The opening answers are Barbara Broccoli and Sam Mendes, whose career the film resets: he was nowhere after Away We Go, went on to Spectre and 1917 with Roger Deakins, and took a franchise property to more awards and more money.
The film also rejuvenates the Bond franchise, reminding people of its possibilities as the twenty-fifth film approaches amid franchise and spy overload, Brexit and an old conservative character; it is not the same movie without Bardem, with Jeffrey Rush (as transcribed), Johnny Depp and canceled actors imagined in his place.
One host initially sticks with Mendes, another names the Broccoli family and James Bond the franchise, and the Mendes voter switches, convinced: James Bond continuing as a powerful force for moviegoers.
Daniel Craig is a yes: he opened the Olympics and starred in a billion-dollar Bond movie considered the best ever; Knives Out is great but not the same level of power, and he now does Southern accents and married Rachel Weisz.
Sam Mendes is a no; his peak was earlier, right after American Beauty made around four hundred million and won the Oscars, into Road to Perdition and Jarhead.
Javier Bardem is a no: 2012 did not feel like his moment any more than 2007, and objectively his peak is the No Country for Old Men Oscar; his run through Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Beautiful, Eat Pray Love, To the Wonder, The Counselor and Mother is admired, and he is married to Penelope Cruz.
Sean Connery was in discussions to play Kincaid before the producers decided the stunt casting would take people out of the movie, which the hosts agree was right; Kevin Spacey was originally approached for Mallory, Mendes having directed him in American Beauty.
Ralph Fiennes as Mallory is loved: in a sedate movie where everyone operates at a mild level he chews the scenery in every scene, and he has gone on to be M.
Connery would have been distracting, nobody wants five seconds of fading Connery, who has not been seen in public for a few years, and it would have been the Marvel interconnecting universe, which Bond movies are not.
A behind-the-scenes what-if: release the Peter Morgan cut, though a Morgan disciple sees plenty of his DNA in the finished film; the making-ofs describe a collaborative effort rather than a writer's version being ruined.
Judi Dench literally has aged the best: seventy-seven when she gave a performance of just-enough British acting, with the stature and gravitas to make standing over six coffins feel important; Adele's song is an all-time jam.
The locations are sensible rather than volcano-and-Tokyo Bond locations: Istanbul and London, very London-centric, like a board of tourism; the fiftieth anniversary of the series and the Broccoli family's hubbub may have driven the reminder that this is a British spy from Scotland, and M's garage line about the car not being ostentatious is a favorite Dench moment.
Waning empire keeps waning, the ministers' hearings read as Brexit, and movies about washed-up middle-aged men are on trend for 2019; the cast has not a single error, and the Deakins photography would be cutting-edge if released today.
Casting a prestige director for a franchise has aged well: Mendes had just bricked with Away We Go after American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead and Revolutionary Road and retreated to theater, with the New Yorker covering him and Jez Butterworth; the Bond films had been a schlocky volume play that needed re-engineering into an event, and the move leads to Ryan Coogler doing Creed and Black Panther.
Tarantino was long rumored for a Bond film, Danny Boyle left the most recent one, and Nolan would be bank-breaking but only makes Warner Brothers movies; Mendes openly lifted the Dark Knight aesthetic, and Nolan's films are themselves a commentary on Bond, with the orphan avenging sins in common.
Costumes have aged well: Ben Whishaw's climactic Dries sweater and museum parka, the cut of Craig's suits, Moneypenny's business casual, the barber jackets (as transcribed), the final Skyfall look with boots, and the wool-looking training tracksuit with low-top Adidas that only Craig could wear; everyone's sweatpants should fit like that rather than like the Ad Astra moon base.
Albert Finney's last film performance has aged well: a perfect role for an actor of his age as a father figure to old Scotland, old England and Shakespearean movie acting.
The song has the highest approval rating and is chosen; an Oscar winner.
Five candidates are laid out, with an effort to keep scene distinct from sequence: the Shanghai skyscraper shootout, the new MI6 introduction in Churchill's tunnels with word association and sit-ups while Rory Kinnear briefs him on the state of the world, Silva and Bond's first meeting with the William Tell scene, the tube chase, and the church scene at the end; a Shanghai versus Macau mix-up is corrected along the way.
Smaller stuff is what connects one host to the movie: the first meeting with Q in front of the Turner painting, talking in metaphor and at cross purposes in really well-written dialogue, with Wishaw great as Q; it is not a sequence where a train bursts through the ground.
M reading Tennyson at the inquiry, cut against Daniel Craig sprinting through London with Big Ben behind him, lays it on thick but is moving every time; Craig is called a fantastic movie runner, maybe number two behind Cruise, and the film came out months after the London Olympics, which Bond kicked off in the Danny Boyle opening with the queen.
Mallory and M's philosophical conversation about whether the enemy is in the shadows is a favorite dialogue scene, read as metaphor about waging a war on terror and the rights of a government to exceed its power, reflected later in the court scene; nothing in Quantum of Solace, written during the writer's strike, has that crispness.
Two more suggestions: the planning conversation at Skyfall with Albert Finney's Kincaid, including the line about men coming to kill us and killing them first, which is right out of Eastwood, and the fight on top of the train with the excavator and the sleeve adjustment; the Istanbul opening with Moneypenny feels like typical Bond until M orders her to take the shot, and the motorcycle chase on the narrow walkway is illogical but shot beautifully.
The pick is called a category of one: the Silva intro, shot by Mendes and Deakins from right behind Bond's shoulder as the villain comes down in an elevator and starts talking from forty feet away, his face withheld until the rats story nears its conclusion; the filmmakers knew what they had and let it play, and the episode plays the rat speech from the film.
The scene inverts the Bond convention of saving the villain's big speech for the end, as parodied by Austin Powers, by putting it at the close of the first act; it is playwriting, one long metaphor monologue, spiced with the question of whether Silva is sexually attracted to Bond or something fraternal, and the hosts wonder whether the unbuttoning was in the script.
Bardem is called the greatest Bond girl, lighting Craig up more than anyone since Eva Green; the villain tilts the movie on its axis, funny and destabilizing and more unsettling than other Bond villains, while the backstory with M is brushed aside in one line about Hong Kong.
Silva hacking Bond and MI6 in 2012 is seen as prescient, a technocracy story rather than the money-and-power plots of villains like Mads Mikkelsen's; the abandoned island, shot off Macau but based on one off Nagasaki, is a faded ghost town that parallels Bond's own enjoying-death stretch.
The scorpion scene is loved, with a nitpick that a British guy doing scorpion tricks in a Turkish bar while keeping a low profile would go viral; Silva mirrors Bond as a lone wolf with mommy issues operating to his own ends.
After the action discussion, the answer is the rats speech, the Silva intro.
