Those who have seen Sam Mendes Bond film 'Skyfall' will doubtless have gazed wide-eyed at villain Raoul Silva's island HQ. -- from Daniel Craig’s confident return as 007 to Javier Bardem’s scene-stealing turn as the villainous Silva -- that virtually no one has discussed that remote, bombed-out island Bardem’s character used as his base. Severine (Berenice Marlohe) explains that the power monger spread rumors of a chemical leak on the island, evacuating the residents and leaving him the lair. According to Yahoo’s UK Movies site, that’s a fairly accurate retelling of what happened on the actual island Mendes was inspired by.
While the area was rebuilt for the shooting of Skyfall, the island of Gunkanjima does actually exist. It is located nine miles off of the coast of Nagasaki, and prospered in the 1950s due to the presence of coal and the Mitsubishi company. But as the site says, Mitsubishi eventually abandoned the island when petroleum “took over as Japan’s fuel choice,” decimating the island city and leaving it to decay. Cinematographer Roger Deakins and his cameras were able to make it beautiful, but as a real-life area it kind of sucks.
Aerial view (Copyright: Gakuranman)
Tower blocks (Copyright: Gakuranman)Workers were housed on the site
Don't look down (Copyright: Gakuranman)
Beautiful decay (Copyright: Gakuranman)Cinematographer Roger Deakins shot the approach and some external shots there, but much of it was rebuilt at Pinewood. These shots, taken by urban explorer and blogger Gakuranman, show the ghost city in all its eerie glory, the perfect lair for a modern Bond villain.
