The plot appears to involve a character named Silva who seeks vengeance on “M” (Judi Dench). The first teasers for the film are now surfacing and intimate that Bond has a death and resurrection-like experience. The pre-credit shows Bond being shot “dead” on top of a moving train and he plummets to his death under water.

His “death” is just an artifice for story-telling (he does not truly die). Bond needs to appear to the world to be “dead” in order to operate covertly. Nevertheless an analogy for death and resurrection is embedded in Skyfall.

A snippet in one of the trailers has this exchange of dialogue between Bond and his nemesis Silva:

Bond: “everybody needs a hobby.”

Silva: “So what’s your hobby?”

Bond: “Resurrection.”

It may also be that motifs about atonement for “past sins” will be peppered throughout the film. The film trailer shows “M” peering at a computer flat-screen monitor which has this message: “Think On Your Sins”.

(For the relevant trailer “First Full Skyfall Trailer” go here, or better still see the official film website and click the US trailer).

While Bond is one of the most amoral hero-action figures around, it seems that Skyfall can be added to the list of death-resurrection analogies abounding in different facets of pop culture. In chapter 4 of The Cross Is Not Enough we discuss a few selected morsels of death-resurrection analogies in film, cult TV series, comic-books, poems, novels and Shakespearean plays. Check out our book if it piques your interest.

Callan

When we wrote The Cross Is Not Enough it was much longer than what was eventually published. In chapter four where we explore analogies of Christ’s resurrection in pop culture, we also spoke about Callan and The Eagle: A Crime Odyssey (Ørnen: en krimi odyssey). Space limitations meant we had to drop them out.

RESURRECTION IN CALLAN

Edward Woodward (1930-2009), (starred in The Wicker Man, Breaker Morant, The Equalizer) was the star of the British cult-TV series Callan (1967-72).  Callan is an espionage agent working for a mysterious government agency merely known as the Section. At the end of the second series the story ended on a cliff-hanger: Callan is wounded and very close to death.

The first episode of the third series of Callan is called, “Where Else Could I Go?” It opens with Callan having recuperated from his wounds. His boss Colonel Hunter muses: Does Callan still have what it takes to be ruthless? Hunter says to a subordinate James Cross that he will give Callan three days to see what happens. Cross who is skeptical says, “It will take a miracle.” Hunter retorts, “Resurrections usually are.”

Notice that Hunter allows for three days for Callan’s metaphorical resurrection?

RESURRECTION IN THE EAGLE: A CRIME ODYSSEY

The Eagle: A Crime Odyssey (Ørnen: en krimi odyssey) won the International Emmy Award for the best non-American drama series in 2005. The Eagle is the nickname of Hallgrim Hallgrimsson a half-Icelandic and half-Danish lead investigator of the RSA an International Criminal Investigation Unit. In episode eight Hallgrim is stabbed in the chest and in hospital dies and undergoes a near death experience (NDE). After Hallgrim returns to his body some of his colleagues gather around his hospital bed. His subordinate colleague Villy Frandsen opens a bottle of wine and offers a toast: “To Hallgrim’s resurrection.”

Both Callan and Hallgrim Hallgrimsson have experiences that take them to the threshold of death. Both return to fullness of life. Both characters are flawed men. Their work in espionage and international police work involves frequent violence and sometimes dubious ethics. They seem very unlikely to qualify as Messianic figures. Nevertheless the scripts of both stories make allusions that echo Christ’s resurrection.

Check out our book and especially chapter four to see other examples we discuss. Can you think of any other resurrection analogies from TV series or movies? Drop us a note below.

Well, we don’t think so. In The Cross Is Not Enough we talk about Captain Jack Harkness who is the lead character in Torchwood.  He acts at times like a Christ figure who saves others, indeed saves the whole world.

A key clue is that in several stories Jack dies and is resurrected from the dead. If you didn’t realise it, Jack’s death and resurrection is a veiled analogy to Christ’s Resurrection.

WHO IS CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS?

Captain Jack Harkness was created by the Scottish television writer and producer Steven Moffatt. He is played by the Scottish-born American-raised actor John Barrowman.

Captain Jack, as he is also known, began life not in Torchwood but in the BBC’s long-running series Doctor Who. Its in the 2005 series that Captain Jack first appears and he shares five episodes with the Doctor, and the Doctor’s assistant Rose Tyler.

In the story “The Empty Child“, Captain Jack turns up on earth during the London Blitz of 1941. He seems to be an American-born volunteer who serves as an officer-pilot in the R.A.F. That is when he encounters the Doctor. As that story unfolds, its revealed that he is a human being but actually comes from the 51st century. In that futuristic time he worked as a Time Agent but then through a chain of events became a con-artist selling off pieces of technology to the highest bidder. He tries to hide in the twentieth century to evade being arrested.

CAPTAIN JACK’S RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD

Captain Jack and the Doctor initially harbour doubts about each other but as they share in subsequent adventures they become good friends. Under the Doctor’s mentoring, Captain Jack is transformed from feeling like a coward to being a man of action who says “no” to evil.

In the final story of the 2005 series — “The Parting of the Ways“– the Doctor, Captain Jack and Rose Tyler are pitted against the power of the Doctor’s most formidable and evil enemy the Daleks.

The Daleks kill Captain Jack in the climactic battle. However, Rose Tyler amazingly intervenes. She accessed the power of the time vortex out of the Doctor’s time-travel capsule the TARDIS. Using this power Rose pours energy into Captain Jack’s corpse and astoundingly he is resurrected back to life again. Unfortunately for Captain Jack he is left behind as the Doctor and Rose rush away after the battle.

As we discover from later stories in Doctor Who, Captain Jack used a time-vortex manipulator and travelled back in time to the earth. He wants to be reunited with the Doctor and he knows that when the earth gets into huge trouble the Doctor always returns.

TORCHWOOD

Before Captain Jack manages to become reunited with the Doctor he lives a new kind of life on earth during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Torchwood (unscramble the letters and you get “Doctor Who”) developed as an adult spin-off series from Doctor Who. The Torchwood Institute is the name of a secret organisation that hunts down aliens who threaten the earth. Captain Jack leads the Torchwood team in an underground base in Cardiff, Wales.

Throughout the four series of Torchwood we learn more about Captain Jack’s life, and we see him in different stories saving others in a Christ-like fashion. He also experiences death and resurrection a few times but that’s something we’ll chat more about in the next post.