Raoul Silva – Skyfall
I don’ t think there ’ s another villain on this list that feels
more borrowed from The Dark Knight than Javier
Bardem’ s Raoul Silva . The character is practically
designed right from the Joker template. In the Joker
paradigm, the villain considers himself to be the
counterweight, the balance to an unsolvable equation .
Batman is an agent of order . The Joker is an agent of
chaos .
In Skyfall , James Bond represents order . He is a tool of
the establishment . An agent who begrudgingly does the
heavy lifting of his Government masters but still
believes in , and is willing to die for God and Country.
Silva represents the abandonment of that idea , the
notion that sacrifice is meaningless and that agents like
Bond are pawns in a political game that is more about
protecting interests than protecting citizens. There ’ s a
passage when the two characters first meet that gives
us a glimpse into Silva ’ s take on the yin /yang
relationship between them .
Raoul Silva : One summer , we went for a visit and
discovered the place had been infested with rats . They ’ d
come on a fishing boat and gorged themselves on coconut.
So how do you get rats off an island? Hmm ? My
grandmother showed me . We buried an oil drum and hinged
the lid . Then we wired coconut to the lid as bait and the
rats would come for the coconut and … they would fall into
the drum . And after a month, you have trapped all the rats ,
but what do you do then? Throw the drum into the ocean?
Burn it ? No . You just leave it and they begin to get hungry .
And one by one … they start eating each other until there are
only two left . The two survivors . And then what ? Do you kill
them ? No . You take them and release them into the trees ,
but now they don ’ t eat coconut anymore . Now, they only
eat rat . You have changed their nature. The two survivors .
This is what she made us.
The scene is reminiscent of the now classic
interrogation room scene where Batman and The Joker
first meet .
The Joker : Don ’ t talk like one of them . You ’ re not ! Even if
you ’ d like to be. To them , you ’ re just a freak , like me ! They
need you right now, but when they don ’ t , they ’ ll cast you
out , like a leper ! You see , their morals , their code, it ’ s a bad
joke . Dropped at the first sign of trouble . They ’ re only as
good as the world allows them to be. I ’ ll show you . When
the chips are down , these … these civilized people, they ’ ll
eat each other . See , I ’ m not a monster. I ’ m just ahead of
the curve .
It ’ s not difficult to draw parallels between these two
scenes. Even the most rudimentary aspects are carried
over from The Dark Knight into Skyfall. I use the
Skyfall example because it ’ s so damn obvious. There
are already a few people online who have gone to great
lengths comparing the two . What ’ s interesting is how
it’ s crept into other franchises .
