MAJOR SPOILERS - Nit Picking Plot Loopholes
Bodie
Posts: 211MI6 Agent
I know you have to go with the flow with Bond movies and most of them have plot loopholes you could drive an bus through, but just for a bit of fun:
1. What were 3 MI6 officers doing in Istanbul with a laptop with details of undercover agents in it. Surely this type of information would be safely encrypted in the MI6 mainframe.
2. Why did Bond take himself off when he was shot. Surely getting shot must come under the heading of occupational hazard if your a 00. Could it be he was sulking because M gave the order to take the shot. That would be a bit nieve.
3. Why assign Bond to go after Patrice when he failed all his tests. What were all the other active 00s doing. Had they the weekend off.
4. When Bond saw that Patrice was going to shoot the man in the building opposite why didn't Bond move in then to save him.
5. Patrice got 4 million euros for shooting the man admiring the painting. Even with inflation its a fair increase from Scaramanga's million a kill. Also seems a bit elaborate when all that was needed was for one of the men with Severine to shoot him when he was sitting down looking at the painting.
1. What were 3 MI6 officers doing in Istanbul with a laptop with details of undercover agents in it. Surely this type of information would be safely encrypted in the MI6 mainframe.
2. Why did Bond take himself off when he was shot. Surely getting shot must come under the heading of occupational hazard if your a 00. Could it be he was sulking because M gave the order to take the shot. That would be a bit nieve.
3. Why assign Bond to go after Patrice when he failed all his tests. What were all the other active 00s doing. Had they the weekend off.
4. When Bond saw that Patrice was going to shoot the man in the building opposite why didn't Bond move in then to save him.
5. Patrice got 4 million euros for shooting the man admiring the painting. Even with inflation its a fair increase from Scaramanga's million a kill. Also seems a bit elaborate when all that was needed was for one of the men with Severine to shoot him when he was sitting down looking at the painting.
Comments
2. I guess a feeling of betrayal. M ordered the shot in a risky situation, she was desperate. Bond got let down and cut loose, MI6 assumed he didn't survive the fall, as Eve called it in "agent down". Bond saw it as a chance to take a break and review his life and what he should be doing with it.
3. Bond was always thought of as the best. M needed to show Bond she had faith in him and wanted him back, so she lied about the tests and sent Bond back out into the field.
4. Because Patrice's target wasn't known or important. Why risk the mission for the life of an unknown? You could look at it tactically. Maybe Bond thought Patrice's weapon was single shot, so if he let Patrice fire, there'd be no more rounds left to take out Bond?
5. We don't know who the guy was. Possibly a computer guy who helped Silva set up his operation. Maybe he was one of the guys who instigated his torture? Either way, Silva had a sadistic streak and possibly wanted to take the guy out when he was least expecting it.
Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
www.helpforheroes.org.uk
www.cancerresearchuk.org
Ok good fun, and I like to close loopholes, lets see now...
1. I guess the info on the laptops would have been encrypted anyway, Silva with his knowledge could easily have broken the encryption, given he's ex MI6, but it would have been beyond most people. Why have the agents got the info? Maybe they would just need to know who was where and doing what, just in case?!
2. Bond took himself off after he was shot, not because he'd been shot but because it was the perfect cover to 'retire' himself. He is weary of the job, cynical about it and he's just had enough at that point. In fact Eve shooting him probably did him a favour!
3. M and Bond have a very special relationship, the whole point of the film in fact. M still thought Bond could do the job better than any other agent despite his failing the tests. It was personal and Bond would understand this, especially as he and Silva are two sides of the same coin, unlike 006 and 008!
4. Bond didn't stop Patrice killing the man because he wanted to see what was happening and the man looking at the painting was frankly irrelavent to Bond. I guess he needed to see who Patrice was going to Kill. Bond didn't save the man because he didn't need to.
5. Patrice was a trained killer, good at his job, wouldn't miss and couldn't be traced. Severine was a scared young woman, who was there under pressure, and would no doubt have made a mess. I doubt she could kill at point blank range.
Ok my take on your points Bodie, I maybe wrong, lol! And yes good fun!
I remember the same thing crossed my mind when watching it yesterday.. Although pretty fast after that thought, you saw the train getting heading into the tunnel.
YouTube channel Support my channel on Patreon Twitter Facebook fanpage
I imagine she was in a state of shock and not really thinking clearly.
Scaramanga was way ahead of his time!
MAJOR EARTH SHATTERING SPOILER**** Only read if you have seen the WHOLE film***
Why the hell wasn't Bond fired or hung or something for... well... for kidnapping M and getting her killed?
I mean, seriously, good film but this is just niggling me bad. He got her killed. And he's still working.
If Ralph's new M character took the heat and got demoted to M then it would have been helpful to have that mentioned in the actual film. If that IS even the case. It's just distracting that poor old Jude got capped and no one got their wrist slapped.
J
Got to agree here, Bond's plan kind off... sucked to be honest.
These don't bother me, but as we're having fun as said, I thought I'd bring them up...
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
1. She had a full tank of petrol?
2. It was an out of service train, heading back to the depot.
1. Agreed, and modern Land Rovers are far more economical!
2. How convenient... I guess Silva is not a complete monster after all.
www.007jamesbond.dk
http://thedangermen.com/
-How could a computer genius who works for MI6 hook up the computer of a dangerous hacker directly into the MI6 mainframe (even inside the firewalls)? No-one who works with IT security would even think of doig such a thing!
Also: Clearly Skyfall isn't occupied, everything is dusty, locked up and covered up. There are no houses in the valley other than the family chapel. I can't see an extra car anywhere. Where does Kincade live?
Ok, Q in this case has the arrogance of youth, in his mind he's the best and no-one can out wit him. He was wrong and made a mistake, which is something Ben Wishaw aluded to in interviews.
Just because you can see no other cars doesn't mean Kincades car wasn't there somewhere, a place like Skyfall would at least have a garage I would imagine! We did't get a full estate agents tour after all, and there is probaly a village nearby, Bonds family would have had to buy a pint of milk from somewhere!
Patrice had his hands around Bonds neck, and I imagine Patrice kind of assumed Eve maybe taking a shot and was using Bond as a shield.
I'm quickly coming to the conclusion there really are no 'nits to pick' in this film!
It is explained. When Bond meets up again with Eve after his return to MI6, she apologises and then Bond mentions being shot in the ribs, some of the less vital organs.
With things like this, I don't question anything. May sound daft but when you consider the amount of situations where bond has made a miraculous escape or had a seriously massive bit of good luck land at his door, you just have to shrug it off and go along with it.
I'd like to know what happened to the list of agents, did it get retrieved or are all the agents blown? Bond 24 material?
Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
www.helpforheroes.org.uk
www.cancerresearchuk.org
1. All the other double 0s may be dead. There were eight coffins.
2. I don't think M cared that much if Bond lived or died (okay, she'd probably prefer he live). He was given a radio transmitter and it was his job to find Silva, and when he got close, hit the button so that the cavalry could come charging in. Whether Bond lived or died was immaterial. It's sort of like the book version of TMWTGG where Bond is basically sent on a suicide mission.
I could be wrong but I don't believe the eight dead were 00 agents. M's office was blown up in the explosion. There is a scene in the PTS where Tanner looks out of M's office and shouts "Give me CCTV, satellite, anything." He's talking to "rank and file" MI6 employees. They would be the one's who died in the explosion.
I realise that it's a contrivance that allows that last scene to play out the way it does but it doesn't work when you think a little deeper about it.
I love the last scene for the record, despite the plot-hole annoying me a little, it didn't take anything away from the film for me.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
For all we know, he may have met her for the first time five minutes before the movie started when she gave him a ride from his hotel to where the dead agents were located. Bond would've spent the entire trip talking to M and getting updated. As far as Bond was concerned, she was just a driver.
M sent Bond on the mission, as she knew he was the best... (even after failing the tests) - she says so at the end, when she is dying... she knew he would get the job done. (And needed too...)
2. I think M did care if he died... and that basically what the movie was all about - her thinking about what she's done/doing (re-sending men to their deaths...) But she knows it's part of her job, and sentimentality can't get in the way of that even though Bond had a massive paddy about it and pretended to be dead
Maybe the closest thing is how does Silva know that Bond took M to Skyfall in the first place? I've only seen the film once so far, but I don't recall anything concrete about how Silva is able to track them. If he can, then why not have set a trap for Silva in some other context? Lure him to another safe house where SAS are waiting to take Silva out?
There are some dumb choices that characters make on the other hand.
Why does Kincade use a flashlight while trying to escape -- the film wants us to believe that there are frozen pitfalls that make doing so a necessary gamble, but given that they're fleeing for their lives, perhaps a better solution would have been to simply wait somewhere else on the grounds in hiding rather than go to the only other building. That's not a plothole but just kind of stupid. Or why drag M across the moors rather than hide her and try to lure Silva's men away?
Why would an MI-6 hard drive not have some sort of auto-erase or self-destruct feature? In the 1960s, the tape recordings that Jim Phelps got for Mission: Impossible had this -- for all of Q's puffery, did the gadget master not consider this simple precaution? I generally don't care about such things -- nitpickers always want to pretend that life is perfect and the best solution to a problem is always as immediately understood to characters as they are to audiences -- but there's already a time-worn precedent in spy movies for these kinds of technical solutions.
Why didn't Bond take Patrice with him while fighting/falling? If the stakes were that high, Bond seems exactly the kind of person who would sacrifice himself to stop the bad guys. Why didn't Even shoot both of them in the legs, as the goal was to stop Patrice and not necessarily just to kill him?
If Bond grew up at Skyfall, wouldn't he have had more of an advantage in knowing where to hide and what might be available to defend himself? The climax of the film has been compared to Straw Dogs, but in that film, there was more geography to the house, and the Hoffman character seemed to better understand how he could use his knowledge to advantage. Bond might as well have just been in any house fighting.
Of course, these are all just grousing, as the film operates reasonably well despite the choices. It would have been better if the characters had done a little more -- I was watching Gone with the Wind last night and was amazed again at how every scene in the movie tells us something important about the characters whereas in more modern films, like Skyall, a lot of scenes are just there to advance the plot -- but that's the era we live in.