MI-6 agents in Istanbul James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) are after a mercenary named Patrice (Ola Rapace), who has stolen a hard drive containing information about undercover agents. Bond and Patrice fight atop a moving train and M (Judi Dench) orders Moneypenny to shoot Patrice despite the fact that she doesn’t have a clear shot. The bullet strikes Bond instead and he falls into a river. He is presumed dead and Patrice gets away.
Three months later there is an inquiry about M’s handling of the case and she is pressured to retire by Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. Her servers are hacked and M receives a taunt online just before the MI-6 building explodes. Bond, who has been self-retired all this time comes out of hiding and returns to help M. He fails the medical, physical, and psychological exams, but M approves his reinstatement anyway. He is to identify Patrice’s boss, recover the hard drive, and retire Patrice. Q (Ben Whishaw) gives him a radio beacon and a Walther PPK.
In Shanghai, he follows Patrice and sees him kill a target. They fight and Patrice falls to his death before Bond can learn anything. Moneypenny joins the investigation. Bond finds a casino token that leads him to a casino in Macau. There, he is approached by Sévérine (Berenice Marlohe), who works for Patrice. She wears the tattoo of a sex-slave. She warns him about her bodyguards but promises to help him if he kills her employer. He defeats the guards and joins her on her yacht, the Chimera. They sail to an island off the coast, where they are delivered to Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). He had once been an MI-6 agent but became a cyberterrorist and was behind the attack on MI-6. He kills Sévérine, but Bond alerts MI-6 and Silva is captured and taken to Britain.
At the new underground MI-6 headquarters, Q tries to decrypt Silva’s laptop but that allows Silva to escape. Q guesses that Silva allowed himself to be captured as part of a plan to kill M, who betrayed him to the Chinese in 1997, letting him be tortured and disfigured. Bond chases him through the London Underground and prevents him from attacking a Parliamentary Inquiry where M is located. Telling Q and Bill Tanner (Rory Kinnear) to leave an electronic trail Silva can follow, Bond takes M to Skyfall, his childhood home in Scotland, in his Aston Martin DB5. Helped by the gamekeeper Kincade (Albert Finney), they set up booby traps. Silva’s men arrive and Bond, M, and Kincade kill most of them, but M is wounded. Silva arrives with helicopters.
Bond sends M and Kincade through a priest hole tunnel to a nearby chapel and rigs propane tanks to explode, destroying the helicopter and the house as well. Silva corners M and tries to die with her, but Bond puts a throwing knife into Silva’s back and kills him. M dies in Bond’s arms from her wounds. Moneypenny becomes secretary to Mallory, the new M, and Bond turns up for work.
The film was directed by Sam Mendes and written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and John Logan. It was released on the 50th anniversary of Dr. No and was a success with both critics and audiences. It was nominated for five Oscars and won two. The music was by Thomas Newman and the Skyfall theme-song by Adele won the Oscar for Best Song.
Surprisingly, this was only the second movie in which Bond has been shot. Daniel Craig and Queen Elizabeth appeared in a movie promotion at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, in which they take off in a helicopter at Buckingham Palace and stunt doubles skyfall into the stadium—the Queen’s first acting role unless you count her whole life. In the film, Craig performs a great many of his own stunts, including the opening fight on the rooftop of a moving train. There were 85 Tom Ford suits made for the opening chase, for him and the stunt-doubles. The fall from the bridge is technically called a Skyfall jump, which has taken place in a dozen Bond movies.
Dame Judi Dench had a cellphone on set that played the James Bond theme, breaking everyone up when it rang. M’s home was that of long-time Bond composer John Barry. Raoul Silva is modelled after the Joker from The Dark Knight. Skyfall is also the title of a science-fiction book by Harry Harrison. This was the first time an Aston Martin DB5 was blown up in a Bond movie, but it wasn’t a real car; it was 3-D printed. This was also the first time that a character in a Bond movie says “fuck” in an audible way. The actor saying this was Dame Judi Dench. After the scene in which Moneypenny gives Bond an erotic shave with a straight razor, sales of that item increased 400%.