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Lizards in Movies   Skyfall  (2012)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   So far, this has been the most successful Bond movie of the franchise, making more than a billion dollars at the box office. It was also nominated for and won more Oscars than any other one, including the first Bond song ever to win an Oscar. } Throughout the franchise Bond has been threatened by all kinds of exotic animals, including alligators and crocodiles, a tarantula, a tiger, piranhas, sharks, and snakes. This film adds Komodo Dragons to the list, along with a nice drinking game scene with a scorpion. Daniel Craig is James Bond. His agency, M16, is in trouble, compromised from inside and out after someone stole a list of undercover agents. He goes to Macao to find out who has the list. We see him standing on a small boat motoring through illuminated dragon heads towards a large casino on an island. The entrance to the casino is also a dragon's head, and as soon as Bond enters the casino through the mouth of the dragon he sees a real dragon, or at least a giant lizard called a Komodo Dragon. It's in a large circular pit in the casino that patrons can look down into. The pit is full of candles and dragon statues to complete the mood. For me, a Komodo Dragon pit is way better than sharks with lasers. Even though the dragon pit seems to be simply a casino attraction, I'd bet that the villain throws an incompetant henchmen into it once in a while to get his money's worth. In the casino Bond picks up a suitcase full of cash, watches some gambling, then has a drink with a scarey Bond Girl who tells him that her boss's henchmen are going to kill him, but if he survives he can come to her boat and take a shower with her. Bond is now motivated. He fights with the bad guys above the dragon pit until one of them drags him over the side and they fall into the pit. We can see by the expression on his face that Bond is aware that the Komodo Dragons are dangerous. He even points to them, just in case the audience wonders about the big lizards, since nobody ever told us what they are. But Bond eventually loses the fight, gets thrown to the ground, and the bad guy takes his gun and aims it at Bond. Looks like no boat shower for James. But wait - when the bad guy tries to shoot Bond the gun won't fire because as the new Q told us earlier, the gun is protected by a sensor in the grip that is coded to Bond's palm print. (If it works as bad as my phone, I hope there's a way to enter a password into it, too.) As the bad guy makes faces at the worthless gun a huge Komodo Dragon sneaks over, bites onto his leg, and drags him off into a dark area where we see the man screaming and the light reflected in the eyes of the lizard. I like a happy ending. Then a second dragon runs out of the shadows past Bond to get his share of that tasty bad guy. In one of the most creative uses of the largest species of lizard in the world that I've seen in a movie to this date, Bond jumps on the lizard's back, using it like a trampoline to get enough height that he can leap up and pull himself out of the pit. (This reminds me of when Bond ran stepping on the backs of floating alligators and crocodiles in Live and Let Die.) No lizards were harmed in the making of this movie. Komodo Dragons are dangerous and endangered and rare outside of a few islands in Indonesia, so there's no way they could use real ones for the scene. According to James Bond Memes, the filmmakers filmed Raja, a Komodo Dragon living at the London Zoo, then re-created the big lizard using CGI for the dragon pit fight scene. It's all some very impressive movie magic. The murky candle-lit cinematography, beautiful as it is, may have made it hard for the audience to see what was going on in the pit, but I like a movie that doesn't need to over-explain the threat of giant lizards to us. We figured that out ourselves. You can usually watch the scene somewhere on YouTube. Try this link.