Nothing she does?
I think he walked " creative differences"
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I agree with this. The “step-brother” angle is stupid and waaay too coincidental for them to become archenemies by pure chance 20-plus years later. This is the worst kind of effort to make stories/missions be personal.
As theSpectre mentioned, having Bond’s first encounter with Blofeld’s organization be in Casino Royale makes way more sense and you still get a personal angle and a good reason for them to be archenemies. To paraphrase Blofeld in SPECTRE, “You infringe on my world, I destroy yours.”
Good lord. Reading this thread makes me want to pull my hair out.
These are James Bond films, suspension of disbelief is a prerequisite . In fact, when I go to see any film I don’t bother trying to pull the plot apart afterwards. I am just there for the ride.
When the DB5 was revealed in Skyfall there was a huge reaction from the audience in the cinema- a lot of people gasped, others whooped, I merely had a shiver run down my spine and the hairs on my arm stood on end. I don’t care where he got it, whether it makes sense for him to have it, whether DC is the same Bond as Moore, Connery whoever. It’s James Bond’s car and this is a James Bond film and Daniel Craig is James Bond.
It’s as simple as that.
Same goes for the underground train Silva sent crashing through the tunnel- it happened. It doesn’t matter where it came from. It’s a set-piece. These films have massive budgets and it took 25 engineers and six months to create such a scene, pain-painstakingly put together each carriage weighing 7 tons.
Just appreciate these films a bit more and as for these so-called ‘plot-holes’ - do I look like I give a damn?
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Glad your theater had such a powerful reaction to the car scene. I can honestly say that outside of the CR torture scene, no Craig film has solicited audible reactions out of any crowd I’ve seen them with, unlike the Bond’s I saw in the 70s and 80s, where I often wished folks would just settle down so I could hear the show.
Anyway, I agree it’s easy to enjoy a film with your brain turned off, and the Bonds invented that. But some of us can’t manage to sit there with the same “I don’t care what happens, I always love everything” attitude that comes easily to you. At the end of the day, we enjoy certain entries more than others, and its fair to consider why.
For instance, why do I happily put up with Bond’s disappearing wrist gun in MR, or laugh off Connery conveniently wearing a ninja suit with suction cups under his fisherman disguise in YOLT (when he couldn’t have known he’d find a fortress with metal walls to climb down)? But then, why does it mildly irritate me when Bond “cheats” in LALD with the buzzsaw watch? Or take me completely out of the action when the DB5 shows up in SF?
My own theory is that as long as you’re having fun, you’ll happily let things slide, but if you’re already turned off, or irritated, or bored, you start picking everything apart. SF lost me way before the car, and having lost my good will, the film went under my microscope.
I also think “classic” Bond gets much more of a free pass with this stuff because the attitude was always, “Folks, we and you both know this whole premise is lunatic, so let’s have some fun with it, " whereas the Craig films are much more pretentious and faux-serious with all their brooding, “blunt-weapon,” angsty, psychologizing " where’s our Oscar” airs. They demand to be taken seriously, and under the cold glare of serious inspection, they’re as daffy and nonsensical as anything that went before.
Anyway, should Bond as a genre get by with nonsense more than other films? Is say yes. But should Skyfall, with its “look, we don’t need Nolan to make a Nolan film” attempts to Oscar-up the franchise? In my opinion, no.
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I certainly DO care what happens and certainly do not love everything.
But picking apart a film’s perceived plot holes is not something I end up doing if a film doesn’t grab my attention or I get bored. That’s just not how I experience a film.
Each to their own!
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Well, considering EON takes an eternity to get these things in the theater, we’ve got to do something to pass the time. 
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Oh wait, you meant during a film.
This is a good point, and gets back to what I was trying to say. I’ve seen films that I’ve found tremendously entertaining in the moment and only later realized were illogical or sloppy. Then I’ve seen films I loved greatly and further analysis revealed them to be even more clever and well-constructed than first impressions suggested.
Where I run into trouble is when a film has me noticing and taking exception to plot points, gimmicks or leaps in logic while the film is still in progress. That I consider a failure, really, and I think it’s worth examining. Having issues with a film doesn’t mean I write it off entirely (always) and having flaws doesn’t make a film “bad” per se. But I do think that if anything comes up to take a viewer out of the story and remind them they’re watching a movie – and second-guess the decisions that were made – then there’s a problem. And yes, I freely admit what’s a problem for me may well not be for someone else.
And while I promised already to shut up about the car, I’ll make one last remark. To me, the inclusion of the DB5 was intended to get cheers and probably did get them in some theaters, but those cheers were unearned. Up to this point, great effort had gone into making Craig’s Bond a distinct and separate character from what went before. CR and QoS were, largely, rejections of the traditional formula that said “This is not your father’s James Bond movie.” To which I answered, fine, then give us something just as good. I think CR met that challenge. I wasn’t as happy with QoS, but at least it had the courage of its convictions. Bringing back that car was a clumsy exploitation of a legacy of good will surrounding “classic” Bond, a nod back to a “history” that by mutual agreement we and the producers had already said goodbye to. The car belongs to another series, another character, another era. Pulling it out for easy applause is a cheap stunt, and completely unnecessary given that they’ve already proved Craig-Bond can stand on his own without having to mooch “cred” from “old Bond.”
Which is to say, with some effort I can come up with reasons to explain away the car’s presence in SF, within the logic of the story itself. But on a personal level, I feel it was a mistake to include it in the first place, so I’m disinclined to help. Just like the “other fella” remark, it’s a fourth-wall-breaking nod to other films, and all it made me think was, “I sure liked Goldfinger a lot better than this.”
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Shout out to PPK and David M with a couple of points.
Like PPK, everytime I saw SF in the cinema, the audience did have an audible reaction to the first appearance of the DB5 and then it’s role as a significant plot device in the film’s climax. And I believe that the general audience are more “laissez-faire” about the logic and more reactive to the instant emotion generated by any particular moment. For me the Aston’s appearance is nothing more than pandering to that very base “this is a Bond film” moment. Should those moments exist in each and every film is a different discussion but because I like SF, and I reacted to that bone thrown at me (Hey long-time Bond fans, here’s a little gift for watching GF for the umpteenth time on cable!), I’ll give it a pass.
As to David M’s posts - I agree we all have different thresholds as to what should or should not make sense, and so how you feel about an individual film will determine how patient you’re willing to be be. I liked SF from the first minute so I’ll buy into Underground trains arriving on time and DB5s turning up. On the other hand, I think SP is… well, I’m not willing to give it a pass on pretty much anything, including the stretched-beyond-belief ret-conning that is the last act.
Where you stand on how each film in the franchise hangs together is determined pretty much with where you start with each film. DAF’s plot is, when you look even casually, preposterous, but because SC is there, it is quite funny and goes down easily for me, I’ll forgive all of it. Well, apart from Blofed in drag, but then as Bond of SP might have said, that’s family for you…
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This is a great point; as a long-time Bond fan, I’m going to have different expectations and demands than a casual viewer. The average audience member likely doesn’t give a whit about whether the continuity of the Craig era can be reconciled with that of “classic Bond.” All they ask for is the theme, some pretty girls, maybe a tuxedo and lots of action. Any nods to classic Bond iconography are just icing on the cake.
It’s entirely reasonable for EON to want to please the largest audience possible, so in that sense, including the DB5 is a sound move, commercially. I may consider it a “fail” artistically, and a cheat from a writing perspective, but that’s always going to be my hang-up. At the end of the day, SF pulled in obscene amounts of money, and that’s Job 1. If as hardcore fans we find an entry meatier or more satisfying on a deeper level, that’s cool, but realistically that’s not the producers’ main objective. On the whole, we’re lucky to have gotten as much quality out of the films as we have. The laziest route to getting richer would have been to just do four more DADs and skip the experimentation of the Craig era completely.
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That’s my head canon too;
Lazenby Bond; Dr No, FRWL, GF, TB, OHMSS
Connery Bond; Dr No, FRWL, GF, TB, YOLT, DAF
It doesn’t work any other way. Well, unless you exclude yolt and have DAF be the sequel to OHMSS but that doesn’t quite work either.
Also, Moore and Dalton also follow the ‘lazenby bond’ timeline. So YOLT and DAF are essentially non-main canon.
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I love SKYFALL - but I forgot that it is actually Severine who invites Bond to follow her, kind of testing him since she thinks he will be killed by Silva´s goons before he can leave the casino.
What a marvelously written, acted, shot, edited, scored and directed scene:
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The shower scene is still icky, though. I couldn’t believe it at the time and it looks even worse now.
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What, because Bond ‘forces himself upon her’?
Absolute rubbish conjured up by the press at the time. Severine was waiting for Bond to board the yacht, she expressed disappointment when her bodyguard/whoever said they’d be setting off and Bond seemingly hadn’t arrived yet.
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Care to explain?
It’s a plot point that’s been debated since it came out and honestly, if someone wants to feel that scene has a touch of creepiness to it, I can’t begrudge them that.
Severine has been used by men through force for sex all her life, from being kept in the sex trade when she was 12 to Silva currently keeping her prisoner. Bond then getting his little piece, even if he was invited… it does have this unsettling air about it.
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Well, it’s been much discussed ever since the film came out and often crops up during conversations about Skyfall and the wider context of Bond and women, particularly since #Metoo.
Although Severine seems interested, and indeed disappointed when Bond initially fails to turn up, Bond wasn’t aware of this disappointment. More seriously, Severine has been conditioned to reciprocate men’s advances since her childhood as a sex slave. Bond just stepping into the shower, uninvited, was and remains a real WTF moment for many viewers and fans. If men have learned anything in the last few years, it’s that flirting does not constitute consent. There really couldn’t have been a moment more mistimed. I’m no SJW when it comes to gender relations, but it’s pretty glaring even to me.
Having said that, I think Skyfall has more serious flaws i.e. its whole script, and those concern me more.
The scene is creepy and Bond comes off as such in it, but at least the scene was consensual making it better than some of his other interactions in previous films: Patricia Fearing and Pussy Galore are two examples.
I always viewed that scene as several different factors leading to the same outcome:
- Bond forces something to happen by convincing Severine to take him to see her employer (Silva)
- Severine believes Bond can save her and thus invites him to go with her.
- Silva allowing the meeting to take place because he knew Severine would bring Bond to see him
Up until the firefight at the hearing, Silva controlled like 99.9% of everything that happened. I think the only thing he couldn’t control was Eve shooting Bond by accident. But it was a happy accident for him that he could use to try and turn Bond against M.
I think there’s a trap there, namely to assume ‘forced/abused child/sex worker = not able to have sex any more - and enjoy it - on her own terms’. It is a problematic scene in the context of what signs Bond spotted on Severine. But there’s no indication that she is not, in this specific situation, making her own decisions. She made a deal with Bond, the same deal Andrea (from TMWTGG) made with him: to free her from her current fate. I don’t find anything pointing toward her not consenting to spending the night with Bond.
Bond’s behaviour in TMWTGG on the other hand seems to me far more creepy in comparison. I understand why Severine is a sensitive matter in general, but would argue in the specific case she’s able to refuse Bond. I’m not sure it was the same with Andrea and doubt she’d have been okay with Goodnight in the wardrobe either.
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