Skyfall - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Skyfall or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Skyfall

[nora]

M's office at the end of the movie is a recreation of the original office from the earlier Bond movies. However, the ship painting that had been above the fireplace behind the desk was now between the windows, and a picture of the new MI6 building hangs in its place.

[stephanie]

For the destruction of the Aston Martin DB5, the production crew did not rely on the real car. Instead, the model shop turned to a German company that created parts of the car utilizing vintage 3-D printer technology. The built model was at a 1:3 scale, and then destroyed in front of the cameras.

[melinda]

During principal photography, three Turkish youths bypassed tight security in Adana, Turkey, to infiltrate a closed film set, where they filmed footage of a train scene being shot with their mobile phones. Fitting of the intrigue from the earlier Turkey-set Bond movie From Russia with Love (1963), the three snuck through alleyways and jumped a wire fence into a train station where this movie was being filmed. The trio slipped under train cars and rendezvoused at the repair depot, where they went into spy disguise and put on off-duty worker's helmets and overalls. They were later caught by security, interrogated, and removed from the set.

[michele]

Dame Judi Dench played the role of M in this film at the age of seventy-seven. The performance is also Dench's seventh time playing M. This is Dench's largest on-screen role playing M, the most significant James Bond film ever to explore a relationship between M and James Bond. Producer Barbara Broccoli says that the film explores this relationship perhaps more than in any of the twenty-two previous films. She has said, "We wanted to really mine the relationship between Bond and M, because it is the most significant relationship he has in his life. M is the only person who represents authority to him. You have two extraordinary actors, and we just thought, let's go all the way. It's worked extremely well. It's a very emotional story."

[chris]

Screenwriter Peter Morgan left the production when development was suspended, due to MGM's bankruptcy. Morgan later declared that ideas from his first draft were still retained by the Logan, Purvis, and Wade screenwriting team, including the film's "big hook". Character and plot details from the script were kept under tight wraps during principal photography, with the names and identities of several characters, such as those played by Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris and Albert Finney, being kept a secret for several months. The script was heavily revised by John Logan, even throughout filming. When filming wrapped, it had been revised thirteen times since the third draft.

[clayton]

Numerous cast members, playing smaller parts in the movie, never received a script with which to work, due to the production's strict secrecy protocols, so stringent and tight that they reflect real-life intelligence espionage. Tonia Sotiropoulou did not know what she would be doing in the film until the time her scenes were shot. She commented, "I was one of the people who never had a script. I just got told what I'd be doing on the set by the director. They have to be so careful. You have quite strict contracts that say you can't say anything about the plot, and everyone respects that."

[kristina]

With the cooperation and assistance of the London Mayor's Office and Transportation For London, the production was able to shut down Vauxhall Bridge and Millbank for a scene where M witnesses a terrorist attack on MI6 Headquarters. The explosion of the MI6 Headquarters was represented by a few fireworks on the day, but then an MI6 model miniature was built at one-third scale on the backlot at Pinewood Studios, where long-time Bond special effects expert Chris Corbould, this film's special effects and miniature effects supervisor, used twenty-eight explosives to replicate the attack.

[richard]

A sizable amount of the film's story takes place below London's street surface, an underground environment that is based on what was historically known as "The Churchill Bunker System". During World War II, many government offices were relocated underground for protection from German bombing during "The Blitz". Here, after MI6 Headquarters is the subject of a terrorist attack, M makes the decision to relocate underground, just like Winston Churchill did during World War II.

[bernard]

The film is partly set in Istanbul, Turkey. Turkish producer Ali Akdeniz, who has worked on The World is Not Enough (1999) and this movie, says that the location of this part of the film was particularly chosen as an homage to Bond's connections with Istanbul, once known as "The City of Spies". Ian Fleming once visited Istanbul in June 1955 for an Interpol conference, which he was covering on behalf of "The Sunday Times". The event provided a setting, and much background information for his Bond novel of From Russia with Love (1963). For example, Fleming met Nazim Kalkavan, an Oxford educated man who inspired the Darko Kerim character. Also, while there, Fleming covered the "Istanbul Pogroms" (The Great Riot of Istanbul), which was published in "The Sunday Times" on September 11, 1955. When Fleming left the conference, he travelled by train, commenting that the experience was drab because there had been no dining car. Interestingly, this movie and From Russia with Love (1963) involve trains, the London subway tube, and a Turkish train in Adana in this movie, and the Orient Express in From Russia with Love (1963).

[fred]

The opening train action sequence was originally planned to be shot in the Sabarmati railway yard of the Konkan Railway in India. However, delays in getting permission to film there, with the many complex problems, meant the sequence was not filmed there. South Africa was considered to film this sequence, but in the end, it was shot in Turkey.

[gerald]

Vehicles featured in the film include: a Range Rover Vogue SE; a 3.0 L V6 Diesel Jaguar XJ L; a Range Rover Evoque; black 2007 Audi A5 B8 cars; a Mercedes-Benz; a Stornoway metallic grey Land Rover Defender 110 wheelbase double cab ute; a 320D L Cat Hydraulic Excavator; 1998 Volkswagen Typ 1C Beetles; an Agusta Westland Merlin AW101 helicopter; various Honda CRF 250R motorcycles, and the classic James bond car, the silver birch Aston Martin DB5.

[jamie]

The first James Bond film where M (or any top-ranking MI6 official) dies on-screen.

[fred]

Sixth appearance in the official James Bond franchise of the classic silver birch Aston Martin DB5 car. The film marks the return of the vehicle, which first appeared in Goldfinger (1964), and last appeared, very briefly, in Quantum of Solace (2008). The DB5 has also appeared in Thunderball (1965), GoldenEye (1995), and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). The car also features in the James Bond video games James Bond in Agent Under Fire (2001), 007 Racing (2000), James Bond 007: Bloodstone (2010), and From Russia with Love (2005), but not in the tie-in video game 007 Legends (2012), which has instead the Aston Martin DBS. The license plate number of the DB5 in this film is BMT 216A, the same as it was in Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965), the complex, out of which the car drives, resembling that from Goldfinger (1964). The famous DB series of Aston Martin cars is named after Sir David Brown. Brown was an entrepreneur, adventurer, and chairman of Aston Martin from the late 1940s to the 1970s.

[kenneth]

Third James Bond movie to film in Japan. Hashima Island was for shooting Silva's island lair. The first Bond film to lens in Japan, where the largest amount of filming was done, was for You Only Live Twice (1967). The second was for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), where filming was done there, to get shots of exotic fish in Okinawa.

[jim]

The first James Bond film to be released in the IMAX format. Unlike most films blown up for an IMAX release, the film did not go through their DMR (Digital Media Remastering) process, as cinematographer Roger Deakins thought that the film's image quality was high enough to make it unnecessary. Deakins has said they "...shot 2.35:1 (aspect ratio), but because of the size of the chip, you have so much space top and bottom, that basically I shot it for both formats. The IMAX was clean, and the image quality is fantastic, because you're using the full size of the chip. So I had seen a lot of tests, and was blown away by the IMAX. We did a 4K finish, and it's down rez'd to 2K after that. It quite surprised me, the fantastic quality." Films shot in IMAX have an aspect ratio of 1.44:1 which takes up the entire IMAX screen. Skyfall wasn't shot in IMAX, but the aspect ratio of the IMAX "Skyfall" prints, is 1.90:1 compared to standard theater "Skyfall" prints, which have an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The IMAX image is twenty-six percent larger at the top and bottom of the frame than the screen image in conventional theaters, thereby giving audiences a taller depth of field to view.

[willard]

Daniel Craig's third outing playing James Bond. Craig's first was Casino Royale (2006) and his second was Quantum of Solace (2008). The film is Daniel Craig's first James Bond film not to use an original Ian Fleming story for its title, as his first two Bond movies used Fleming titles.

[charlie]

Stuntman Gary Powell, and other members of his family, have worked on every EON Productions official series Bond movie since Dr. No (1962). Father and uncle Nosher Powell and Dinny Powell worked on all the early 1960s and 1970s Bonds with Sir Sean Connery and George Lazenby; brother Greg Powell worked on the 1970s and 1980s Bonds with Sir Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton, and Gary has worked on all of the 1990s and 2000s Bonds with Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, as well as this one, the first Bond movie of the 2010s.

[fred]

For the motorcycle chase in Turkey, Coca-Cola was sprayed on the tarmac of the streets in Istanbul to keep the bikes from sliding. While Coca-Cola is not an official product placement in the movie, there was a Coke Zero marketing campaign that tied in with the movie. Coke Zero would have been less effective, as the sugar in Coca-Cola makes it sticky.

[linda]

The name of the World War II-era French song heard playing on Silva's island lair is "Boum!", and is sung by French singer and songwriter Charles Trenet. The song won the Grand Prix du Disque, and was released in 1938.