Bored. James Bored.

Rating: 6/10 (11 November 2012)

The reviews flowed in. Best reviewed Bond movie ever. Biggest overseas opening ever for a Bond movie. That just proves a good point: consensus doesn't prove anything.
I was the kid who stayed glued to the TV on all the old TBS Bond movie marathons during Thanksgiving and Christmas. I've read a good deal of the source material books from Ian Flemming. But I have no fanatical attachment to either. On the contrary, I just happen to enjoy the simple escapist window Bond opens to an audience for a few hours. Yep, I even liked Moonraker. I always preferred George Lazenby's "strait Bond" over all the other guys. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" is by far my favorite movie of the series. "You Only Live Twice" would be a distant second place.
Daniel Craig isn't a bad Bond at all and he's definitely a product of the "Jason Bourne" generation of action movies of stoic heroes where the Brosnan productions often veered into the Roger Moore fantasy camp - which I actually didn't mind. So the cold and stale touch of Skyfall actually compliments his character, but it can't save the movie from the doldrums it "falls" into from time to time. Javier Bardem was good, but I think Moriarity in BBCs Sherlock was more of a threat to London than this guy.
Plain and simple, Skyfall was pretty dry and the narrative was a jumbled mess of pacing. There were undoubtedly great ideas, but none of them were well capitalized on. The pieces never really fit together. It's as if the three writers agreed the movie would star Daniel Craig, then went their separate ways and wrote three different movies then tied them together with string before filming. Even Hollywood fix master editor Stuart Baird didn't tighten this one up very well. There was a lot of shifting in seats and not a laugh to be heard in the theater I sat in.
Money Penny, M, Q and the Aston are here to signify that Jason Bourne is finally dead and Bond we all remember has returned. Maybe, but this coming from a book worm with a long attention span: this Bond was boring.