Skyfall Plotholes

image

Definitely not me but it’s nothing new that discussions float between places and people.

Have we been baited by someone from the other side?

Surely no-one has ever been that bored?

Dare I say, the dark side?

1 Like

Additonal thought: there has always been an aspirational element to the character of James Bond–look at the books/websites dedicated to the James Bond lifestyle, and the concern for the car he is driving, the watch he is wearing, and the liquid he is consuming.

Does that sense of aspiration spill over into Bond’s treatment of women? I would argue it does (though as a queer it does not affect me; the heterosexual members of this community will have to say how Bond’s behavior with women affected them).

So if darker/grittier/more realistic aspects are injected into the Bond formula, how do they affect the aspirational elements which have not been jettisoned?

Lastly, I may be queer, but I am Bond forum monoganmous.

1 Like

Honestly, no, for the same reason none of us, including you, have become a serial killer because of watching Bond. We can all tell the difference between fiction and reality.

I’d say it depends whether a character is done ‘justice’: is it a character or just a conveniently placed cardboard where the script can throw a slogan or theme at watchers. Minor characters like Severine or Q are usually running a risk of being the latter. But behold, a closer look often reveals more facets…

Severine is evidently a player a cut above Silva’s other goons: she figures prominently in important schemes, is part of a bizarrely staged killing - and her own demise, likewise bizarre, surreal - as well as a crucial element in Silva’s wider plan.

Bond thinks she’s afraid of her employer and there’s reason to believe she really is (she may have more experience with the drinking game than we are able to witness…). It’s important that Bond believes he may have an ‘in’ with her, even if she’s not actually going through with it. And it’s likewise important that she’s not just taking off with Bond from Macau, as she well might.

In all of this complicated mix of motivation and hidden agenda - Silva wants to get caught; Severine wants to escape; Bond wants to get his job done (no hidden agenda here) - we are also told Severine has been a victim of child sex trafficking. And now there’s the question: is this everything she is, can we see beyond this snippet of information, still see Severine’s other facets and motivations?

Can be difficult. Why have we been told this at all?

Because we needed a conflicted character whose function had to be standing between Bond and his objective, believably torn between loyalty and her own desire. A character whose death would mean more to the audience, somebody they could like but maybe not entirely understand.

I think in this given set of circumstances we could have used perhaps another backstory. Or maybe have done without entirely, like with Severine’s twin Cigar Girl. But then her death would also have meant less to the audience. Who is debating whether Cigar Girl was treated well by TWINE’s script?

1 Like

Once more, difficult to judge in general. And very much depending on which particular case we are talking about. As well as what kind of viewer, what kind of fan. As @stromberg already pointed out, the films are full with questionable, at times even despicable cases. And a certain kind of character in the audience will always jump on the occasion to use such cases to justify his own vile behaviour. Nowadays perhaps even more than in the 60s.

In general though I’d argue Bond, while not a guy to marry, is largely depicted as at least not being abusive. And once more in general, the fans and audiences seem - still - to be able to discern between Bond film and real life. Otherwise somebody wearing a $ 400 Baracuta windcheater might well decide to change the course of history. And that, as we know, are usually guys dressed by Woolworth. Where they got their guns too…

But to set this in context, over the years you find all kinds of fans on the net; there’s literally nothing you can think of that the net hasn’t already thought of before - and given a niche where it can exist.

And there’s also no way to forecast how people make up their own narrative to fit Bond into their world. We used to have a member on the old board, longtime fan and amiable enough, who for religious reasons preferred to think all the times Bond lay in bed with a girl nothing happened below the sheets. I think I can confidently claim that you don’t meet this theory very often, neither in fandom nor with the wider audience.

So you see, there’s really no way of telling what people take for themselves from these films and how they deal with it.

1 Like

All so wonderfully analyzed, Dustin. Thank you.

First, pardon my delay in responding–work became a little more intense.

While being a victim of child sex trafficking is a snippet of information in terms of it being one character aspect among many, it also has far more significance in a character’s life (if that character is making any claims to verisimilitude) than saying she was born in Canarsie. Childhood sex abuse has a profound effect on the subsequent life of a person and will affect most (if not all) of her “other facets and motivations.” If Severine’s abuse is to be taken as more than “trauma signaling,” then I would agree that another backstory should have been used since, as your analysis notes, the narrative needed a conflicted character.

Which is fine in a Bond film working on the level of fantasy/myth. But the Craig Bond films want more than myth/fantasy–they want to add reality while still holding onto the fantasy/myth elements. An audience member can feel like Evelyn Mulwray in the last reel of CHINATOWN: “It’s fantasy! It’s reality! It’s fantasy! It’s reality! It’s fantasy and it’s reality!”

Bond films have worked perfectly where audience involvement was achieved through engaging action and spectacle. The Craig Bonds went for greater involvement through increased audience identification with the characters. On one hand, this approach was an answer to the critique that women were objectified/diminished in earlier films. But the cure also brought its own problems since while characters were fleshed out, it was only to a certain degree, so that depth was sometimes signaled rather than provided. It is the old problem of trying to ride two horses with one butt.

What I am referring to is the general objectification of women that goes on in Bond movies (though there is some nice male eye candy in one of the Brosnan Bonds, but I cannot at the moment recall which one). Not that Bond movies were alone in this practice. We know how women, people of color, and queers (to name just three groups) were generally depicted in films as existing to be at the service of the hetero white male protagonist. In the Hollywood films of the 1920’s and 1930’s (especially pre-Code films), there are some great exceptions, e.g., THE DIVORCEE (1930) and EX-LADY (1933), but in these and other cases you find that women were involved in writing the scripts and shaping the female characters. Women’s involvement as writers and (more significantly) directors diminished once the Hayes Code was instituted, resulting in greater rigidity and stratification in the way studios were operated. Dorothy Arzner was the only woman in the DGA until her retirement, followed by Ida Lupino in the 1950’s. But that was it until the 1970’s. What constituted accepted/standard film narrative was determined by men for decades. There were some exceptions: Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Fred Zinnemann created three-dimensional female characters who exhibited autonomy, and Douglas Sirk filmed scripts he was handed in such a way as to turn them on their head, but these were rare exceptions.

Not entirely. There are things that the films do which are consistent, observable elements of the works.

I agree. There is the interesting exception of Cad Bond in TMWTGG–a dead end, but at least Hamilton carried the conceit through the whole film, making for an interesting take on the character. One of the other egregious examples is the rape-the-lesbian-out-of-Pussy-Galore scene in GOLDFINGER, but there again Hamilton’s distancing mise en scene/editing does good work.

But in addition to how Bond acts in the films is how women are presented therein. Within the movies many objects are presented as aspirational items, the possession of which represent achieving Bond status. For example, Manuela in MR sits on the sofa, reveals some leg, and offers herself to Bond as if she were one of the suite’s amenities. Women being ready and willing to be conquered is part of the Bond universe. There are women who resist, but ultimately they too are won (or forced) over.

Agreed, but what I was asking members of this community was “how Bond’s behavior with women affected them.” Or to put it another way: how did they initially react to the films’ presentation of women and if and how that reaction has changed over the years.

1 Like

But actually that snippet, short as it is - and unreliable since it’s still Bond’s assumption, however informed - is going far beyond trauma signalling. Bond also assumes Silva was the one taking her out of the prostitution racket. This not only explains her actions, it also provides a powerful source for loyalty: Silva literally gave her back a life. Of sorts.

It may be slowly dawning on her that Silva shouldn’t have command over this her life in the first place. But the deep gratitude and devotion of years isn’t something that can be easily shed. Silva knows how to recruit devoted agents, he’s been at the receiving end of the technique himself. Perhaps Severine is even an asset he recruited when he was himself still working for SIS? It would fit the pattern.

Great way to put it. Though I’m not sure about the greater depth bringing that much more problems with it. It is still a relatively small circle discussing these films in detail while the wider audience just consumes them. Without much further thought or care. Even the pieces in the feuilleton about the one film or the other - how it’s supposedly “Time to stop making Bond films!” - are aimed largely at a tiny segment of the actual audience.

That’s a wide field going far beyond SKYFALL or any plot holes. I shall come back to this later, possibly in its own thread.

3 Likes

What I never realy understood was her presence in the same room as the guy who’s gonna shot by Patrice in that large building opposite the one Patrice (and Bond) are in. What’s she doing there? Who is that guy anyway, what has he got to do with the plot? Is she only there to have a cool scene between Bond and her staring at each other?

Same reason Goldfinger smuggles gold with his Rolls-Royce.

1 Like

I don’t see the similarity?
The smuggling of gold and going to that factory in Switserland has to do somehow with the plot.

But there’s no good reason that Severine is there at all. Why? Why is she in the same room which the guy who’s shot on behalf of her own “friend/lover”.

You can think of some reasons (Is she framed/set up by Silva, or even used as a prostitute), but not a real good one, because the movie itself gives none.
It’s just a very odd scene, if you think about it. It doesn’t make sense at all.

Why is Goldfinger personally smuggling Gold with his car? It has nothing to do with the plot but it serves to lead Bond to the main plot.

Why is Severine at the assassination of that guy? It has nothing to do with the plot but it serves to lead Bond to the main plot.

1 Like

Not quite.
He would have met her in the casino anyway.
They didn’t even mention that they have seen each other already, if I’m remember it right.

Goldfinger didn’t need to move the Gold himself. he’d have been at the plant anyway.

It’s only a plot hole if you try to hold it to a higher standard of logic, which is massively unreasonable 66 years into the characters first appearance in which a game of chance is treated as if it’s real. Bond has never been realistic and no-one making it has ever pretended it has.

I’m putting that in bold as I know i’ve written that quite a few times and it’s a response to every “plot hole” complaint that is on this thread, as they all stem from people trying to hold Skyfall to a higher standard of narrative than any of its predecessors because it dared be successful to a wider audience. Some people online, who have nothing to do with anything, think Bond is trying to be real now, but people online also put Jedi down as religion on their census, should we now treat Star Wars as a theological text because of that?

1 Like

Um, Severine lures that guy into that situation. She is the bait for the kill.

2 Likes

Indeed. She’s integral. There was also a deleted scene of Severine giving Patrice the briefcase.