Watch Skyfall (2012), Story, Stars, Reviews & All You Want To Know About A Great Movie

Skyfall (2012)

Skyfall is a 2012 spy film based on the Ian Fleming character James Bond, produced by Eon Productions and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It is the sequel to Quantum of Solace (2008) and is the twenty-third Eon-produced James Bond film.

Directed by Sam Mendes and written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and John Logan, it stars Daniel Craig as Bond, alongside Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Bérénice Marlohe, Albert Finney, and Judi Dench. In the film, Bond investigates a series of targeted data leaks and co-ordinated attacks on MI6 led by Raoul Silva (Bardem).

A sequel to Quantum of Solace was confirmed in 2009, shortly after Mendes was announced as director. Development of the film was suspended throughout 2010 after Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which caused screenwriter Peter Morgan to leave the project. Production resumed in December 2010 after Purvis, Wade, and Logan were hired and a November 2012 release date was announced in January 2011.

Principal photography began that November after the film’s title was revealed and lasted until March 2012, with filming locations including London, Shanghai, Istanbul, and Scotland. Skyfall is notable for the return of longstanding James Bond characters Q and Miss Moneypenny.

Skyfall premiered at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 October 2012, and was theatrically released in conventional and IMAX formats in the United Kingdom three days later and in the United States on 9 November, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962). Skyfall received critical acclaim, with praise for Mendes’ direction, cast performances, action sequences, cinematography, and musical score.

Among its accolades, it won Best Sound Editing at the 85th Academy Awards and Outstanding British Film at the 66th British Academy Film Awards, while its theme song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

Skyfall grossed $1 billion worldwide, the fourteenth film to do so, and became the then-seventh-highest grossing film of all time, the highest-grossing James Bond film, the second-highest grossing film of 2012, and the then-highest grossing film released by Sony or MGM. The sequel, Spectre, was released in 2015.

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Skyfall (2012) Trailer

Skyfall (2012) Reviews

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Skyfall (2012) Credits

Skyfall (2012)

Rated PG-13 for intense violent sequences throughout, some sexuality, language and smoking

143 minutes

Cast

Judi Dench as M

Ralph Fiennes as Mallory

Daniel Craig as James Bond

Naomie Harris as Eve

Ben Whishaw as Q

Albert Finney as Kincade

Javier Bardem as Silva

Directed by

• Sam Mendes

Written by

• John Logan
• Robert Wade
• Neal Purvis

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Skyfall (2012) Plot

In Istanbul, MI6 agents James Bond and Eve Moneypenny pursue mercenary Patrice, who has stolen a hard drive containing details of undercover agents. As Bond and Patrice fight atop a moving train, M orders Moneypenny to shoot Patrice, despite not having a clear shot; Moneypenny inadvertently hits Bond, who falls into a river. Bond is presumed dead and Patrice escapes with the hard drive.

Three months later, due to a public inquiry into M’s handling of the stolen hard drive, she is pressured to retire by Gareth Mallory, the chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament and a former SAS officer. Although she claims she is still useful, MI6’s servers are hacked, and M receives a taunting computer message moments before the MI6 building explodes.

Bond, who used his presumed death to retire, learns of the attack and returns to service in London. He fails a series of physical, medical, and psychological examinations, but M approves his return to the field, ordering him to identify Patrice’s employer, recover the hard drive, and kill Patrice. He meets Q, MI6’s new quartermaster, who gives him a radio beacon and a Walther PPK pistol.

In Shanghai, Bond follows Patrice but is unable to prevent him killing a target. The two fight and Patrice falls to his death before Bond can learn his employer’s identity. Moneypenny joins Bond in his investigation on orders from Mallory. Bond finds a casino token Patrice intended to cash in for the assassination, leading him to a casino in Macau. There, Bond is approached by Sévérine, Patrice’s accomplice. Recognising her tattoo, he concludes she was a sex slave “rescued” by a criminal who now employs her, a man Bond wishes to meet.

She warns him he is targeted by her bodyguards, but promises to help if Bond kills her employer. Bond thwarts the attack and joins Sévérine on her yacht, the Chimera. They travel to an abandoned island off the coast of Macau, where the crew captures and delivers them to Sévérine’s employer, Raoul Silva. Once an MI6 agent, Silva turned to cyberterrorism and orchestrated the attack on MI6. Silva kills Sévérine, but Bond alerts MI6 reinforcements who capture Silva for rendition to Britain.

At MI6’s new underground headquarters, Q attempts to decrypt Silva’s laptop, but inadvertently gives it access to the MI6 servers, allowing Silva to escape. Q concludes Silva wanted to be captured as part of a plan to kill M, whom he hates for disavowing and betraying him to the Chinese government in 1997, leaving him to be tortured and disfigured by a suicide attempt by cyanide pill. Silva escapes his cell and Bond chases him through the London Underground and thwarts Silva’s attack at a Parliament inquiry where M is present.

Instructing Q and Bill Tanner to leave an electronic trail for Silva to follow, Bond uses his Aston Martin DB5 to take M to Skyfall, his childhood home in the Scottish Highlands. They meet Skyfall’s gamekeeper Kincade, and together the trio set up a series of booby traps throughout the house.

When Silva’s men arrive, Bond, M, and Kincade kill most of them, but M is wounded. Silva arrives by helicopter with more men and heavy weapons, so Bond sends M and Kincade through a priest hole to hide in a nearby chapel, and rigs propane tanks to explode. As the house and the helicopter are destroyed, Bond escapes down the same tunnel.

Silva survives the destruction of the house, following Kincade and M to the chapel. Confronting M, Silva forces his gun into her hand and presses his temple to hers, begging her to kill them both. Bond arrives and kills Silva by throwing a knife into his back. M then succumbs to her wounds and dies in Bond’s arms.

Following M’s funeral, Moneypenny formally introduces herself to Bond and tells him she is retiring from fieldwork to become secretary for Mallory, the newly appointed M. Bond meets with Mallory, and tells him he is ready to get back to work.

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Skyfall (2012) Box office

Skyfall earned $1.109 billion worldwide,^[4] and at the time of its release was the highest-grossing film worldwide for Sony Pictures and the second-highest-grossing film of 2012. On its opening weekend, it earned $80.6 million from 25 markets.^[118] In the UK the film grossed £20.1 million on its opening weekend, making it the second-highest Friday-to-Sunday debut ever behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. It also achieved the second-highest IMAX debut ever behind The Dark Knight Rises.

The film set a record for the highest seven-day gross with £37.2 million, surpassing previous record holder Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (£35.7 million).^[120] By 9 November 2012 the film had earned over £57 million to surpass The Dark Knight Rises as the highest-grossing film of 2012, and the highest-grossing James Bond film of all time in the UK.^[121] After 40 days of release the total UK gross stood at £94.28 million, making Skyfall the highest-grossing film in the UK, surpassing the £94.03 million of Avatar.

By 30 December 2012, it had become the first film to gross more than £100 million ($161.6 million) in the UK.^[123] Skyfall‘s box office receipts made it only the 14th film and first Bond film to gross over $1 billion, the seventh-highest-grossing film ever made at the time, pushing it past the inflation-adjusted amount of $1.047 billion earned by Thunderball.

Skyfall set an opening weekend record in Switzerland ($5.3 million) and recorded the second-largest opening weekend of the year for a Hollywood film in India after The Amazing Spider-Man ($5.1 million), as well as grossing $14.3 million on its opening weekend in France.^[126] In Austria, it achieved the second-highest opening weekend ever ($3.4 million) behind The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, while in Finland, it scored the largest opening weekend when excluding previews ($1.47 million).

In North America, the film opened in 3,505 cinemas, the widest opening for a Bond film.^[128] The film earned $2.4 million from midnight showings on its opening day and a further $2.2 million from IMAX and large-format cinemas.^[128] Skyfall went on to gross $30.8 million on its opening day in the US and Canada,^[129] and $88.4 million in its opening weekend, the biggest debut yet for a Bond film.^[130] By the end of its theatrical run, the film earned $304.4 million in the United States and Canada, making it the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2012 in these regions.

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Skyfall (2012) Critical Response

Skyfall received “generally positive reviews from critics and fans”, according to the GlobalPost.^[132] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 92% based on 384 reviews, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The site’s critical consensus reads, “Sam Mendes brings Bond surging back with a smart, sexy, riveting action thriller that qualifies as one of the best 007 films to date.”

On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100 based on 49 critics, indicating “universal acclaim”.^[134] CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade filmgoers gave the film was an “A” on an A+ to F scale.^[135]

A number of critics, including Kate Muir, reviewing for The Times, Philip French, writing in The Observer, IGN’s Daniel Krupa and the reviewers for the Irish Independent and the Daily Record, all asked whether Skyfall was the best Bond film produced.^[136] The Daily Telegraph‘s film reviewer, Robbie Collin, considered Skyfall to be “often dazzling, always audacious”,^[30] with excellent action sequences in a film that contained humour and emotion.

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter thought that Skyfall was “dramatically gripping while still brandishing a droll undercurrent of humor”,^[137] going on to say that it was a film that had “some weight and complexity to it”.

Variety‘s Peter DeBruge suggested that the film’s greatest strength lay in its willingness to put as much focus on characterisation as it did action set-pieces, allowing the two to co-exist rather than compete for the audience’s attention,^[138] while Manohla Dargis, reviewing for The New York Times, considered Skyfall to be “a superior follow-up to Casino Royale“^[139] which is “opulent rather than outlandish and insistently, progressively low-key”.^[139]

Kim Newman, reviewing the film for Empire, concluded, “Skyfall is pretty much all you could want from a 21st Century Bond: cool but not camp, respectful of tradition but up to the moment, serious in its thrills and relatively complex in its characters but with the sense of fun that hasn’t always been evident lately”.^[140] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, describing it as “a full-blooded, joyous, intelligent celebration of a beloved cultural icon”.

Reviewing for the New Statesman, Ryan Gilbey saw that “nostalgia permeates the movie”,^[142] going on to say that “sometimes the old ways are the best”.^[142]

A number of reviewers praised Daniel Craig’s lead performance. Roger Ebert believed that in Skyfall, “Daniel Craig [takes] full possession of a role he earlier played well in ‘Casino Royale,’ not so well in ‘Quantum'”;^[141] Philip French commented that “Craig manages to get out of the shadow of [Sean] Connery”;

while Daniel Krupa thought Craig’s Bond was a “defining performance” for “a great actor”.^[144] Edward Porter, writing in The Sunday Times, considered that “Craig has developed an authoritative Bond persona, dry and intelligent”.^[145] Ryan Gilbey thought Craig had “relaxed into Bond without losing any steeliness”.^[142]

The supporting cast also received praise. Roger Ebert reflected that Skyfall “at last provides a role worthy of Judi Dench, one of the best actors of her generation. She is all but the co-star of the film, with a lot of screen time, poignant dialogue, and a character who is far more complex and sympathetic than we expect in this series”.^[141] Jenny McCartney, writing in The Sunday Telegraph, agreed, describing Dench as “compellingly luminous” in the film, and the one that “the camera caresses most meaningfully and often”.

McCartney thought Javier Bardem played Silva “with worrisome élan”,^[146] while Henry K Miller considered his character “the most authentically Bondian Bond villain in decades”.^[147] A number of critics noted the strength of the supporting cast; Kim Newman found the “warmth and gravitas” of Finney’s performance noteworthy,^[140] while other reviewers, including Edward Porter, Daniel Krupa and The Playlist‘s Oliver Lyttelton, singled out Ralph Fiennes as Mallory and Ben Whishaw as Q.^[148]

Ann Hornaday, writing for The Washington Post, thought Sam Mendes had reinvigorated the series, with Skyfall being “sleek, crisp, classy … exhibiting just the right proportion of respect for legacy and embrace of novelty”.^[149] Henry K. Miller of Sight & Sound agreed, and praised Mendes, who he thought was worthy of directing more Bond films.^[147] Kim Newman also praised Mendes’s direction of the action sequences.

The work of cinematographer Roger Deakins also received praise: Newman commented that he “delivers the most impressive visuals this series has had since the 1960s”,^[140] and Miller described the film as “dazzlingly photographed”.^[147]

The film did not escape criticism, with reviews pointing to its two and a half-hour running time, and the final third of the film being “protracted”, and not matching the first two thirds in its momentum as the underlying flaws in the film.^[150][151] Xan Brooks of The Guardian, in an otherwise positive review, criticised the “touchy-feely indulgence” of “the bold decision to open Bond up – to probe at the character’s back-story and raise a toast to his relationship with M”.

Daniel Krupa also singled out Naomie Harris as “awkward” and having “virtually non-existent chemistry” with Craig.^[144] Similarly Philip French in The Observer tempered his praise for the film by highlighting “some lazy repetition” and argued, “the badinage is often perfunctory and Bond is as usual captured too easily and too easily escapes”.

Edward Porter, writing in The Sunday Times, considered that while aspects of the film were “achieved with wit and panache”,^[145] he found that the climax to the film was slightly disappointing, although the “weaknesses in the final stages are not serious, however, and the film’s brief epilogue is wonderful”.

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