I'm not going to get into it too deeply, but you cannot write off Silva as "another Bond villain."
I certainly didn't, and I don't know that anyone here has either.
The whole conceit is that he is their first serious post-9/11 baddie. The "non-state actor." M even has a big speech about it in the second half of the movie before Parliament...which is cut like TDK when the Joker is coming for Harvey Dent, Silva is coming for her. And why is that in-vogue right now? Because Nolan did that with the Joker and Bane in his last two Batman movies.
Wouldn't both LeChiffre and Green be considered both serious post-911 baddies and "non-state actors"?
Why would the idea of a killer coming for someone we're supposed to care about be in vogue? Because the revenge/assassination story, period, is one of the most popular plots in history/film/literature.
What do you mean it's cut like TDK? In montage?
They even introduce a fatherly figure who helped raise Bond after his parents died in his depressing home manor which is attacked. It is very heavily influenced by what Nolan did. To deny that is simply denial.
To say that this character is heavily inspired by Nolan's take on Alfred is reaching. It's essentially the same old cliche "caretaker with a gun" we've seen a dozen times before in other films. He doesn't seem to have any story impact on James in a moral sense, he functions as an exposition device, and as someone to interact with M. The manor home being burned down, that's a bit more obvious. That, yeah, that was probably inspired in some fashion, or at least shares some serious similarities to what Nolan did. It'd be difficult to write that scene and not recognize that a recent blockbuster has used this basic idea in a key sequence. But even then...we've seen the "someone returns to sad abandoned mansion filled with sheet-covered items" in plenty of other films. That element alone isn't neccessarily some brilliant concept Chris Nolan invented. Its a staple of certain types of literature.
Sorry, I took the "remake" language as hyperbole. That aside, I think you are downplaying the similarities and parallels a bit much as if they were simply coincidental.
No, I'm not saying they're all coincidental or I would have said that. I don't think they're all coincidental anymore than I think every single plot element is something that Mendes and the writers culled from Batman or Nolan's ideas.
The concepts of orphans, orphans going home, surrogate parents, villains setting traps for the authorities,...these existed long before The Dark Knight, Nolan's Batman series, and Batman and Bond in general. Suggesting that because Batman has some of these elements that Mendes and the writers must have taken these ideas from the recent Batman franchise...I can't agree with that. All that can be said is that basic similarities exist...which happens in film, literature, and art in general.
The point that the director has explicitly stated TDK's influence on Skyfall aside, the parallels accumulate into an overall pervasive influence.
I think "pervasive" is a bit much. The elements that are similar to anything Nolan has done are limited to a few key sequences, and quite limited in their scope. Mendes does something entirely different with almost every basic element that the films have in common. The rest of the film doesn't really directly resemble Nolan's approach/ideas so much.
If you critique them only one by one on a surface level, as you did, then of course each might be dismissed, but together they form a strong connection between the films that is really quite plain, I think.
I wasn't critiquing them on a surface level...more the opposite...I was discussing the details of them in order to point out that only in their basic similarities do they have much in common with The Dark Knight/Batman/Nolan connections.
Here's what Mendes said about Nolan's influence:
"In terms of what [Nolan] achieved, specifically ‘The Dark Knight,’ the second movie, what it achieved, which is something exceptional. It was a game changer for everybody," he explained about how it influenced his approach.
"We’re now in an industry where movies are very small or very big and there’s almost nothing in the middle," he continued. "And it would be a tragedy if all the serious movies were very small and all the popcorn movies were very big and have nothing to say. And what Nolan proved was that you can make a huge movie that is thrilling and entertaining and has a lot to say about the world we live in, even if, in the case with ‘The Dark Knight,’ it’s not even set in our world. If felt like a movie that was about our world post-9/11 and played on our fears and discussed our fears and why they existed and I thought that was incredibly brave and interesting. That did help give me the confidence to take this movie in directions that, without ‘The Dark Knight,’ might not have been possible. Because also, people go, ‘Wow, that’s pretty dark,’ but then you can point to ‘Dark Knight’ and go ‘Look at that – that’s a darker movie, and it took in a gazillion dollars!’ That’s very helpful. There’s also that thing – it’s clearly possible to make a dark movie that people want to see."
He's talking about the approach to making a blockbuster/action film that can be thrilling, entertaining and still serious, relevant and dark, not just about the story points he liked from The Dark Knight. He never mentions what Nolan does with the Joker, or the story itself. He's talking about Chris Nolan's use of subtext, themes and subject matter in a blockbuster movie. I think people are taking the "influence" idea a bit too far based on some vague story similarities that, in large part, Bond and Batman have always had.
