Just saw the new Bond movie, Skyfall. What a butt-stupid movie!
Whoever wrote that thing should be fired, all three of them!
(Which means they’re now Hollywood’s go-to directors of choice and will write half the films coming out in the next three-five years since the movie made a zillion bucks!)
Total, Utter and Complete SPOILERS! (Just stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled!)
Not kidding!
Okay. When I use the words “plot” and “Skyfall”, I’m using these words in the loosest possible connection to each other; because, for all intensive purposes, this movie doesn’t have a plot, just a rambling semi-coherent narrative.
I think it’s best to just take it from the Villain’s side. So here’s the Villain’s “plan”…
I (the villain) am a former Double-Oh agent who was left to rot by M in a Chinese prison and tortured to the point where I’m pretty crazy. (And apparently bisexual…) I eventually escaped, and decided there is nothing I want more in the world than to kill M for screwing me over.
(So far, pretty reasonable, I can see where this came from. But…)
So, in order to get revenge on M (and only M!) I become the greatest computer hacker in the world and make myself astoundingly rich and powerful on a global scale with a mercenary army.
(Well, I guess it would take power to take down someone like M…)
Then I hire a super-assassin to steal a hard-drive from British agents, which contains the list of undercover British agents throughout the world. This assassin is one of only three in the world who uses a special type of custom bullet, and I know fragments of one of these bullets will be lodged in James Bond when he tries to stop my assassin. (And apparently, my super-assassin ONLY used his special bullets on Bond as he tried really hard to kill him, not the other four agents or numerous bystanders he killed…Or at least nobody in the forensics team bothered to run a check on the super-special bullets my assassin was spraying everywhere…)
(Err….)
Meanwhile, I will blow up M’s office (while she’s out, since I want her to suffer) in MI6 forcing them to switch to their backup headquarters in the London underground bunker system. This will also cause M to be put on trial for incompetence.
(But, what if they switched to another location beside the bunker? You haven’t been active for years and….okay, I’ll just go with it…)
Then, M will send James Bond after the assassin, and he’ll see the assassin kill some guy who likes art, and kill him, but at the same time Bond will see my femme fatale former-Macau prostitute girlfriend in the next building and find the poker-chip I gave the assassin for payment in his assassin kit. He’ll use that poker-chip to travel to a casino and find my girlfriend, seduce her, and she’ll lead him to me! Smart, right? (Oh, and I’ll have lots of people try to kill him really hard while this is going on.)
Then, my girlfriend will bring Bond to my private island where I will ask him to become my bitch, then give him a gun and he’ll kill all my guards and take me prisoner.
(I hate it when that happens.)
So I will be taken to the London MI6 backup base where I will be put in a plexiglass and plastic cell in the middle of a stone room under a bright light because I have magnet superpowers that can open locks. (Oh wait, that’s Magneto! Nevermind!) But you see, this is all part of my clever plan! For you see, I wanted to be caught! I wanted them to bring me and my harddrives into the MI6 base so that when they decrypt my hard-drives it will cause all the doors to open and let me escape into the London tube system. (Which is why I wanted them to switch to their backup base.)
There, my men will meet me (because I arranged all of this beforehand) and give me a police uniform so that I can travel by subway to meet other men halfway across London in a car and attack the courtroom where M is under review (which is also part of my clever plan) and kill her and a bunch of nobody government ministers.
Foolproof! The perfect revenge!
(end of plan)
So, as you can see, the villain’s entire “plan” is basically praying that a bunch of co-incidences happen and he gets a chance to meet M and kill her.
This for the man that was capable to blowing up her office with her in it (which he didn’t do), and who had a list that pretty much every country and intelligence broker in the world wanted. (Why not just offer to give it to the one that brought him M? Who wasn’t prepared and didn’t know he was coming.)
OR! Better yet, since they don’t know you’re coming, and you control their computer systems- you could, you know, just fly to London, walk into MI6 HQ, and kill her. (And just leave.) At least, if that’s your goal.
But he doesn’t really have a goal, or a purpose, or a target except M.
Of course, Bond isn’t much better.
A super-hacker villain with a mercenary army is after M, so he takes her and hides out in the Scottish highlands with groundskeeper Willie where they’re isolated and have no help or support, but know the bad guys are coming because he leaves a trail. And he calls this a trap! (Hell yeah it’s a trap! For you, Bond! Ya dum f*ck!)
Apparently, there are no actual safehouses guarded by real soldiers in all of the UK. And they can’t ask for help from…I dunno…the British SAS or someone else who might know how to fire a gun. (Despite M being one of the most powerful people in British Intelligence.)
I’m so annoyed, I’m going to stop now. I’m not even going to try to get into the meta-nature of the movie, where Bond is supposed to be at the start of his career, but makes jokes about 1960’s and 1970’s gadgets he never used in this continuity….
What a stupid f*cking movie! Is this what passes for “good” now in Hollywood? Jesus…Did nobody else notice the emperor has no clothes?
People were saying this was the rebirth of James Bond films as fun again, but it was just a bizarre combination of campy old Bond and hardcore new Bond in a random and haphazard fashion.
Awful. Awful film.
Rob
Hmmmm….
Doesn’t sound any dumber than any OTHER Bond film.
Don C.
Oh Rob… I don’t know where to begin on how wrong you are on this. Bond plots are always complex and overly done. Bond villains are always maniacally stupid. Please anyone reading don’t let this deter you. Skyfall is a CLASSIC James Bond film done in the modern way. A real triumph and much better than “Quantum of Solace” and a happy return to the Bond you love (if you love Bond). Not only that, it smartly introduces Moneypenny, Q, and back story to James’ life you haven’t seen before. They really do great justice to 50 years of Bond.
But go check it out yourself.
Okay Jack, let’s keep this really simple.
Tell me what part of my description of the villain’s plan is wrong.
I’m waiting.
(And Quantum of Solace is the only Bond film I haven’t seen, I’m actually quite a fan. I love Bond as a character and idea, and really enjoyed Casino Royale.)
Let’s begin with one of the writers.
John Logan.
Perhaps one of the best screenwriters writing today.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0517589/
Gladiator, the Time Machine, Hugo, Rango, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (Inaccurate but still fun), The Last Samurai, RK) 281. Okay, he’s got some turkeys in there but even Star Trek: Nemesis wasn’t horrible, just it was bad because it was TNG.
But instead of going point by point why I think you’re wrong here, I’ll offer a different review that I think is more pointed. It recognizes the bredth of Bond films and more sees how this movie not only gives a nod to previous films but deepens the mythology while bringing us the closest to an ensemble cast.
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/review-sam-mendes-007-film-skyfall-sees-james-bond-back-to-his-best-20121012
And one more thing… In my opinion, the best Bond foils ARE agents who have that extra element of “It would take just one little twist for you to be like me.”
This was the case here. Bond has every reason to hate “M”. He calls her a bitch in his session (Brilliant little extra writing with a purpose even in the answers of his psyche test).
I don’t know where you get the idea that the agent JUST learned how to be a computer hacker afterwards. They mentioned in the movie that was his specialty when he was a 00.
As for whether or not all these things go pat. I think one of the problems is we expect all the vagaries of a plot to be somehow perfectly hatched months before. The villain saw an opening and took it- something like, you know a 00 Agent would do as opposed to a Blofeld villain who would plot and plan more. Double 00’s are the ultimate men/women of action and reaction.
“Apparently, there are no actual safehouses guarded by real soldiers in all of the UK.” – Okay.. this is unfair. The guy blows up M’s office in MI-6 and somehow you think any of the regular safehouses will be good enough? Really?
I know.. I said I wouldn’t.. but some things have to be challenged! Don’t be so jaded! 🙂
J
>Tell me what part of my description of the villain’s plan is wrong.
I think it works like superhero comics; yeah, it’s stupid but you’re supposed to pay more attention to the action. The plot’s just there to facilitate it.
Think of it as a Zen exercise, forcing you to live in the moment. “What is the sound of one car crashing?”
Don C.
I finally saw ‘skyfall’ this weekend. I’ve been looking so forward to this film, because anyone and everyone says this is the “best daniel craig bond film yet”. after i watched skyfall, i reviewed the ‘approval’ rating for this film and found its one of the highest approval rated movies of 2012. i figured it was going to have a high approval rating, since was the 4th biggest box office, but i didn’t realize it was going to be 92% critic and 88% fan approval rating.
This movie is 100% utter garbage and for the record, everything that you said above I agree with you and said the exact same thing even prior to reading your opinion. But I wanted to share with you some additional ridiculousness that you forget to mention…
Remember the scene when bond is chasing the villain in the tubes and finally catches up to him in some under ground station or rather, which is bond turns on the lights and sees the villain on the ladder escaping then bond proceeds to shoot his gun and says, “next time I won’t miss” and the villain laughs and blows a hole in the side of the underground station and a train flies at bond like the villain had some kind of super power that shoots trains out of walls? yeah, that was when I officially said, “no more. this movie sucks ass”.
There is no way the villain could have predicted that would happen.
remember… anytime a movie spends time mentioning something like in this bond film where Q informs him his gun will only work for his palm print, this means someone is going to try to kill bon with his gun. this also means, bond would have died if it wasn’t for Q “saving him”. So dumb…