what to do in your pajamas.)" It means that the Q in front of the computer cannot fully understand the scene Case.
So these machines and their operators are unrestrained, something more dangerous and scary than Project 00, synonymous with the centralized society in George Orwell's 1984.
So in the end, Bond did not kill Spectre boss Franz Oberhaus, and responded to the sentence "a license not to kill".
Through this series of reflections, Sam Mendes answered the questions posed before: the world is changing, but our hearts cannot change; sometimes, tradition is more useful - this is similar to the expression in "Skyfall" means the same.
The second is the discussion of the conflict between the identity of the agent and the identity of ordinary people. Such conflicts usually imply recluse, which also has a certain spiritual resonance with Chinese martial arts. Because whether it is working as a secret agent or walking in the rivers and lakes, it is a life of licking blood and losing a lot, and the best destination for these people is to quit fighting and killing and live the life of ordinary people. This is how Bond is arranged at the end of the film.
These discussions are very meaningful, adhering to the spiritual core of traditional spy films; moreover, the actions, scenes, as well as photography and soundtracks in the first half of the film are very brilliant.
It's a pity that the second half seems to be a different film, completely reduced to a synonym for perfunctory and vulgar. To some extent, these two are the same thing, that is, the proliferation of old stalks. I don't know if the director thinks that these old stalks can add to the traditional meaning, or just simply don't want to use their brains. Every step of the plot in the second half can be predicted by the audience early: The Bond girl casts herself in the net, and the villain boss opens the door, There are a lot of rambles, the explosive watch highlights the divine power, the Bond girl escaped and returned to the homeland to continue fighting again, the bond girl was arrested again alone, Bond was brave and rescued the bond girl, and the villain wanted to run when the situation was bad. , the pistol shot down the villain's plane, and did not kill the villain to hide his fame.
It's okay to return to tradition in spirit, but it doesn't mean that every stalk must be old in terms of expression! Films that dare to use old stalks now are usually used as targets for complaints and spoofs, so that there is a market. And the serious use of old memes like "Spectre" is really a bit of secondary school. For example, every time Bond has sex with a female character, I want to laugh.
In terms of keeping pace with the times, the film also uses one of the most abused stalks: globalization and surveillance. Spectre is the incarnation of all the negative effects of globalization. Its purpose is to establish a monitoring system that understands everything and achieve its own evil purpose of ruling the world... Wait, what's your relationship with Marvel's Hydra? What does it have to do with the casino in "The Ultimate Player"? What does it have to do with the "Samaritan" in Suspect Tracking?
"Suspect Tracker" grasped the pulse of the world situation in 2011, and achieved great success through the Snowden incident in 2013, and a series of subsequent works are nothing more than following the trend, and like "Spectre" Holding on to it any longer is boring.
So if the quality of this movie is to be said, it can only be said to be average; but when I finally saw Bond and his loved ones speeding away in the morning light of London, I thought, for 007 fans, That said, it's also a movie worth watching.
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