Miscellaneous Movie Musings the Sequel

[Alex]

Battling spoilers!

Spoiler:

It may not have needed to be Bond specifically but it was only through the actions of Bond that any movements towards Silva's confrontation of M was achieved. Plus not only did he have to get captured but he had to get captured at just the right time so that he'd be transported to London, interrogated, have Q infect the network at just the right moment so that he could escape and not just assassinate M but do so while she was testifying before the parliament committee.

Seriously, it was a plan that make Heath Ledger's Joker look feeble minded.

But the part that bothered you doesn't bother me because it was part of the horribly unlikely and convoluted plan. The assassin needed to be separate from everybody else in on it because the assassin was bait for Bond (or whoever else) so that Bond would find the casino chip and follow it to Macau and from there get to Silva. The thing I wonder is if the assassin knew everybody else was in on it.

And one thing has really settled poorly with me over the last date. One horribly wrong emotional note:

Spoiler:

Seriously, as it has settled, I find Bond getting naked and sneaking up on her and groping here without warning, even though he knew her to be a horribly sexually damaged person. One who, so far as he knew, would consider sexual submission to him the cost of seeing Silva killed. Just a horrible scene from the point of view of what the character of Bond believes he knows at that point and what it says about him that he'd act that way.

That isn't sexually promiscuous it is very nearly sexually predatory. Especially when the next day she is killed and he barely bats an eye. Surely he enjoyed his night with an attractive woman who had learned many great skills in her 20 years of forced sexual labor.

[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.

[Alex]

Spoiler:

No, it was all plan. He had explosives set in a specific room. He had a very specific moment planned for when he'd assassinate M. All of required knowing, before he was captured the exact moment he'd escape from MI6. He had two fake cops in a tube station set to hand him his disguise at a specific moment in time. he had a car waiting at a specific spot at a specific moment to take him to parliament.

All of this ha to have been planned before he was captured since he never communicated with anybody after that. And not just knowing that he would be captured but exactly when he'd be captured because everything about the latter half of the plan was extremely time specific.

And to know when he'd be captured with such specificity he'd have to have even manipulating Bond (or whatever agent ended up on his tail) from the beginning.

Now, perhaps he didn't know Bond was alive, but ten the curious question would be why Silva waited months after capturing the drive to begin phase two of humiliating M before killing her.

The problem beyond excessive villainous omniscience is that the events make even less sense without it.

[Alex]

Spoiler:

and talk about omniscience, his entire escape plan required knowing that MI6's top computer expert would jack an unknown computer, recovered from someone who had already cracked every computer security system they had, directly into th MI6 network.

Predicting that level of idiocy is true omniscience.

Damn, you're talking me into liking it a lot less than I did at the time.

[Strangler Lewis]

I liked [i]Argo[i].

[innerSpaceman]

On a less nitpicky note about Skyfall, it seemed a little odd to me that we've seen only the beginning and what's feeling like the end of Daniel Craig as James Bond.

Much was made about his aging in Skyfall (he's still hot stuff, but time is not being kind to his particularly craggy looks), and the film is not subtle about him being too old to be a Double Oh (in fact failing the tests for reinstatement as an MI6 agent).

Since Casino Royale was his debut as a Double Oh, and Quantum of Solace took place immediately after that ... will there be a web series or an animated take on this James Bond's actual exploits? His obituary in Skyfall mentioned he's a Commander, and in the other two films he was barely above a recruit. What have we been missing?



Also ... the overt nod to Goldfinger was one thing. But the "Circle is Now Complete" ending just reeks of goodbye to Daniel Craig as James Bond. Reportedly he wants out of his 5-film contract, but Alex heard him muse on future installments of the series. I don't know what to make of it. But at the very least I feel we've been gipped out of Daniel Craig's prime James Bond adventures. (Le sigh.)

[Alex]

All the stuff about Craig wanting out seems to come from a single quote to Rolling Stone which reads to me like standard self deprecating talk. He said he's wanted out since he first got the role. So if that is true, he hasn't been very effective to date.

I don't know about in the Craig-as-Bond universe but in Fleming's-Bond universe his rank of Commander had nothing to do with his MI6 service but was his Royal Navy rank before becoming a secret agent. If that carries over he was a commander in Casino Royale as well as in Skyfall.

[innerSpaceman]

Ah thanks for that. I'm not familiar with the book history. My familiarity with the film history is hardly comprehensive ... but as I faintly recall, Bond's navy service and his commander rank wasn't mentioned until You Only Live Twice, which was Connery's first (of three) "final" James Bond movies.

But even if Craig's Bond has the same naval history, we still seem to be coming into Skyfall at the end stage of his 007 career, while his other two films were the very beginning. Just an oddment, imo.

[Strangler Lewis]

I liked "The Perks of Being a Wallflower."

[alphabassettgrrl]

Seeing "Skyfall" tonight! So very excited.