Please understand:

Abrams Winner! Worst Film! It’s a Tie!

in a country where the mean is 28 minutes of commercials and trailers, I was forced to endure five, count ’em five, Skyfall tie-ins for various cologne and watch type products.  Synercalifragiliciousexpedianza!  We had reached the nadir of post-modernism, having paid to the advertisements for the thing that we were going to see, which, naturally enough, had more product placement than any film in history.  Unfortunately, and against Fredric Jameson’s prediction, the world did not collapse on itself, and thus I was forced to endure the 150 minutes that is Skyfall.

Don’t get me wrong, I see all the Bond films, and they’re all pretty boring.  There is a kind of check list quality to the plot, which is exactly as comforting as a nice comfy episode of The Mentalist.  It does what it says.  And Skyfall, story wise, is no different.  Initially.  There’s french girls, a ridiculous haired villain, Tennyson quotes, some locales, and some poorly filmed and edited action sequences.  There are preposterous plans that involve crashing the London Underground in order to…walk into a room.  It’s Bond film.

And these are fine, and it’s even fine, to a point, that the sense of fun is gone.  Admittedly mostly misogynist and sadistic puns, but still.  Also fine that the stunts are gone, replaced with ridiculous CGI hyperbole, the equivalent of the story: no sense of danger.  But that’s fine.  What can I say: the post-9/11 seriousness is wearing me down.  I like everything now the same.  I should become a film critic.  Remember that without any sense of story, tension or character, a hint of levity or an exciting jump from a plane might be something to cling to.  But I’ve given up.  The terrorists have won…the rights to the sequel!

Leaving it in.

Saw this is Britain. It was popular here. So is Wimpy’s.

No, what makes Skyfall so depressing is, of course, the fact that is An Origin Story.   Also that it is an inexplicable 150 minutes long.  Minus commercials.  Did I mention that?  But getting back, in an aside in an earlier piece, I briefly tossed aside how the point of telling where someone came from is to unman/woman them, that in explaining, we de-iconicize the character.   Lisbeth Salander being an equally egregious example as Hannibal Lecter, that we want to feel superior than our hero (you heard me; in fact we will call this ‘To De-Sabatier‘, in honor of the carbon steel that Lecter favored).  Besides being utterly pointless from a narrative point of view (do I have to explain that this is the sixth actor to incarnate James Bond?  What is he, Doctor Who?  Who(‘se?’ ‘A Who whose?’) origins will be utterly explained next season, no doubt), this is the horror of democracy in action, that’s it’s not enough that we want to be James Bond, but that we could be.

If we were born on a house in the moors, of course.  Which didn’t actually do anything to you emotionally, despite all the kerfuffle to the contrary.  How could it?  It is, after all, the safest place in Britain.  Unless you count anywhere else.

Thank God; it’s not fine anymore.

Profits!

Losses!