The official teaser trailer for the latest James Bond film, ‘Skyfall’, has finally arrived—but as it happens, it’s a shaken mess of images that create more questions than they answer. Who, what, or where is Skyfall? The trailer doesn’t tell us, but it promises one hell of a high-octane ride to the answer.
The trailer begins with 007 (Daniel Craig) playing a sort of word-association game with a government psychologist while his bosses look on from behind a two-way mirror. When the psychologist says, “Skyfall?”, Bond hesitates before replying, “Done”, and leaving the room. Then the barrage of images begins as try to figure out what it is about this word that has unnerved our favorite dashing agent.
We see shots of China and what could be the wilds of England. There are plenty of explosions and gunshots, a row of coffins draped in the English flag, and one of Bond’s leading ladies, Eve (Naomie Harris) shaving his face. More mayhem, someone falling, helicopters whirring. At the end of the trailer, Bond intones, “Some men are coming to kill us. We’re going to kill them first.” (We don’t see the person to whom he’s speaking.)
By the end of the trailer, we’re no closer to knowing just what this latest Bond outing is going to be about, or what the title is referring to; since the script is an original story and not an adaptation of any of Ian Fleming’s novels, it looks like we’ll just have to sit back and chew on these images for another few months until a longer trailer comes our way.
In any case, ‘Skyfall’ surely can’t be much worse than the last Bond film, ‘Quantum of Solace’, which managed to be so thoroughly unimpressive that it took four years and a massive change of direction to reboot this rebooted franchise. Hopefully this time, the change will stick, because Bond has been sorely missed.
