1. Skyfall: Some CGI Komodo Dragons
Having arrived at a floating casino off the coast of Shanghai, Bond has made contact with the exotic Severine, who may hold the key to the conspiracy surrounding MI6. During the course of their conversation, Bond realises that Severine is scared helpless by the power she's working for, the same power that saved her from a lifetime of slavery in the sex trade. It's dark stuff, and when she asks "What do you know about fear?" you almost want Bond to shrug his shoulders and reply "not much", if only to break the tension of the scene. A fight then ensues between Bond, three massive bastards, and some CGI komodo dragons. The CGI komodo dragons do a good job of breaking that tension. Though the Bond producers have been pretty rigorous about sticking to practical effects and physical stunt work, some alarmingly bad CGI has crept into the series. Die Another Day's windsurfing scene is the ne plus ultra of embarrassing digital effects, but it has to be said the komodo dragons in Skyfall run it pretty close. The problem with this kind of overt CGI is that it seems more fitting in a science fiction or fantasy movie, where we expect a certain level of unreality. Even when the Bond films are stupid, it's a grounded stupidity, a stupidity of real live snakes slithering into bathtubs, or a stupidity of actual proper sharks darting through the water towards our hero (a stupidity of sharks should be the new collective term for sharks, btw). Forty years back and the production team would've enlisted a komodo dragon wrangler. The most unexpected thing about the scene, though, is how comic it is. One of the creatures drags its prey into the shadows. Fine- that's kind of scary. But as another one runs full tilt at Bond, he leaps on its back and jumps out of the pit. It's clearly a reference to the crocodile scene from Live and Let Die (which was done with real crocodiles, and is therefore 100 times more impressive) but it's also remarkably out of sync with the grounded tone of the film. Of course, if there wasn't some kind of embarrassing tonal shift in there somewhere, it just wouldn't be a Bond film. So in that respect, the komodo dragons were probably necessary.