Skyfall

... This movie... This is like Brave, but in Live-action. I don't mean storywise, I mean reaction wise... When I first went in and watched it, I enjoyed it, and thought it was a good movie. I'm no real fan of the Bond films, but it was enjoyable. But, after actually thinking on the movie for a bit I realized that there were actually quite a few things that now make me think otherwise...


     From this point on, there will be spoilers.


     The first thing that gave me pause in the film was when they had the badguy captured, and were trying to decrypt his codes. I don't care so much that their portrayal of hacking wasn't realistic, having a screen display a sort of spider-web of code instead of just thousands of lines of information, rather I care about how they go about decrypting it...They know the villain to be a manipulative bastard, and yet are trying to decrypt the code while being connected to M16. No shit he snuck a code in there to open all the doors! I'm just shocked he didn't blow up the entire building once the code was decrypted!

     That's another thing; the villain blows up the office of the head of MI6. He does this by hacking into the building, and turning on the gas... One, why is such a thing connected to the internet? This is not Megaman nt Warrior, we do not have personal AIs to go into machines and kill anthropomorphized viruses, not everything is connected to the internet. Two, why do they have gas anyway? It is the 21st century, we have these things called fans, radiators, heaters... Why would they have gas anywhere but the garage and possibly the weapons lab?

     That's another thing also; the villain is a super hacker. He claims at one point to be able to crash the stock market, with just a couple keystrokes. But, he doesn't do that. Instead of being a cyber terrorist, he focuses on hurting MI6 and it's leader... Sure, he has a personal vendetta, but wouldn't the idea of someone's world crumbling around them be better than just menacing them?

     Consider this: what if instead of turning on the gas that is connected to the internet for some reason, he controls the doors of MI6? He's shown to be able to open all the doors, so keeping them closed would've been just as easy. Consider how many doors you walk through in a day; what if you were no longer able to open these doors? You'd probably be stuck in a room with no food, and if the room is hermetically sealed with regulated air supply (like there would be in a weapons development area) you'd probably run out of oxygen. That's an idea out of a horror or sci-fi story, yet is entirely plausible when doors can be opened and sealed via a computer.
     Rather than Bond trying to find the villain to retrieve a list of agents, it could instead be Bond racing against the clock to free MI6. Meanwhile, the villain is forcing the boss of MI6 to watch as her people die around her, with her powerless to stop it. He wouldn't get his desired "satisfaction" from killing her (really, the dude's a sociopath. after killing her he'd probably just have started setting the world on fire) but he would get to watch her torment.
     Changing the plot to that would've removed a lot of the problems revolving around the hacking and the insane planning. It isn't necessarily Bond-like, but it is a more believable plot, with less contrivances.

     Speaking of contrivances... At the end, the Boss and some guy we meet in the last 20 minutes are escaping Bond's home, Skyfall (yeah, kind of a let down. Was expecting it to be a botched mission or something... not the name of Bond's childhood home.), and the guy is dumb enough to be waving around his flashlight, as if to say, "Here we are! Come kill us!" Oy...
     Oh, and you know that gun Bond gets in all the preivews? one that they make such a big deal about? Bond never fires it. In fact, it is never fired at all. It is a Chekov's gun that fires off by not firing off, as absolutely insane as that sounds. Complete let down. The tiny radio was more useful than that gun...

     Oh, to bring this up again (and as a way of showing what the movie did wrong) the list of the undercover agents all over the world, that plot thread disappears entirely after the badguy is captured. It is never brought up again, and never considered. It is a true-blue MacGuffin. A useless item to be sought after simply because the plot demands it.

     And just one last note... This movie feels padded by about 30 minutes. This is because the end sequence feels a bit like it is happening after the big climactic battle. The badguy interrupts the hearing about the missing files, and attempts to kill the Boss, only to be stopped by the agents and Bond. There is also a very brief, Blink-and-you-miss-it-but-is-brought-up-later scene where the guy who is going to replace the Boss intercepts the bullet that was meant for her. This entire scene feels like it should've been the end of the badguy, and the wrapping up of subplots... But nope, we need to trek across the country to Bond's old home, so that they can kill him. THEY COULD'VE DONE THE SAME WITH A GAS ROOM AT A REMOTE LOCATION. They didn't need to go to Bond's home to set up a trap! They set up crumbs for the badguy to follow, and he followed them like a lemming! Sure you wouldn't get to kill the Boss that way, but if you're going to contrive circumstances just so that the Boss will die, you could have done so 30 minutes before hand!

One last nit pick... Where does the bad guy hire his goons? Do they have lives, families, friends outside their job? Did he clone them with her computer skills? Why does no one want to explain why the badguy always has mooks?!


*sigh* Skyfall is a popcorn movie. You'll enjoy it while watching it, but you won't want to see it again. If you like Bond films, go watch it. If you enjoy random action like in the Furious 5 movies, go watch it. If you like deep, intricate plots that make perfect rational sense even after watching them, go read Death Note.

This has been Fixer Sue. Don't be surprised if a week from Friday I'm gushing about Rise of the Guardians; also don't be surprised if I'm actually raging about Rise of the Guardians, it could go either way now.