2. The Callbacks To The Older Films
Die Another Day was a very flawed piece of cinema but one of the more fun elements were the nods to every single Bond film that came before it, including a brief cameo by the jetpack from Thunderball, Gravess death mirroring that of Goldfingers, and a recreation of Honey Rider emerging from the sea in Dr No. With Skyfall, the callbacks are still there and still great fun but theyre much less gratuitous and quite a few of them make up parts of the narrative rather than just being in there for the sake of it. To name but a few: For Your Eyes Only gets name-checked very briefly, Q sarcastically mentions the exploding pen from Goldeneye, and one of the henchmen in the Shanghai casino looks a bit like Oddjob. But the biggest callback of the film is the reappearance of what is quite possibly the most iconic part of the franchise: James Bonds Aston Martin DB5. This ones not just there for the fanservice as it plays a massive role in the climax, being used by Bond and M to escape since its age means that theres no tracking device in it, and with Bond using the machine guns to cut down Silvas henchmen. And of course, Bond looks monumentally pissed off when Silva destroys it, with the loss of the car finally causing him to make the final decision to destroy Skyfall and decimate Silvas forces. Thats what you get when you blow up a perfectly good Aston Martin. When that garage door opened and the DB5 was revealed, I just sat there with my mouth hanging open. Ditto when Bond fired up the machine guns. That car is pure Bond and its only fitting that it played a big part in the 50th anniversary. Its just a shame that we never got to see the ejector seat and the bulletproof shield in action.