Batman NOT Bond

Rating: 3/10 (22 November 2012)

Mendes so meticulously crafts scenes to explore story themes that he completely misses the spirit of Bond, kills the character, and delivers a soulless movie.
THIS WILL BE FULL OF SPOILERS If there's one scene that encapsulates this entire movie, it's the scene where M is reciting pretentious poetry interspersed with action scenes involving Bond. The inter-cut action scenes are boring but that doesn't matter. In Mendes hands, it's the pretensions that are important. The action scenes are only there to add symbolic weight to the words of the poem -- or to be strung together as pieces of "art" and paraded as a Bond movie. Ironically, there's no scene of classy performance art like we normally get in a Bond movie (we DO get it in the latest Mission Impossible movie). It's "Skyfall" itself that gets passed-off as "classy" performance art.
It's as though Mendes felt that, having delivered a good Bond mini-movie in the pre-credit sequence, he had fulfilled his obligation to Bond fans and was now free create a personal art project (merely checking some Bond boxes along the way) -- and an overly serious and boring art project at that.
As for the plot of "Skyfall", there's not a SINGLE scene in this entire movie that makes any sense what-so-ever from a plot perspective. John Logan, who wrote the brilliant Hugo, must have simply been brought-in to add wit and story themes to the existing script -- not concerning himself at all about the, apparently, necessary plot faults. Yes, I can only think the producers believe major plot faults to be NECESSARY to a Bond movie as they refuse to make the movies without these faults. With the near total lack of truly Bondian action set-pieces, all these major plot faults, simply and unfortunately, cannot be ignored.
For those that think I've overly harped on the plot faults, consider... This Bond movie had pretensions of being taken as a serious thriller. It has an academy award winning director at its helm and is filled with top-tier actors and actresses. It has a celebrated writing team. The producers have publicly bragged about this script and all the time (YEARS) that they had to perfect it. All this and they give us a story no more cohesive than that of "Moonraker"(and, amazingly, even less original) -- but with none of that movie's stunts, gadgets, or special effects to hide the craters. It's enough to make one forget one's complaints about double-taking pigeons, gondola-car hybrids, and henchman who fall in love with teenage girls half their height.
THEN, there's the "a storm is coming" line. PLEASE. I can't begin to count the number of times I've heard that line used as metaphor in a movie but I think the first time was WAY back in the first Terminator movie. Logan, Mendes, and Craig should ALL be flogged for this. THIS is art?! This is our 50 year anniversary gift for all our support over the years -- and the new formula!? Old formula -- the plot and story must never make sense and we'll have great panache-laden action set-pieces to hide the fact. New formula -- the plot and story must never make sense and we'll have well-acted "art" scenes to hide the fact -- and the action set-pieces are to be thrown-out (the baby with the bath water).
I appreciate the great performances, theme explorations, artistic devices, drama and cinematography. I really do. These are needed additions to the Bond series. However, if "Skyfall" is supposed to be the new direction of Bond -- all the dumb story and plot faults we've come to expect of the franchise but none of the special effects, set-pieces, thrills, stunts, gadgets, panache and fun -- the series will never make it close to another 50 years.
Happy Birthday anyway Mr. Bond. You may have done nothing for us lately but we appreciate your cumulative service. Now, I'll stop "expecting you" as you've now become, yourself, an "uninvited guest". As I said, you've committed an unforgivable sin. You bored me.
James Bond is Dead (with a capital "D"). Long Live Mission Impossible.