Skyfall, Bond, Daniel Craig

My Favorite Scene: Skyfall (2012) “Silva’s Rat Monologue”

By the time of Daniel Craig’s third go-round as Bond, he had already owned the role, but he hadn’t been given a legendary villain. Sam Mendes fixed that when he cast Oscar-winner Javier Bardem as Silva, and gave us-arguably-the best Bond film of them all.  Skyfall tells more about Bond’s boyhood and maturation than the previous 22 films combined without actually giving him an origin story. I know they’re going deeper down the rabbit hole in SPECTRE, but I always felt Wolverine lost a lot as a character when his whole origin was neatly laid out, and I think Bond would, as well.


Javier Bardem, Silva, Skyfall

This really is as much Judi Dench’s picture as it is Daniel Craig’s and after six films as M, she certainly earned a co-starring role as she and Bond hunt and are hunted by Silva. Bardem is certainly flashy and over-the-top in the Bond villain tradition, but unlike most, he’s every bit as good as James, and spends most of the film beating him quite handily. There’s so much good and done right in this film that it’s hard to nail a scene as my favorite, but I love a good entrance. When you get your villain making monologues from the get-go, you know you’ve got a good one.  I’m going to cheat and also stick in Silva’s reunion scene with M, because I can’t decide between the two. Bardem should have at least gotten an Oscar nomination for this film. Just brilliant.


2 thoughts on “My Favorite Scene: Skyfall (2012) “Silva’s Rat Monologue””

  1. Everyone involved in the Craig era is bringing their A game. I don’t care if you think Connery is still the end-all, you have to admit that the recent films are just plain better made, from the direction to the cinematography to every single one of the performances. I think that SPECTRE will be much more of a traditional Bond film than Skyfall, but that could be a good thing. If it’s the most traditional Bond film of the Craig years, that’s an even better thing. Everything everyone has loved about James Bond since before I was born, but with better production values. It’s time for a new quintessential Bond film that’s better than Goldfinger, but I’ll settle for a really great time. Here’s hoping. In the meantime I need to catch Crimson Peak, because I’m not sure how long it will remain in theaters.

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