Chapter 8 Fighting on the Home Front: Skyfall (2012) and James Bond’s London
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Whereas the city of London mainly served as a safe haven and as the backdrop for expository scenes in the early James Bond films, it has acquired a more prominent role within the most recent films in the series. Skyfall (2012), in particular, saw a significant departure from the franchise’s traditional reliance on exotic locations and based nearly a third of its running time in the British capital. At the same time, the notion of Bond’s ‘coming home’ (which serves as a dominant motif in the film) coincides with a paradigm shift in post-9/11 geopolitics. The article traces these developments by assessing Skyfall’s depiction of London and how the film negotiates and adapts classic Bond tropes in the ‘age of terrorism.’