Trivia / Skyfall

• All-Star Cast: Stars an unusually high number of award-winning actors for a Bond movie, including: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Helen McCrory, and Albert Finney.
• Ascended Fanon: Bond coming from a huge manor is an idea originally floated in John Pearson's strange 1973 book James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007.
• Banned in China: It is actually censored for a scene where Bond himself kills a Chinese security guard and for the parts where Sévérine mentions of being a child prostitute in Macau.
• Billing Displacement: Sévérine is plastered all over promotional materials for the film and is heavily implied to be the main romantic lead. However, her screentime in a two-hour movie is about fifteen minutes, and she lasts just long enough to reveal her tragic abusive background, and is murdered by Silva in front of an indifferent Bond. Eve, meanwhile, is far more significant to the plot and stays around from beginning to end, but her face never appears on any posters, and she's only in the TV spots for about a split second. This might be to hide the twist regarding her true identity.
• California Doubling: No actor went to Shanghai, only cameramen to get nice views of the city.
  • The Ascot Racecourse doubles for the interior of Shanghai Pudong International Airport.
  • The penthouse pool at Shanghai is in Canary Wharf at London.
  • Broadgate Tower at London doubles for a random skyscraper in Shanghai.
  • The scenes of Bond dealing with Patrice and the interior of the Macau casino were filmed at Pinewood Studios, England.
  • Bond's arrival at the Macau casino with Chinese New Year dragons and lanterns was filmed on the Thames in London.
• Darkhorse Casting: French actress and model Bérénice Marlohe (who pretty much only did bit characters on French TV and in French films up to this point, so not even that well known in France itself) was cast as the film's main Bond girl.
• Deleted Role: M's assistant Vanessa is cut almost entirely from the early MI6 scenes.
• Deleted Scene: Approximately 10 minutes of footage was taken out before the final cut due to run-time. The following scenes were filmed but removed:
  • A shot of Bond running through Regent's Park as he prepares for his MI6 evaluation.
  • An exchange between M and Mallory when she quips Bond being in the South China Sea is precise intelligence.
  • An establishing scene with Sévérine at the airport in Shanghai, where she gives Patrice the equipment case on the escalators.
  • Exposition scenes that explained what Sévérine is doing when we see Patrice carry out the assassination for Silva: she sets up targets interested in buying stolen paintings only for them to be assassinated and the money stolen.
  • A procession of hearses and producer Michael G. Wilson's cameo as a pall bearer at the funeral service for the MI-6 agents. Also, shots of dead and wounded MI-6 agents following the explosion were cut.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Javier Bardem dyed his hair blonde to play Silva.
  • Naomie Harris spent six weeks training with a professional barber and several more practicing on crew members to prepare for the scene where Eve shaves Bond.
• Easter Egg: If you pay close attention to the title sequence, Silva's torture is in there too, right after the Chinese dragons. Notably, it's fire themed, as opposed to Bond's parts, which started with a water theme. It has flashes of Silva's screaming face and a shot of him tied to a chair.
• Fake Nationality: Bond's unnamed Turkish lover is played by Greek actress Tonia Sotiropoulou.
• Fake Scot:
  • Bond is established here as a half-Scot who grew up in a Scottish manor, and he's played by an Englishman. Ironically, Fleming's original conception of Bond was as an Englishman, but he was so impressed by Sean Connery's performances in the early Bond films that he gave Bond Scottish ancestry in his book canon.
  • English-born Albert Finney plays Kincaid with a Scottish accent.
• Hey, It's That Place!: This is one of many films to shoot its London Underground scenes at the disused Charing Cross Jubilee Line platforms.
• Lying Creator: In the months leading up to the release, Naomie Harris denied that her character is Moneypenny. Turned out she is.
• Milestone Celebration: The film was released in 2012, the 50th anniversary of Bond in film. In honor of this, the movie's cast was first revealed on Nov. 3, 2011; the exact date fifty years previous that Sean Connery was first announced to be Bond in Dr. No, and the film itself contains multiple references to previous films in the series. And prior to the closing credits a special 50th anniversary logo is shown above "James Bond will return."
• Missing Trailer Scene: A brief clip of Bond jogging (presumably, part of his "back-to-work" training) is in the teaser, but not the film.
• No Stunt Double: Daniel Craig performed the stunt of leaping and sliding down the escalator rail himself.
• On-Set Injury: Daniel Craig ruptured both of his calf muscles during the rehearsal period, whereupon rescheduling took place requiring two weeks rest for his injuries.
• The Other Darrin: This is the first Bond film to feature Q and Moneypenny since Die Another Day ten years prior; unsurprisingly, they are now played by much younger actors and are more involved in the story.
• Playing with Character Type: While he's at first portrayed in a way that leaves ambiguous the possibility of him being one of the bad guys as a Red Herring, Mallory ends up being a normally office-bound senior spy who can go out into the field to support his man when the chips are down (and in the next film takes down a treasonous mole and formally arrests Oberhauser). Keep all of this in mind when you remember that he's portrayed by the same man who played Lord Voldemort and Amon Goethe.
• Recycled Script: It's similar in concept to The World Is Not Enough; both involve an abduction victim left to their fate by M, whom they view as a quasi-maternal figure, and M is forced to deal with the consequences of her decisions when said victim wants revenge. They are also the only Bond movies where M is actually part of the story rather than just giving Bond his briefing and sending him on his way. Both also feature scenes in Istanbul as well as a chase scene in London (a rarity for the franchise, despite London being in nearly every film), an explosion at the MI6 building, MI-6 being temporarily relocated, Bond recovering from a shoulder injury sustained in the Bond Cold Open, the introduction of a new Q, a female lackey who is terrified of her male terrorist employer, Bond being held captive in a chair by the Big Bad, the Big Bad using Bond to get to M, Bond pursuing a villain underground, a helicopter destroying Bond's car, Bond using gas to blow up a helicopter, and the bad guy being impaled by a metallic object.
• The Red Stapler:
  • The demand for the Wild and Wolf scrabble mug Q was using in the film soared soon after the movie's release.
  • As did the china bulldog paperweight. Royal Doulton couldn't make them fast enough.
  • And straight razors.
  • The color correction on the film posters set off a trend of men wearing blue tuxedos^note in the film itself, Bond wears a tuxedo in traditional midnight blue, which looks "blacker than black".
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • The chase through Istanbul was meant for The World Is Not Enough, but abandoned due to civil unrest in the city.
  • M being Killed Off for Real and Moneypenny being re-introduced appeared in early drafts for Quantum of Solace.
• Saved from Development Hell: Production stalled for a while as MGM went bankrupt and Eon decided to wait until the studio got back on their feet. The entire creative team agrees that the delay gave them the time to fine tune the script. Plus, the eventual release date ended up coinciding with the franchise's 50th anniversary.
• Spared by the Cut: M's assistant Vanessa originally had a more prominent role. She was to be on duty at MI6 HQ while M went to see Mallory. Telling Tanner about the MI6 computer attack, she was also to be the person discovering M's computer hacked by Silva's images before being killed in the explosion.
• Technology Marches On: Played for Laughs. The radio tracker Bond receives looks like the one he was given in Goldfinger. Back in 1964, such a device was a state-of-the-art high tech gadget. In 2012, it's explicitly ordinary and for some reason it's slightly bigger.
  Bond: Latest thing from Q-Branch. It's called a radio.
• What Could Have Been: Enough for its own page.
• Working Title: Once Upon a Spy, Silver Bullet, Magic 44, A Killing Moon, and Nothing is Forever.

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