[innerSpaceman]

Well, Alex, you're interpretation of the plot is so elaborately ridiculous, that it's simply not one I share. Your's requires absolutely every element of chance to fall one particular way. Whereas I'm assuming the villain is playing things much more as-they-go ... meaning the results must be the same, but he adjusts his game based on how things occur in real time, because ...

Spoiler:

... there's no way to have predicted Bond would be the victor in the fight with the Shanghai skyscraper assassin, or that he'd even be in place at that moment, much less that he'd be shot by future Moneypenny and knocked off that train, or that he'd even be shot with the uranium bullets that ultimately led him to the assassin in Shanghai. Counting on all that happening is just so insane ... and so I believe it's far less of a stretch to assume Silva is adjusting to events as they happen, but is prepared to be captured by Bond or whoever MI6 sends after him, however that plays out.

The timing of new-Q's computer investigation is pretty much tied to his captivity (i.e., Q would attend to that as soon as practical), so I find Silva's plot much less of a stretch as it gets closer to execution.


* * * * *

If the Art-Lover assassination was all an elaborate trap for Bond, then he's the stupid one for falling for it. Or, at the very least, the film never implied Bond was following the clues even though a trap was likely. That kind of thing can be done with a facial expression in a proper shot, so it's absence was telling. Also, as I said above, the outcome of a fight between Bond and the same assassin he lost to last time could hardly have been a given.

It works better for me if it's not a trap, but rather a real series of clues. And that also could have been established with a single shot of Femme Fatale's face in the Art-Lover's target suite. The people in the room could all have been properly freaked out by the shooting, and she could have shown in a filmed glance that her freak-out was fake (see, e.g., Catwoman's similar revealed play-acting in the recent Batman finale).

Lazy filmmaking is what I chalk it up to. Plot holes that can be remedied with a single shot of an actor's face, but are not ... that's one of my movie pet peeves.