No kidding. The fact that his entire plan would have been utterly and completely for naught if they’d, I dunno, decided to handcuff him to the table inside his plastic cell, or if Q had been sick that day and there was no one to plug his computer into their system, or any of a billion other things totally and completely outside his control; was a really big and frustrating flaw in an otherwise extremely entertaining movie.
You still have to love Q plugging the damn laptop into the network.
I’m no Q, but thats simply something you do not do - especially a villains laptop.
And if you do need to do it - to ‘allow’ it to get to the network at large - you connect it to the special network.
And while I liked bond seeing the code word in the decryption stuff - that isn;'t the way it works UNLESS you want someone to be able to decrypt your stuff for you.
Other than that - I enjoyed it -
I did, however, miss the exploding pen.
That’s exactly what it was supposed to be, since it was part of the plan all along. The idea was that decrypting it triggered the program that disabled the security. I also thought it was fairly Bondian, in that he often does these sort of half-understood things that go bad/play into the villain’s hands but then he fixes them afterwards.
I agree that it relies on Q being an idiot to expose it to the network to work. Similar plot points (utterly incompetent security at the hearing, the visible lights on the moor) were the biggest problems with the film.
The reboot has so far fallen very much into line with the original series start Connery films and it was nice to see it all fit together.
Although I liked it a lot, I had a somewhat similar reaction as has been mentioned about it not feeling as much like a Bond film. The strange thing is that this one so competently referenced the older Bond canon and had all the elements – they just didn’t seem to come together into a Bond film somehow. I did find he lack of sex to be glaring too. Bond doesn’t need to be as callous toward women as in the past, but his sex appeal is part of the fantasy that was noticeably missing (or at least subdued) this time around.
edit: For the first time I actually had trouble with the accents (I’m American) : I thought the villain’s name was ‘Silver’ and couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone was addressing M as ‘mom’.
Bond is shown shacking up with a beautiful and exotic woman after his death/retirement. The banter between Bond and Moneypenny after the shaving scene strongly implies they had sex. And he had sex with Sévérine (Silva’s girlfriend/toy) on the yacht–I mean, they were in the shower together, and it’s not like Bond movies have ever been hardcore porno, so I think it’s safe to assume. That’s three women Bond had sex with or was strongly implied to have had sex with (one of whom winds up dead), which strikes me as pretty much par for the course for a James Bond movie.
I do not think he had sex with Moneypenny.
But he did with Severine. And I had a problem with that. He correctly deduces that he was sold into sexual slavery at age 12 and had been a slave of sorts ever since.
So how does he let her know he made it onto the boat? By getting naked and sneaking up on her in the shower. Now, not a great tactic ever in real life but it seems to me this would be a woman with whom a little less sexual aggression might be warranted.
And the sex at the resort while dead. I assume they had just watched Road House and wanted to see if sex against a stone wall is as uncomfortable as it looks.
I have no idea how this movie is getting rave reviews. (My local newspaper opined that it was the “best Bond movie ever” and that it should be considered for a Best Picture nomination.) It had some good scenes but lots of problems.
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At the start of the movie, the villain is apparently pulling off the mother of all Batman Gambits. Yes, I understand that he’s leaving a trail, but his plan requires all of the following improbable requirements: 1) Bond gets shot, doesn’t die, and doesn’t stop the thief, 2) keeps the bullet to trace (the idea that anyone would use special traceable uranium bullets is so silly that Bond never should’ve thought of it in the first place), 3) locates the assassin, takes him out and finds the chip without dying, 4) follows the chip to the French chick and not die to her guards, and 5) Q is stupid enough to hook the computer up to the MI6 network.
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The villain never really did it for me. His introduction was campy. He’s an ex-MI6 agent, but I never really felt he was connected to their world since M just ignores him and Bond doesn’t know him. Compare to Trevelyan, who actually felt like a former MI6 agent with a connection to the good guys. And his plan doesn’t really make any sense (especially as it goes from “kill M” to “kill himself and M.” Uh, ok. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not exactly drawn to watching a villain who can be described by the phrase “mommy issues.”
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New Q was lame and pretty forgettable.
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I felt like there was a lot of wasted potential between M and Bond. The whole theme of their movie was supposedly going to be their relationship, but apart from a few lines here and there (Bond ticked that she risked shooting him; M lying that he passed the test) it seemed there was no real tension between the two.
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Too much mood whiplash. As others have said, it seemed to try and be a serious movie, and then in other parts be a callback to the campy films, with the result that neither worked. Top example of this would be when the French chick gets killed - a good moment for the villain and a good one-liner for Bond, with a decent fight scene. Then the heroic music plays… all while the girl limply hangs there dead in the background. Ugh.
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The entire scene with the villain escaping up all up to bursting into Parliament strongly felt ripped out of The Dark Knight - crazy villain getting help from random minions, dressing up as cops, causing improbable mayhem (I knew you would follow me so I rigged this tunnel with explosives to drop a train on you at just the right moment! Mwhaha!)
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HOLY SHIT TURN OFF YOUR FLASHLIGHT ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED GROUNDSKEEPER
In the end, this really felt like two movies - the typical Bond film travelling in “exotic” locales like Shanghai and Macau, and then attempting the more gritty settings of a Bourne or Batman film in the second half. I suppose it was useful as a deck-clearing exercise, but overall lacked emotional punch and didn’t have enough “Bond”-ness for me in the second half.
Saw it last night. First thing to say is I enjoyed it – sat through the 2hrs 22m entertained all the way – BUT surely they could have had a slightly less stupid plot?
I’m not looking for Le Carré in a Bond movie but it’s irritating when the villain’s plan is so relying on coincidence and inexplicable idiocy in other people it would make a Truther blush! I suppose I can forgive the “what would have happened if MI6 had recovered the hard disk in the opening sequence?” Silva presumably put together the rest of the plot once he had the data but his method of getting captured and taken to M and to London was bonkers – if the original assassin had killed Bond in Shanghai or his idiotic minions killed him in the Macau casino he’d have looked a bit foolish – or even more foolish if Bond had just killed him when he took out the hired muscle … Then you get on to the idiocy of the Secret Intelligence Service: OK, we’ve captured this guy who’s already hacked into the most secure network in the country so we will confine him using nothing but centrally controlled electronic locks and we’ll connect his laptop directly to our network, inside our firewalls! And don’t get me started on the incompetence of the security at the “inquiry”….
Amongst all this, the torch on the moor was fairly minor but it did sort of set the seal on the attitude shown by the writers and Director – essentially “this spy/action stuff is just toooo silly – we don’t even need to try and make it believable”. Surely they could have found some better way of allowing Silva to follow M to the chapel without Kincaid and M being completely and utterly incompetent? Both of them had shown resource and intelligence in the battle through Skyfall – now they are suddenly as dim as the villains in a Famous Five book! (Incidentally, did the bit with them preparing the house remind anyone else of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone? ) Like magnusblitz I got the feeling Mendes did not really know what sort of film he was trying to make - gritty Connery or tongue in cheek Moore or just homage to every other Bond film from the last 50 years.
Ps How come Moneypenny didn’t get reprimanded? Not for shooting Bond but for not taking a second shot and killing the guy with the disk – she had a clear shot before the train entered the tunnel.
pps Was there some significance to the names of Bond’s parents shown of the headstone?
My problems fall more to the logic of the people NOT involved with the spying. Why wasn’t the load on the flat cars (the earth moving machine and the Beetles) actually tied down in any way? Why didn’t the train stop when the last third of the train came uncoupled? Why didn’t it stop when the last five feet of one of the passenger cars was torn away? Any of these things would have stopped the train - in ANY country. (Hell, severing an air brake line will literally throw a train into an emergency stop).
I really liked the movie, but then realized that Bond poetry much failed at everything except keeping himself alive.
Well, he stopped Silva from killing M, and was able to let M died in the arms of someone she cared about (loved?).
But I thought the whole third act went on waaayy too long. Not to mention Bond’s plan was kind of idiotic. "Let’s go to my old house, where we will be totally outnumbered by the crazy guy and his seemingly unending gang of henchmen.
I wondered about Silva’s henchmen too. Were they all mercenaries? They didn’t seem to belong to any kind of organized group.
I don’t get this one - the villan (Silva) did not care what happened to Bond - his plan had nothing to do with him specifically.
His plan was to
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retrieve the hard drive with the data - succeeded. If anything, M’s actions to “take the shot” helped him here, and was also meant to set up ‘why’ Bond stayed dead as well as why Silva was so angry with her.
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Get the needed data to decrypt said hard drive - now, how he broken into MI6 is an unknown (or he had inside help that we don’t know about yet), but his ‘plan’ there was embarrass MI6 and send the message to M - succeeded.
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Bond returning from the dead was his undoing - period - it was never part of his plan - he did however, have a contingency plan in case the hitman was captured/tracked down - he knew that someone would capture him and take him to London. Thanks to his familiarity with MI6, he also knew once the attack on HQ happened, where the backup location was - so the plans he made there to escape were completely successful due to that.
As far as hoping that Bond did not die from the gaurds at the casino - Bond (or any agent) actually getting to him was never part of his plan - that he had fallbacks in place should those (unlikely) events happen, is not a sign that he was hoping they would.
If there was a plan that relied on coincidence - it was M’s putting into the record how ‘broken’ Bond was - I believe Bond did pass his tests, but they wanted whoever might be tracking this to think they were sending a broken agent out after them.
What never ceases to amaze me in any movie like this is the number of accomplices Silva has - but this was never about control or money - this villain was always about revenge for the wrongs he suffered due to an order from M.
I saw it yesterday and really liked it- it was a fully entertaining fantasy.
I think the movie did a great job of being both a credible action flick and a slightly self-aware tribute. The plot was dumb, but not too painfully so. The cars, girls and exotic locales were well done. And unlike many modern action films, it did a good job of balancing itself in terms of intensity. I am so sick of watching action films that are basically two hour car chases. I know that 15-25 year old men are the prime movie watching audience and every movie needs to appeal to them, but not every action film needs to be paced like an X-Box game.
I was surprisingly disappointed in the romantic scenes (and I say this as a raving feminist). Bond’s romantic forays just seemed so secondary in this film. We barely saw the first girl at all, and she might as well have not been there. His seduction of Severine was abrupt and unsatisfying…you walk into a shower and then there are fireworks and…that’s it? That’s your big conquest? And while her character did get him to the island, the character herself didn’t actually do anything. She talked for a few minutes, slept with him, and then got shot. As a sexual conquest or romance or whatever, that’s damn boring. His romantic tensions with Moneypenny was a little more interesting, but again it didn’t seem to add up to much. If that romantic tension hadn’t been there, the plot wouldn’t really have been any different. Boring! I know we need to see a new, less misogynist Bond, but women can be positively portrayed and still be sexual beings.
I really liked when Bond implied that he’s explored all aspects of his sexuality, and I also liked how they handled his obvious alcoholism- they were able to make it a part of his character without glorifying it.
Yep, a lot of time when people start criticizing villains’ complex plans, they’re acting as if it all went exactly to plan. His plan was to get caught, not to get caught in some super specific way.
That being said, I think it’s time to put the “villain gets caught to gain access to base” plots to rest. As soon as the helicopters showed up, I thought “he wanted this.”
This is what I meant by saying the lack of sexuality was glaring. It wasn’t that it didn’t happen, it was just that there seemed to be there without being fleshed out. Merely implied instead of explored.
That applies to other aspects as well. For example, the opening: Having James Bond ‘die’ and then cut to credits is a great callback to the early half of the series. But then he’s just shown shacking up with a girl on a random beach. There’s no explanation. It’s as if they said, “well, audience, we know you’re smart enough to know James Bond didn’t actually die, and he’s perfectly fine. Heck, even M probably knows it too.” But that’s terrible and lazy storytelling. If you’re going to put it in there, put in the explanation. Especially for this one, where you actually see his body go over a waterfall. Holmes might have hid on the ledge, but we never get a word on what Bond did.
[Speaking of Holmes, BBC’s Sherlock is doing it right.
Even those who don’t know Holmes likely figured he had some way out of it. So we were shown that yes, of course, Holmes is alive. It’s the how that matters. Can you imagine if the next series were to start with Holmes just wandering around New York on a sightseeing trip before he decides to fly home and Watson says, “Oh, hello” when Sherlock pops up on his doorstep one day?
I agree that the contour of a Bond film (in terms of action and sequence of events) was yet another element they got right. And still it felt unsatisfying.
After all the raving online (“best Bond movie ever!” by serious, credible, mainstream reviewers and the like), I was disappointed by the lame plot.
The last three Bond movies have tried to be grittier and more realistic than the previous ones. Which is fine with me - I love it! But that just makes the various non-credible plot elements stand out even more.
It’s the same problem the last few years of superhero movies have had. I just find myself sitting there, looking at the beautiful sets, the “serious” actors, the elegant cinematography, and thinking “Really? A guy running around in a bat suit? Really?”
The movie was produced very well, and it was enjoyable enough. But every five minutes, something happened that totally took me out of the movie because it was so blatantly simplistic and unrealistic, compared to the rest of the movie.
Damn, missed the edit window.
They did a lot in this movie (and the previous two) to get rid of the cartoonish, superhero-style James Bond. Bond is no longer invulnerable, he’s flawed, wounded, sore, getting older. There are no more ridiculous gadgets. MI6 is now visibly subject to civilian oversight - we see M having to testify at a committee hearing. And so forth.
All of this, IMO, improves the quality of the Bond movies immensely.
On the other hand, they fail to execute on this realism consistently. Despite all the emphasis on realism regarding Bond himself and MI6, we still have a “crazy supervillain”-style enemy with the usual inexplicable army of well-equipped disposable henchmen, and a military helicopter with machine gun that he has (also inexplicably) managed to smuggle into Scotland after escaping from MI6.
I just don’t understand why, if they’ve decided that a grittier, more realistic Bond is needed (the right decision IMO), they don’t spend the time to come up with grittier, more realistic enemies.
Couple questions
Why did Bond let the sniper shoot his target?
With Moneypenny added and a new M plus all of the talk about Bond getting old, did it feel like they rebooted themselves?
If Finnes character had been MIles Messervy would that have been too much of a giveaway?
This is the part I’m complaining about his plan being too far-fetched. As far as I can tell, the hitman being captured isn’t an “in case of” - it was actually part of the villain’s plan to have the hitman followed. (Note that we never find out who he kills - it’s just a setup for Bond to follow him). His whole plan of “knowing someone would capture him” hinges on the events of Bond following him and surviving everything exactly as they actually happened.
I don’t think his plan was to get caught - he’s no Loki - but he had contingency plans in place IF he got caught - as it was a real possibility.
He also likely set in motion specific aspects of it as soon as Bond (or whomever) survived the Casino guards - they did not let him win - but he knew that this had happened and knew he was going to have to deal with this other rat - figuring out it was Bond, then getting Bond’s info (and that M also ‘gave an order’ without regard to Bond’s survival) had him hoping it was someone he could turn. He also likely knew that as soon as an agent had gotten that close - it was not a stretch that MI6 would be close behind.
As for Bond’s survival and time off - Bond had quit at that point - to the world he was Dead - to M and MI6 as well - but as soon as M was in legit danger - he felt compelled to come back.
Loved the movie, but the biggest gaping plothole did annoy me a little - Supervillain gets deliberately captured to gain access to the tunnels - from which he goes to the Tube to travel to the shootout at Westminster Corral.
Last time I was in London I just went down an escalator in front of Harrod’s to get to the Tube.