Why I Thought ‘Skyfall’ Sucked

The latest James Bond film ‘Skyfall’ has opened, and is already crushing franchise box office records and exceeding fans’ expectations. Between commenters here on The Bonus View and personal friends, I’ve only come in contact with three people who, like me, disagree with the majority, and find ‘Skyfall’ to be not only a lackluster Bond flick, but a weak spy movie in general. I understand that my opinion goes against the grain, mostly due to the way that I feel about the 007 series as a whole, but I’m not Armond White. I don’t make stupid claims just to gain attention. If you’re a die-hard Bond fan, then it’s more than likely that you’ll disagree with every word I say. Be warned: The following text contains major ‘Skyfall’ spoilers.

As I said in Friday’s review, I love both ‘Casino Royale‘ and ‘Quantum of Solace‘, and really wanted ‘Skyfall’ to follow through with the new rebooted series, which modernized and humanized James Bond, and did away with corny unrealistic fluff such as dumbass gadgets and riding down ski slopes on musical instruments. Unfortunately, I feel that ‘Skyfall’ takes Bond back into the nearly brainless mode that most of the previous 20 films functioned on.

The first sign that something wasn’t right with ‘Skyfall’ happened during the overly-long introductory sequence. After finding a dead agent and his now hard drive-less laptop, Bond chases a random henchman for what feels like 20 minutes. Cranes, trains and automobiles – this action sequence is cool, but way too long, and lacks continuity in every way possible. Bond gets shot twice, but we later only see him with one gunshot wound. He drives a dirt bike off a city bridge onto a train that is suddenly in the middle of wide open plains – no city in sight. Two minutes later, he’s in the mountains.

Due to an on-the-spot call that M makes, Bond is shot and possibly left for dead, but we sure as shit know that isn’t the case. The dumb aspect of this scene is that M is willing to risk killing Bond in order to get the hard drive back, but had she not made the call, both Bond and Henchman #1 would have smashed into the train tunnel. While they both would have died, the hard drive would have been retrieved and I never would have been made to suffer through ‘Skyfall’.

This is the first of many times where ‘Skyfall’ steals an element from another very popular movie. Guess what was on the hard drive that the henchman got away with? A list containing every MI6 agent, his/her whereabouts, pseudonyms and infiltrated organizations. Wait, isn’t that the exact same plot from Brain De Palma’s ‘Mission: Impossible‘? You bet your ass it is, and the plot stealing doesn’t stop there. Ethan Hunt’s NOC list is only the beginning.

After a few minutes of being led to believe that Bond is dead, we of course learn that he isn’t. Bond is content to stay off the radar in his tropical hiding place, tossing back shots of tequila with stupid scorpions on his hands and boning random local chicks (and possibly dudes too) – that is, until he sees something on the news that stirs him up. With the NOC list out there, agents are being killed and someone has infiltrated MI6 headquarters, blowing up M’s office in the process. Who did it? Of course, it’s Javier Bardem’s character, Silva. How did Silva do it? Who knows? Like many other major plot points in ‘Skyfall’, we’re never given an answer. Lazy little ‘Skyfall’ works in a brain-dead manner. Don’t ask the “how” questions because there aren’t any answers to be found.

Shortly thereafter, Bond comes back from the dead and visits M. She takes him to the new MI6 headquarters, and the ‘Casino’ and ‘Quantum’ apologies begin rolling in. Taking us full circle with the original Bond flicks, we get all the goofy stuff that old fans want. The MI6 HQ is now underground and resembles the hideout of old. We meet Q and some gadgets are teased. Jokes are made about not using them as much as MI6 did in the past, but then we proceed to rely on them. Had it not been for the transmitter, Bond would have died on Silva’s island. Had it not been for the Aston Martin machine guns, many more henchmen would have entered Bond Manor during the climax. As much as I didn’t want ‘Skyfall’ to dig into this has-been, gadget-filled territory, I initially didn’t mind because it seemed to be a minimal joke, a throwback. Sadly, it’s really just one of the “apologies.”

Through unmotivated and coincidental actions, at the one-hour mark Bond finally discovers the identity of the villain behind the attack on MI6. For the first time in the film, we meet Silva – a flamboyant former Double-0 agent with mommy issues and a desire to bring down MI6.Wait a second, isn’t this the exact same antagonist type as seen in ‘GoldenEye‘?! Ding-ding-ding! Instead of stealing a villain from ‘Mission: Impossible’, ‘Skyfall’ steals one from its own franchise. Bardem isn’t bad, but his collective 15 minutes of screen time don’t come close to portraying the fleshed-out three dimensional villain he could be. His flamboyance is just a notch down from Jim Carrey’s portrayal of the Riddler. That removing any potential he had of being a menace and kills the serious tone.

Another pointless aspect of Silva comes across as an apology. I’m fine with minimal nods back to the original films (like the subterranean headquarters), which is why I didn’t mind Le Chiffre’s bleeding eye in ‘Casino Royale’ being a throwback to the randomly disfigured villains of old – but Silva’s ridiculous disfiguration is damned absurd. The reveal of Silva’s glass jaw caused me to groan out loud. Making matters worse is the fact that the filmmakers try to tie this disfiguration into a coherent part of the plot. You see, Silva is disfigured because of a job gone bad. Things went sour and M made a call that resulted in his deformity. Because of the opening sequence where Bond is shot and left for dead due to M’s decision, Silva explains that they have a lot in common. Mind you, Bond’s involvement in this whole ordeal stems from coincidences and random acts. Silva never planned to get Bond in this position. It was all chance, but that’s not what we’re led to believe. Bond randomly finds Silva and we’re supposed to think that Silva set it all up.

Bond stumbles into Silva’s lame lair and gets caught, but it turns out that Bond wanted to get caught. Because of the gadgets that Bond now has, M and MI6 are able to intervene, rescue Bond and capture Silva. It was a twist! (Please note my sarcasm.) But then Silva is taken back to the brand new secret underground HQ and it’s revealed that, like Loki in ‘The Avengers‘, Silva wanted to be caught and brought back to their new hideout all along. Double twist! What follows is a scene that I deem the most braindead of the whole movie. Bond chases Silva through subway tunnels, catches up to Old Glass Jaw in a large subterranean room and fires a few shots. Bond can shoot two rungs on the ladder Silva climbs, but not Silva himself. And just when he gets the bad guy in his sights, he freezes and doesn’t take the shot just so that Silva can drop an empty train on him. (P.S. I’ve been in London’s tubes during the day, and no train is ever empty.) Considering that Silva had no idea where the new MI6 HQ was located, how lame is it he somehow knew the exact place that Bond was going to catch him, and would have a bomb rigged so that he could drop a train on Bond? Absolutely absurd.

At this point in the film, halfway through, the plot is completely discarded. Do you remember that NOC list that Bond and MI6 have been tracking down? Well, the characters sure don’t. The story that we’ve been wrapped up in for over an hour is tossed aside. You might assume that the hard drive was retrieved when Silva was captured, but you’d think that this was a plot point worth resolving. After all, at least five agents had their identities revealed and were executed. This is a major part of story, something greater than leaving up to presumptions – but it’s not resolved. Ever. After Silva breaks into MI6, only to escape (without achieving a thing), the MI6 mission shifts from the unresolved NOC list to protecting M from Silva. Bond and M don’t look for the hard drive any longer. Eff every other agent in the field – Mum is in danger! All energy and efforts go towards keeping M safe. Bond and M run from Silva, becoming the prey and not the usual predators.

The NOC list is ditched just so that the franchise can be given yet another new origin. We’re suddenly force fed a splinter of Bond’s back story. A plot point is revealed that other reviewers claim digs deep into Bond’s roots, origins and motivations. I disagree with those statements. ‘Casino Royale’ created a three dimensional character. Through the death of Vesper in the climax, Bond was given a dark motivation that we could all connect with. In ‘Skyfall’, that motivation (what I’m calling “The Vesper Motivation”) is completely dismissed for a newer, shallower one – his parents died. Why is Bond the cruel, heartless and brutal beast that he is? It’s not because of Vesper. It’s because he’s an orphan. Once again, we’re supposed to make the connection that Bond is like Silva – he has parent issues too. Boo-hoo and bullshit. The final act character development is worthless, but not as worthless as the ripped-off anticlimax that follows.

Do you know how every Bond movie has a wild adventurous finale? ‘Skyfall’ doesn’t. The movie wraps up with Bond and M playing ‘Home Alone‘ against the strangest set of henchmen ever. They lock themselves in Bond Manor with Albert Finney (who pops up just for the film’s climax) and re-enact ‘Straw Dogs’. Bad guys climb inside the boarded up house, but fall for boobytrap after boobytrap, failing to ever take out either of the geriatric geezers shuffling around inside. When Bond, M and Finney complete the first wave, then enters Silva in a helicopter shooting sequence that would have been any other villains’ first attack choice. This scene just keeps going on and on and on. They move the fight outdoors, and then they move back indoors, and so forth.

The nearly two-and-a-half hour runtime of ‘Skyfall’ is unwarranted. Most scenes are too long, especially the “Peter and the Chicken” action sequences. It would all be over much earlier had Bond taken the shot one of the many times in the movie that the opportunity was readily in front of him, but he unexplainably and consciously decides not to. For example, why didn’t Bond just shoot Silva in the face during the scene where Silva tried to drop a train on him?

My final gripe with flick is M’s fate. Did anyone not see M’s death coming from the moment we met Ralph Fiennes’ character? If you didn’t catch it then, you must have caught it when her real name was revealed. The movie’s ending was spoiled two hours before we got to it.

I’m not going to buy the new Bond Blu-ray set, but I will buy the individual titles that I like. I already own ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Quantum of Solace’, but I will never own ‘Skyfall’.

What Did You Think of 'Skyfall'?

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91 comments

  1. CK

    “The NOC list is ditched just so that the franchise can be given yet another new origin. We’re suddenly force fed a splinter of Bond’s back story. A plot point is revealed that other reviewers claim digs deep into Bond’s roots, origins and motivations. I disagree with those statements. ‘Casino Royale’ created a three dimensional character. Through the death of Vesper in the climax, Bond was given a dark motivation that we could all connect with. In ‘Skyfall’, that motivation (what I’m calling “The Vesper Motivation”) is completely dismissed for a newer, shallower one – his parents died. Why is Bond the cruel, heartless and brutal beast that he is? It’s not because of Vesper. It’s because he’s an orphan. Once again, we’re supposed to make the connection that Bond is like Silva – he has parent issues too. Boo-hoo and bullshit. The final act character development is worthless, but not as worthless as the ripped-off anticlimax that follows.”

    In Casino Royale, Bond is well into his thirties, I’d say, so I doubt that Vesper’s death explains Bond’s character. Vesper’s death didn’t create Bond any more than Rachel Dawes’ death created Batman, and being an orphan doesn’t take away from either character’s impact. Rachel’s death influences and explains Wayne’s behavior in The Dark Knight Rises (I didn’t buy it, but some people seemed to like it), but it doesn’t explain why Wayne is Batman. Vesper’s death may explain why Bond is cold and brutal, but it doesn’t explain everything else; like why Bond has trouble with authority, which the MI6 psychiatrist said was caused by some unresolved trauma from Bond’s childhood. “The Vesper Motivation” was covered and resolved in the previous two movies. Skyfall has moved on to other aspects of Bond’s character and origin, instead of beating a dead horse. (No offense to Eva Green, who is a lovely actress.)

  2. CK

    I’m surprised at your review considering several of the general criticisms can be made for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which was far worse on all counts, yet you gave it four stars.

    “This is the first of many times where ‘Skyfall’ steals an element from another very popular movie. Guess what was on the hard drive that the henchman got away with? A list containing every MI6 agent, his/her whereabouts, pseudonyms and infiltrated organizations. Wait, isn’t that the exact same plot from Brain De Palma’s ‘Mission: Impossible‘? You bet your ass it is, and the plot stealing doesn’t stop there. Ethan Hunt’s NOC list is only the beginning.“

    No, that isn’t the plot to Mission: Impossible. That was the MacGuffin from M:I. How many different types of information would spies be after. Lists of agents names would probably be the most basic information in espionage, so it really isn’t that troubling to see them use it in two movies.

    Ghost Protocol, on the other hand, got four stars for recycling “Ethan Hunt on the run, while hunting down the villain who framed him. All without the support of IMF”; which WAS the plot of Mission: Impossible. Hunt also had to operate on his own in M:I 3, so M:I GP reused a plot element of two out of the three previous M:I movies.

  3. CK

    “At this point in the film, halfway through, the plot is completely discarded. Do you remember that NOC list that Bond and MI6 have been tracking down? Well, the characters sure don’t. The story that we’ve been wrapped up in for over an hour is tossed aside. You might assume that the hard drive was retrieved when Silva was captured, but you’d think that this was a plot point worth resolving. After all, at least five agents had their identities revealed and were executed. This is a major part of story, something greater than leaving up to presumptions – but it’s not resolved. Ever. After Silva breaks into MI6, only to escape (without achieving a thing), the MI6 mission shifts from the unresolved NOC list to protecting M from Silva. Bond and M don’t look for the hard drive any longer. Eff every other agent in the field – Mum is in danger! All energy and efforts go towards keeping M safe. Bond and M run from Silva, becoming the prey and not the usual predators.”

    I really don’t see what everyone’s problem is with the “unrecovered” NOC list. They start out trying to get it, they track down the guy who took it, they capture him and his base of operations, then they stop looking for it. My guess is that the filmmakers assumed we could put two and two together and figure that they found it. Sure they could have mentioned it more plainly, but is it really that vague a resolution that people are questioning this?

    Even if they didn’t get the NOC list back, protecting M, the leader and the villain’s primary target would be important, and clearly the idea was to use M as bait to draw Silva into a trap, not just to protect M. Also, how do you know that “the MI6 mission shifts from the unresolved NOC list to protecting M?” There’s no 001-006? James Bond, an agent that has been presumed dead for some time and was deemed unfit for active duty, is the only agent in MI6? The MOVIE shifts to protecting M. And, as far as I could tell, Bond took it upon himself to take M, not MI6.

    Ghost Protocol (4 stars), however, recycled the plot of M:I, going so far as to make it a major part of the marketing campaign; I’d say even down to the subtitle. They don’t discard this plot element, but, after months of trailers and posters, and a half-hour of set-up the team is disavowed. And, what do they do with this plot? NOTHING. It doesn’t seem to matter at all. In fact, Hunt starts out with two agents on his team and what looks like an empty van. After he’s disavowed? He has THREE agents and a train car full of equipment! The only time that I can remember it coming into play was to explain why Simon Pegg’s character couldn’t hack into the hotel computer, to support having Hunt go outside in his Spider-man gloves.

  4. CK

    “We meet Q and some gadgets are teased. Jokes are made about not using them as much as MI6 did in the past, but then we proceed to rely on them. Had it not been for the transmitter, Bond would have died on Silva’s island. Had it not been for the Aston Martin machine guns, many more henchmen would have entered Bond Manor during the climax. As much as I didn’t want ‘Skyfall’ to dig into this has-been, gadget-filled territory, I initially didn’t mind because it seemed to be a minimal joke, a throwback. Sadly, it’s really just one of the “apologies.’”

    In Skyfall (2 stars) Bond has a car with machine guns, a gun that only he can use and a transmitter. The car, as I saw it, was a playful wink to the audience to acknowledge the previous movies, The gun seems like a minor adjustment to something he’d have already. The transmitter looked to me like it was an integral part of the plan, so of course they sent it with him. Considering how often Bond has gotten out of dangerous situations before, I assumed that the plan was to find Silva and send a signal to have reinforcements come in to capture him. Also, it didn’t look as high-tech as my cellphone, which would mean that the people in the audience with you in the theater were carrying better gadgetry, while you were scoffing at Bond having a radio. Either way, a radio transmitter seems like a fairly basic piece of equipment to me, and I’m pretty sure that in real life they send an agent out with more than a grapefruit spoon and their best wishes. Basically you’re complaining that they sent Bond out with ANY equipment.

    In Ghost Protocol (4 stars), part of a franchise that doesn’t have nearly the tradition of using gadgets as Bond, the whole movie and seemingly every scene hinges upon their gadgets; or, in the case of at least one gadget, a glaring and inexplicable design flaw that conveniently (for the writers) led to most of the events of the movie.

    They track the courier with a contact lens that can scan faces and check them against a database miles away; it can even warn the agent if it detects an assassin, but sends that particular information to his phone.
    They rescue Hunt from prison with a device that can disintegrate concrete.
    They get their orders from a screen hidden in a payphone installed in Moscow; which is much more reasonable than the delivery systems in the previous three movies.
    They break into the Kremlin, with a projector that can make them invisible.

    That’s the first half-hour. Then, they get disavowed and no longer have IMF support, so now they have to make do with their wits and whatever they can scrounge up… just kidding They have guns, computers, cellphones, earpiece communication devices, the classic I:M masks, high-tech contact lens cameras, a briefcase with a printer, a tracking device that tracks paper coated with isotopes (maybe there’s an Office Depot in Dubai, so I’ll give them that one), devices that can change the numbers on hotel room doors, Spider-man gloves and goggles (convenient, considering they didn’t know until they got there that they’d need to climb outside the building), some kind of laser-gun to burn through the window, and suction cup grips to carry the window. That’s one operation, and they were specifically told to take “only what they needed”; which means that there was even more equipment they passed up…they even had radios. All that’s left is a remote-controlled robot that creates a magnetic field to allow Renner to hover and a car with a full Minority Report style computer windshield.

    In Skyfall (2 stars) James Bond “proceeds to rely on” his gadgets: an old car with machine guns (used once), a gun that only he could use and a radio (used once) which didn’t even look as sophisticated as one of the iPhones carried by each member of Hunt’s disavowed, unsupported team.

  5. CK

    That didn’t look nearly as long before I posted it. And, just in case, Luke, not all the sarcasm is directed at you, so no offense intended.

  6. Mikedean

    Skyfall attracted further criticism from victim advocacy groups, which was directed at Bérénice Lim Marlohe’s character, Sévérine. Upon meeting her for the first time, Bond correctly deduces that Sévérine was a victim of sex trafficking from a young age, and is now treated as the property of Silva. Bond later meets her and initiates sexual intercourse as they travel by yacht to meet Silva on his private island; once there, Silva kills the unarmed Sévérine. A spokesperson for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center described this scene as “alarming” as Bond “abuses his power and authority

  7. dirk

    Severign tell bond she was a victim of sex trafficking. He kills the guys in charge in a karate kid moment, then shows up to have sex with her in the shower. UH, thats a whole lot of wrong. no words, no plans he just shows up.

    • Severine very clearly and unambiguously invited Bond to the boat when she told him where the boat was, what time she’d be leaving, and “If you don’t get killed by these guys, come meet me at the boat. I’ll be waiting for you… naked. So that we can have sex. Because I want you to come to the boat and have sex with me. Is it clear what I’m doing? I’m seducing you so that you’ll come to the boat and we can have sex. Got it? Would you like me to write it on your hand? No? You’re good? OK then, I will meet you at the boat… for sex. See you then.”

      • William Henley

        That is not what I got from that scene at all. What I got was a girl begging for help for Bond to set her free from the Hell that her life has become. Nowhere did I pick up that she invited him to the boat to have sex with her. Quite the oppoiste.

  8. Jonathan

    I too am exceedingly glad to see people irritated and disappointed by it.

    I would add to the list of films/stories Skyfall ripped off.

    The main hero seemingly dying and going down a waterfall in the process, then coming back actually alive with reasons unexplained….isn’t that a famous Sherlock Holmes Story

    And as for the scene where he escape his glass prison and kills the guards…the parallels to the famous Silence of the Lambs scene are uncanny

    To me the film failed on all the grounds that make a bond film a bond film.

    A Bond girl….appeared the first third then there wasnt one the rest of the film

    The Gadgets…relied purely on past glories, so were pretty much non existant

    Villain Henchmen, sidekicks or assoiciates…Nigh on every Bond film has backing villains, that make the main villains presence all the more dangerous. All the cronies were boring and wordless the entire film.

    An epic ending in a fantastic location/headquarters. Im sorry but all the moody dark camera angles in the world still make a Scottish house boring. GIve me Fort Knox or the Golden Gate Bridge anyday

  9. Omar

    I agree 100% with this article. While I wasn’t a huge fan of Quantum, I thought Casino Royale was awesome. This new film makes Quantum look like the Godfather. The new Bond starting in Casino made a lot more sense to me, rather than the flamboyant flabby wuss Bonds of old. I dont know what moron decided that the new iteration of Bond sucked and that we needed to revisit the old crap. Doesnt that defeat the purpose of re-booting Bond in Casino? Can anybody explain this?

    • The Daniel Craig movies are less a reboot than a prequel that shows us the origins of James Bond and the franchise’s other iconic characters. The end of Skyfall brings us full circle to the James Bond we know. It would seem that the people who can’t accept that are those who despise the James Bond franchise anyway, yet are somehow tolerant of Casino Royale, in the belief that it’s somehow radically different than any other James Bond film (even though it actually isn’t that different at all).

      Well, guess what? These are still James Bond movies, so if you hate James Bond, perhaps this isn’t the franchise for you. We’re 23 movies in at this point. I think that’s plenty of time for you to figure out whether you like James Bond or not.

      Coming soon: We whine about how The Hobbit is too Lord of the Rings-y, and Die Hard 5 is too Die Hard-y.

  10. John

    One thing hit me the hardest other than all the cliches already mentioned, Bond is supposed to be the good guy and we are supposed to root for him. Information is supposed to be important and his actions are supposed to be meaningful. Too often they are thrown away for just another pretty camera shot.

    Example: sniper guy. Super secret, no one has a picture, but oh by the way. He is on BA123 tomorrow and has ordered the vegan meal in seat C3. Lets follow him and watch him kill random security guards. Now lets wait until he’s killed another random person; have to let the bad guy do his thing to get that next pretty mirrors shot. Who cares who that guy is; certainly our hero dosen’t. And for the whole of the film I didn’t either

    I left the theatre feeling as though I had watched sequence after sequence of Bond madlibs. Desperate justifications to jump from one pretty picture to the next. All the while dragging along a protaganist that was broken in the begining and then never shown me a reason why he should be healed.

    • John

      Last one: Hi Miss sexy at the bar. Oh you know the villan? You must be scared of him. My spy powes can tell this by the trembling cigarette. Oh you were a sex slave since you were 14? Well I just have to get inside of you now since that will be the only way to prove me worthy of your trust.

  11. David

    I don’t understand why everyone keeps pointing on Facebook / Twitter and other sites that this is the best Bond ever and it’s amazing! It was so bad! One of the plot holes you didn’t mention, is why Bond just drop M off at the local Holiday Inn before going to the castle, there was no way of the bad guy knowing the route they took as it was faked in the first place!

  12. atlfalconsfan

    It’s funny. I too thought Skyfall was a snoozer and something that was terribly disappointing. Unlike yourself who is in the minority of the people you know, of my friends and colleagues there was not a single person who liked it. I really can’t understand where the public’s head is at lately with movies, Avengers was truly and utterly terrible, TDKR was a huge let down and completely nonsensical, and yes, Skyfall was awful. Seems there’s a formula in Hollywood now of how to make generic popcorn movies that hit all the right notes for box office success, yet the films themselves are bad and will be looked on in the future as a low point in cinema.
    I’ll go pick a movie from my Criterion collection instead…

  13. William Henley

    So I finally got around to seeing this. I thought it was the best of the Craig Bond movies, which isn’t saying much. In my opinion, Daniel Craig is the worst Bond there is, even over Roger Moore, and the scripts are even worse. This is actually really sad, because I love Daniel Craig in everything else.

    So before I read the other 66 comments, I thought I would bring up some thoughts (which someone else has probably said already, but I wanted to mention these while they are still on my mind). Okay, so we have this list of agents, which have their code names and real names. Okay, then we go to Skyfall, and we see the graves of Bond’s parents, who just so happen to be… BOND? WTH? Are you trying to tell me that James Bond is his real name? NO NO NO!!! That doesn’t fit at all. Shoot, just a few minutes earlier, Silva is going off about his real name, and M reveals his real name. Forget the fact that this movie is inconsistant with the Bond francise, it doesn’t even follow its own story – it is litterally like the begining, middle and end of the movie was written by three different people, and no one bothered to check it for continuity.

    What is up with Bond’s “Gun room” at Skyfall (the one that was auctioned off). Um, aren’t they in the UK? Now I did do some research in on this, and was actually surprised to find that it IS legal for civillians to own firearms in the UK, as long as they have a unique identifier mark (the movie did seem to follow this). So maybe this isn’t as big of a deal as I am making it.

    One of the things that always gets me is how fast Bond and the villians are able to travel around the globe.

    What was teh point of the girl and the whole “Sex trade” story? Bond goes into random casino, just so happens to meet a prostitute who happens to be tied to the villian, he discovers that she was part of human trafficing and the sex trade, and then breaks into her shower on the boat? And after MI6 invade the enemy’s island, whatever happens to said girl?

    Where was Silva getting electricity from on the island, and where was he getting his internet connection from? To do all he needed to do, he would have had to have had something faster than a satelite connection – persumably a fiber connection.

    Where was the electricity at Skyfall coming from? For that matter, what is up with the lights in the tunnel? The house blows up, there is still electricity in the tunnels. A fireball rips through the tunnels, and not a single lightbulb is destroied.

    What was the point of the two way radios in the casino?

    What was the point of the piece of shrapnel that Bond had in his sholder blade that he had analyzed.

    Totally agree, the Tube, no matter what time of day, always has people on a train.

    Why would a field agent have a laptop with harddrive that had the information of every single agent in it? If an agent needed that information, wouldn’t they just secure-VPN into a server? Seems much more secure to me.

    Every other company in the world has seperate networks for secure and non-secure stuff. Why would MI6 hook up an enemy’s computer up into their secure network? For that matter, why are all their systems tied together? There should be a government oversight committee setup to investigate that one.

    Cyanide didn’t kill Silva? Really? And the ONLY effect was that he lost his teeth? Really?

    Do they always store old military gadgets in storage facilities in unsecured portions of London?

    Why was there a police baracade outside of MI6 BEFORE the explosion?

    Is M really stupid enough to go running around a marsh at night with a flashlight when she knew someone was hunting her?

    Was the only purpose of Bond going to the casino to meet the girl? I had to really think to put together that in teh gun case was a token to that casino.

    The casino wasn’t that big. Don’t you think the casino staff would have noticed if a Brit was in there, winning all the games and came up with that much cash? if not, they should have been expecting someone to come in and cash out a token, and probably would have had someone track him.

    I will see if I can think up some more later.

  14. Mas

    Completely agree, Skyfall was an utter disappointment. Loved Casino Royale, liked Quantum of Solace. Still though, Skyfall isn’t nearly as bad as the Pierce Brosnan era bullshit like Die Another Day.

  15. Sim_Mat

    Reasons Skyfall skyfails.

    Dialogue. The dialogue in Skyfall is totally asinine, even by Bond standards. The one liners fell FLAT.

    Emo Q. This is almost as inappropriate as making Q a transvestite played by Tim Curry, though at least that would be more entertaining…

    Bond Wayne. I realize it was always implied that Bond was an orphan, but they’ve turned him into Bruce Wayne, complete with family estate and butler. And why would Bond need to work as a secret agent if he obviously owned some very valuable real estate? If he was sick enough of the job to pretend to be dead for 3 months, wouldn’t it have been easier to simply resign? Also, you fal into a river, they have a satellite fix on your coordinates, but they don’t find you when you crawl out of the river a few hundred yards downstream?

    Javier Bardem. He just got on my nerves. Silva is one of the worst villains in Bond history. He’s gayer than Mr. Wint or Mr. Kidd. He’s more outlandish in appearance than Blofeld. He was a cartoon character with his white hair and bleached eyebrows and disfigured jaw.

    Bond is only 43 or so (well, Craig is about that age but Casino Royale implied he was in his mid 30’s) but he is depicted as an almost-cripple? Despite still being ripped like a cage fighter? This is the same bullshit we had to go put up with in TDKR. Bond was only a poor shot and in pain and an alcoholic when the plot needed him to be. I could accept this idea if Bond were 57 or 60… but even then, why does a Bond movie need this sort of plotting? It’s totally alien to the franchise. It’s also a complete ripoff of Never Say Never Again.

    The “Bond is old and decrepit, both as a man and as a franchise” premise of the film. Maybe Sam Mendes was being deliberately subversive and is now having a laugh at how blind and gullible everyone who saw the movie is. But they went out of their way to show Bond was weak, ineffective and old fashioned, even going so far as coming up with some bullshit excuse to have him do battle with cyberterrorists in the Scottish wilderness to even the odds. Though I fail to see how going to the wilderness, by yourself, when you know you’re going to be faced with a gang of mercenaries who are armed to the teeth, is evening the odds.

    Not that were was much cyberterrorism in this movie. In the end it didn’t matter where the battle took place, except that, you know, maybe if they took M to… say a secure bunker at an air base, surrounded by hundreds of armed soldiers… she would have survived? You can cut your internet access to avoid being targetted by cyberterrorists. Not that cyberterrorists are capable of causing direct physical harm to anyone. Then again, who knew gas pipes had valves on them that were connected to the internet?

    The game keeper. Why is this character even in this film, except to say, “Welcome to Scotland!” ? Why would he voluntarily stay to help Bond fight off a hit squad of dangerous mercenaries armed with automatic weapons and a helicopter gunship? Any reasonable person would have said “screw you, I don’t want to die, I’m getting out of here to avoid almost certain death at the hands of dangerous terrorists!”

    1. Stupidity shown by characters. Josh, you said nobody in Skyfall acted stupidly? Well, Albert Finney acted the most stupidly of all, as I have outlined above. Followed by Bond, for taking M to the wilderness without any protection, to a place without guns, medical facilities or communications, while *deliberately* leading the terrorists to her and not requesting any backup. This is every bit as retarded as anything in Prometheus.

    M was third most stupid for not ordering Bond to take her to some army base or bunker to be secure while, you know, the police or the military dealt with Silva.

    Then we have Bond who stands there and watches while some scumbag shoots someone in the head with a sniper rifle… and doesn’t try to stop him? What a hero. And who was the one who was shot? Just some random guy?

    Q was stupid too, for plugging the computer they retrieved from Silva’s island, directly into MI6’s own network, when he knew it belonged to the world’s most dangerous cyber terrorist? And was so shocked when said computer opened all the doors in the bunker, including that of Silva’s glass cell? Nobody uses BARS and doors with KEYS anymore? The whole point of moving MI6 to an old WWII bunker was to isolate it from hack-able technology that Silva could gain access to. And they put the holding cell within easy access of an underground tunnel leading into the subway?! Yes, whoever designed this prison was sure on the ball…. If they had taken him down to the local police station and put him in a locked cell (you know the kind that has a key) then the movie would have been a lot shorter. This is MORE retarded than anything in Prometheus.

    So anyway, Silva escapes, and they find out he’s going after M at the courthouse, so they duly warn her to get out. But she doesn’t leave. She’s at a hearing answering to the charge that she has been irresponsible and incompetent, and doesn’t take steps to ensure her own safety, or the safety of those present at the court? Yes, that is a VERY good way of demonstrating your ability to defend the public from terrorists. Furthermore, why didn’t they alert the security at the court when they knew an armed, dangerous criminal was on his way there to kill M, if evacuation was not possible? This is TEN times more retarded than anything in Prometheus.

    Bonus round: So, Bond was shot in the shoulder but continued fighting the baddie. Ok, fair enough because when the adrenaline is pumping you can still be effective despite bad injuries. But then he is accidentally shot by Eve and falls from the train. Yet later on he has only one bullet wound, the one in his shoulder. What happened to the shot from the high powered sniper rifle?! Did Bond seek medical attention for that shot but ignored the shrapnel in his shoulder? What kind of idiots does Sam Mendes take us for?

    Josh uses the stupidity and incompetence of the crew in Prometheus as the focal point of his hate for the film. i.e. a crew of scientists making first contact with an Alien race would not be such blithering idiots in real life. But this applies to Skyfall as well. In this movie, MI6 are portrayed as the biggest bunch of blithering idiots on the planet. First for losing information about all of their operatives, and second, for every single thing they did thereafter to try solve the problem. Everything they did was without logic, totally unrealistic, completely contrary to the behavior of an intelligence service and frankly, entirely lacking any basis in reality whatsoever. Now I know expecting logic in a Bond movie is inherently stupid in itself, but the trick is, Bond movies are supposed to be so entertaining you don’t notice the plot holes. But in a film as boring and slow as Skyfall, you tend to notice every single plot hole or oversight or piece of retarded behavior by the characters.

    I can accept plot silliness or lapses in logic in a Bond film where Bond fights the bad guy inside his hollowed-out volcano with a bikini-clad girl at his side. Because that’s just pure escapist entertainment so it works. Appalling plot holes in a movie that takes itself as seriously as Skyfall however do NOT work. This Bond film has poetry by Tennyson in it… but also has a *stupid* plot, full of *retarded* characters who make stupid decisions at every turn. It just doesn’t work!

    • William Henley

      Then again, who knew gas pipes had valves on them that were connected to the internet?

      Yeah, odd, huh? I could understand monitoring software, but even then…

      Now you could argue that it was only accessable via VPN, and that the VPN key was hacked, but I doubt this. Chances are, they were monitored by a system that had no outside connection. I mean, this is a government building after all.

      And it was hacked by a cyber terrorist who hadn’t been part of the group in, what, 15-20 years? Um yeah, I am sure he REALLY knew the network, right? What is to stop China, Iran, or North Korea from hacking it? If one dedicated hacker could do it, couldn’t a government full of hackers do it?

      Didn’t they say that he had routed himself through over 1,000 servers around the world? So, in the time it took him to hack into 1,000 servers, not one of those system administrators noticed they were being hacked and pulled the plug?

      One of the things that REALLY annoys me about movies and TV shows is when the writters want something techy in their story, don’t have a clue what they are talking about, and no one bothers to check them

    • “Dialogue. The dialogue in Skyfall is totally asinine, even by Bond standards. The one liners fell FLAT.”

      That’s because there weren’t any one-liners in the movie. You want a Bond movie with terrible one-liners, watch The World Is Not Enough. Every line of dialogue in that one is an awful pun. Skyfall has actual character dialogue. Perhaps that’s what confused you so much, that you were searching for one-liners in a movie that doesn’t rely on them.

      • Sim_Mat

        Whatchoo talkin about Willis? It was full of one liners. Bad ones. “Circle of life” and “Waste of good scotch” (Bond reckons a human being, albeit a prostitute is less valuable than a shot glass of scotch?!)and “I like you better without your Beretta” (GROAN!)

        Also:

        “Welcome to Scotland”

        “Do you see what comes of all this running around, Mr. Bond? All this jumping and fighting, it’s exhausting!”

        Not exactly stellar writing.

  16. I agree 100%. I’m actually not a “die-hard” Bond fan per-se, but i know a good action movie (and i expected one). I didn’t get it. Horrible plot, went for too-long (no reason for it), not enough action.

  17. Muncher

    The movie was great. Enjoyed the action sequences, ridiculous Old West shoot out ending, and revelation of a chemistry-less relationship with Moneypenny. Suspend suspend suspend. I’ve enjoyed the return to a grittier, more earth-bound agent, but it’s all Hollywood at the end of the day. Komodo dragon pit? Everyone saw that coming. Naively arrogant techno-hacker Q? Come on– über nerds have hive minds and could shut Silva down. I thought Silva was going to pick the lock, kill the guard, put on his skin, and escape to Argentina Lecter-style, Blah blah blah. IMO, the film didn’t suck as bad as you say. Mendes did a fine job with it, plot holes and all.

    • Reminds me of the time I tried to watch The Matrix with my wife. She fell asleep right as the Warner Bros. logo came up at the beginning, was dead asleep for the whole thing, woke up just as the end credits started, and promptly declared: “That movie sucked!” She literally only saw the Warner logo and end credits, and not one second of footage between those two things, yet remains fixed in her opinion that the movie was terrible.

  18. Flaming Mo

    No offense but I’m amazed what is important for some so called fans in the Bond genre. This movie and the last couple of modern Bonds have nothing, NOTHING to do with the original fascination of Bond movies. It was a different time back then (Cold War etc) and it is hard to keep certain things going but the Bond series lost its original claim long ago. It was always a monumental battle of good vs evil, mixed with a huge portion of charme, smiles and coolness. None of that actually works in the modern films as they constantly forget to present their movies with a huge and big blink of the eye.

    I have no problem with Craig as a Bond as he has his own way of acting the role (more like a modern action star like transporter, stoic, tough and hard nosed). Fine. But why destroy everything around him that made Bond movies so great back then?! No stupid stories about a tough talking M, real bond girls who are a key part of the story and who get saved and also an ongoing mix between action and real plot. Bardem could have been an all time great villain but his only goal is to kill M. Bond suggesting crap about having sex with men is just bad and has nothing to do with what made him great.

    And here is the big newsflash: Bond movies were always ridiculously unrealistic! But nobody cared because the movies itself and the actors didnt take themselves too seriously. That’s what made them so enjoyable. In the end you have to judge the movies today differently as a) they aren’t real bond movies except for the name and b) the intention of the movies is completely different. They are as so many movies today a violent ongoing action mix without much of a story or atmosphere. If you like that, fine, you will like the new bond movies. But if you dont, you not only dislike the new bond movies but you also get sick in your stomach what the greedy hollywood clowns have made out of this series.

  19. N8

    Skyfall was a slow, humorless, boring piece of derivative shit! Why are there so many boners over this joyless flick!?

    Let’s set aside the fact that it didn’t make the least amount of fucking sense. Sure, if Javier Bardem wanted to assassinate M, he didn’t need a private island, a massive army of evil henchmen, and the hacking powers of God almighty. He didn’t have to hack MI6’s computers (offscreen), plant a bomb (offscreen), let Bond capture him, hack MI6’s computers again (offscreen), escape MI6 (offscreen), and march an armed squad of assassins into the Ministry (getting through security: offscreen) where he knew she’d be testifying . He could have cheerfully broken into her flat and taken her by total surprise, exactly the way Bond did in the very beginning of the movie. Yeah. I would have let that, and a laundry list of other idiotic items* slide… if they hadn’t taken away everything which made Bond cool.

    It’s a problem that he’s a blond thug, but it’s even worse that he’s gone from a suave, unflappable wisecracker to an emo moper. Now, there are no chicks in bikinis, no corny puns, no cool gadgets, no insane action set-pieces and no fun. Part of what made Pierce Brosnan the best Bond ever was that every cocksure second he was on screen he looked like he was having the best time of his life. Yeah, Craig’s Bond drives cool cars… but he doesn’t savor it. He’s a sad sack who doesn’t get an iota of enjoyment out of being an international superspy.

    Probably because he sucks at it. The plot is a list of him failing at things:

    In the opener, he fails his mission (getting shot by both enemy and friendly fire), hides and drinks with frat boys. Then he fails all his Mi6 evaluations, but M puts him back into service anyway. He tracks down a sniper, doesn’t stop the assassination, and accidentally kills the sniper before getting any information out of him. When the girl’s life is in danger, he can’t save her because he’s nervous and can’t shoot very well. He fails to stop Bardem from escaping MI6. He lacks the credibility to convince anyone that Bardem is walking into the Ministry with a murdering rampage in mind. Craig shows up late to the Ministry. Bardem has already killed a few people. M only survives because two different guys throw themselves in front of bullets for her. Craig walks in and, in a rare display of confidence, winks to a wounded man and shoots a couple fire extinguishers (yay Bond!). This time, as Bardem escapes, Craig doesn’t even try to follow him. Instead, in a bold stroke of WTF, Craig decides it’s time to take M to his dead parents’ decrepit mansion in the Scottish highlands, populated by a guy who’s not Sean Connery. Not because it’s a secure location, but because Craig wants to blow it up, because he’s so emo about it. He fails to outmaneuver Bardem, so he tricks him into thinking he’s dead by dropping into a frozen pond while Bardem watches (which totally works). Finally, in the lamest ending in Bond history, Craig kills Javier Bardem by sneaking up and, without warning, throwing a knife into his back– and M dies anyway.

    This new Bond was supposed to be fresh and visceral, but instead they’re re-hashing the exact same, “Bond is a relic of a bygone era” shit that they were doing with Pierce Brosnan, but without Bond standing up for himself and pushing back. He’s witless, he can’t spy for shit, and he can’t shoot straight. And now Miss Moneypenny is a confident black feminist.

    In Skyfall, Bond is England’s bitch, and he takes it.

    *There are no poker chips worth $4 million Euros each.

  20. Ian Whitcombe

    Many of the paragraph-long posts in this thread have the same grammar and structure as that of Sim_mat, I’m sensing trollery at foot.