Quentin Tarantino Doesn't Like Daniel Craig's Skyfall For One Reason

When "Skyfall" debuted in 2012, it was an inescapable movie phenomenon. The first film in the "007" series to be directed by Sam Mendes, it was widely lauded as one of the best installments in franchise history. The third movie to star Daniel Craig as the super spy grossed a whopping $1.1 billion, making it the highest-selling James Bond film to date. But despite the universal critical praise it received (it has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes), "Skyfall" doesn't have a fan in writer-director Quentin Tarantino. In an interview (via The Telegraph), the "Pulp Fiction" filmmaker suggested the pic was missing something. "To me, it felt more like an action movie than a Bond movie," the Oscar winner said.

"Skyfall" (which almost featured two James Bonds) is indeed an action movie, but that's a feature, not a bug. As critics pointed out, the film features some of the franchise's best action sequences, with many praising Mendes for modernizing the series. In fact, critics were generally pleased that "Skyfall" wasn't another generic "Bond" picture and commended Mendes for trying to do something new with the character.

"This is a brilliant reboot of the canon, mixing a sense of melancholy, the shock of changing times and the darkness of loss with thrillingly staged chase and fight scenes and clever references to all that has come before," wrote San Jose Mercury News critic Charlie McCollum. Bringing "Skyfall," Craig's third film as Bond, to life was complicated and chaotic, but it was well worth it as the actor and Mendes breathed new life into the character.

"Skyfall" is consistently listed as one of the best "James Bond" films of all time, while its follow-up, "Spectre," is considered to be middle-of-the-road and average at best. Sam Mendes' second foray into Bond's world was met with mixed-to-positive reviews upon release, with many critics finding it to be an uneventful retread that dialed up the melancholy and moodiness of its predecessor without adding anything new to the formula. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 63% critics rating — a sharp drop from the 92% "Skyfall" scored on the review aggregator.

Surprisingly, Quentin Tarantino actually prefers "Spectre." During an appearance on the "ReelBlend" podcast, Tarantino once again vocalized his disinterest in "Skyfall" while praising its 2015 follow-up. "I thought 'Skyfall' was like, 'This whole f**king movie's ending at a shootout in a f***ing cabin? This is a 'James Bond' movie?" he said, explaining why he felt the 2012 film's finale was underwhelming. "That's not James f**king Bond! From the opening action sequence in 'Spectre' on, it was like, 'Now this is a James Bond movie.'"

Tarantino is right — that opening sequence during the Day of the Dead was action-packed, but many fans and critics believe that the 2015 film fell off after that initial scene. The "Django Unchained" creative's comments are interesting, but not at all surprising considering he has a complicated relationship with the 007 films as a whole. Tarantino wasn't impressed with the first two "James Bond" films and only started to get into the franchise with "Goldfinger."