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But the SAS would have exposed themselves when the first wave of Silva's men came to fight, and Silva (being in the second wave) would flee seeing it was a trap seeing he may be outnumbered and outgunned. Bond would lose him yet again.
Would Silva have necessarily been able to find out? They don't show any of the first wave communicating with him, though it's not at all unreasonable to presume that they could have but didn't.
I am sure he had communication set up, and he could see everything that was happening regardless when flying around in his helicopter.
There is no logic in it, even Fleming would have scratched his head on this one. Unless you consider James Bond a superhero, a one man terminator, in that case my choice would be James Cameron for the next movie since he knows about terminators. :D
Bond didn't know Kincade would be there. It was just supposed to be Bond defending M. When you consider Bond's knowledge of the harsh landscape, and the secrets of the Lodge, he does have some advantage over Silva's men.
I see plenty of logic in all of it, as we have supplied in our points made in response to your comments. Take it or leave it, it is no matter to any of us.
And Bond showed Silva he was the last rat standing with good old fashioned tactics, not relying on a massive troop of men and all the pomp that music and an armored helicopter supply. As Kincade states and Bond proves, "Sometimes, the old ways are the best."
Poor Brits. Some Time ago US Special Forces managed to Approach some Somali Pirates in the middle of a calm ocean and Take them Out,while the SAS can't even hide in the bushladen scottish landscape. No Wonder there is no Empire anymore. But go on all of you. It amuses me to no end how you try to make Sense of the senseless.
First of all. It is a film, lets not get the lines between reality and fiction blurred.
I personally don't know how clear you need it to be. Do films really need to explain every little deatil or choice? Can we not use our imagination for once? Creative thinking, anyone?
Yes, they could have had SAS and MI6 agents hiding all over the place. You miss the point and the idea of going to Skyfall though, the reason Bond took M there. To catch Silva and end this reign of terror. If there was the calvary waiting, the first wave of attackers would have discovered them, and an all out battle would have occurred which would be somewhat obvious to Silva in a helicopter. His not going to risk it, so he turns around and goes home.
Bond and M had to finish Silva off at Skyfall. To prevent anymore deaths.
The SAS aren't innocent civillians.
How would he? Trained soldiers would know how to camoflauge themselves. Silva's helicopter flies near to SF (where a battle is already started), and before he has a chance to say "shit they have troops there lets go home", it's shot down by the soldiers hidden in the countryside, meanwhile Bond and others take out the henchmen who came to the house. Jobs a good un.
I'm picking holes but I think Bond was incompetent taking M on her own.
Again, trying to make Sense of the senseless. Oh and by the Way i am not lacking Imagination but i also Feature some Sense of Logic, which simply doesn't allow me to buy just any BS!
It isn't senseless. That is immediately what was put in my mind once I seen it. It is called Suspension of disbelief. If you are looking for some sense of logic, you may be in the wrong franchise.
Yes to all of this.
I didn't say they were. I wasn't talking about SAS. I meant getting Silva away from civilians was part of the reason to get him to a remote place.
See above. The two wave thing has been discussed, as well as likely contact between the two waves. It's a movie, so there won't be much waiting and sitting around before the helicopter arrives, it's there right away after the first wave of attack. It makes sense to do that in a movie instead of having a lull there and a three hour film, that's all. Yes, it can all still be argued, but it's an escapist movie, and for a lot of people it obviously works the way it is. :) I have the impression Bond has done a lot of stuff on his own during his career, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not entirely. I don't know if that has always been considered problematic or if it's just Skyfall... ;)
Apparently. It is just Skyfall ;)
By this time I find it amusing how some people frame their responses. People aren't "making sense of the senseless", they are providing reasonable explanations for what happened on screen. If someone would have liked a different ending then I have no problem with that. But to continue to insist that the ending made no sense - especially after several posters explain how it *does* make sense - leads me to think that there is a lack of confidence or even insecurity behind their response. Instead of having the confidence to say "I just didn't like it" they feel the need to show dismiss other people's opinions by showing how the ending was, for lack of a better way of explaining it, "wrong".
This reminds me of how one poster challenged people to explain *anything* that made sense in SF. Then, once myself and others did, he again posted how no one had been able to explain how anything in SF made sense! It's the equivalent of a child putting his fingers in his ears and shouting "Nahhnahhnahhnahhnahh!!!" so he can claim that he didn't hear what the other person said - except that there's no excuse as he read our posts (they were copied in his reply). The most sad thing is that people don't realize how this makes them look.
Again, reasonable is the keyword. You should really Check out the meaning of this Word.
By the Way I was the Poster challenging and anyone can follow our discussion on Page 4 on this very thread and at least those on the sane side of Logic should be able to conclude the worth of yours - and JSW's - "reasoning" (which consisted of a"Silva comes back for revenge", an emoticon and quite some name calling)about the Things making Sense in SF!
And to come back to the OP and stay on topic, this kind of solo, unorthodox initiative is quite Flemignesque I think. Bond does follow, for better or worse, his gut instinct, does not always respect the chain of command, does bend the rules sometimes, etc.
If you mean Fleming would be so daft to come up with such a scheme, then you may be right. However the Fleming I read would not go there at all.
He had Goldfinger keep Bond alive and inform him of Grand Slam in details, he had Dr. No keep Bond alive for a number of trials... Beside, I do not consider the plan of Bond so daft, as you put it, for reasons mentioned by many people here. Yes it was highly risky, yes it was more based on bravery than carefully planned strategy, but it was meant to be bold and risky.
But if people dislike it for a lot of reasons mentioned her by other folks and are thus implying that SF is overrated than they are called names like Craig haters. This fora contains people who like James Bond and they do not all agree on the best version of their hero, (for me that is the book version!) but there seems to be currently no way possible to point out the sheer sillynes of the ending of SF and pointing out the faults in the scripting. Unless we talk about Brosnan, he is to blame for everything apperently.
The reasons given for most actions in SF seem a cop out, a reasoning to justify something that could have been written a hell of a lot better. I read about all the improvement and more realism put in the current 007 and yet they fail to convince me at most key moments in the Craig movies. And believe me as a 007 he is great his movies seem to fail him as CR stumbles at the last act by sheer OTT-ness instead of using the acting skills of DC. QoB has so much wrong it makes no sense whatsoever & SF lets Bond be more superman/terminator, makes him look more imvunerable than any 007 before and then comes up with plots that should have been thought through again. And while I love the DB5 in SF (perhaps the best bit) it makes no flipping sense.
We all love 007 and we generally agree to disagree, but sometimes there is a bit of logic missing in the 007 movies and for me SF goes of the rail early on in the movie and never came back. I do wish DC a really great movie perhaps they need just a great actioner for him instead of something personal which I grow tired of.
One of Fleming's great strengths was his attention to detail. However skewed or ludicrous parts of his plots may seem, he had a knack of couching it in such detail that you can't help but buy it. The finale of SF is driven by emotion and symbolism. For that reason I wouldn't say it's obviously Fleming-esque. The most Fleming-esque notion for me is the mano-e-mano type scenario that Bond is encouraging.
As for the logic of the finale - it seems there are two obvious schools of thought, one that believes it makes complete logical sense, and the other, not. From my point of view it all stems from the notion I mentioned above, a plot driven by emotion and symbolism, not necessarily logic. The finer details and reasoning behind Bond and Silva's decision making prior to, and during the finale are either subtly hinted at, or deemed irrelevant. Now some people can roll with this, it's relatively easy to disengage and go with the flow of emotion, but for others there needs to be a real-world rationale and I can't argue with either POV.
However, a bugbear of mine is that the two are not mutually exclusive, it's possible to apply a real world rationale and still keep the emotional drivers that raise the story beyond just structure. If your plot makes logical sense but suffers in the emotional stakes, you alter accordingly. If your plot is drifting into the illogical but is emotionally engaging, again you alter accordingly. The two working in harmony is much more satisfying than one taking precidence. For me Mendes focused very closely on the emotional and the symbolic, which was interesting and something you don't tend to see in a Bond film. For that I think he gets full marks, but I can't help feeling I'd have sacrificed some of the symbolism in exchange for a bit more meat on the bone plot wise, particularly in terms of details.
There are no real twists, it's all quite linear, Bond escapes with M, Q lays the breadcrumbs, Silva follows them, cue final shoot out. Silva's death is also too obvious. There was the 'Film School 101' shot of the knife, which for an A-level film student would lead to the obvious death in the chapel. I thought that was Mendes throwing us a curveball, but no, it played out in an obvious way, all to statisfy the symbolism he'd layered on throughout. I was genuinely wetting myself at the idea of M killing herself and Silva.
I think most of the problems with the film's logic stem directly from Silva's omnipotence. P+W took TDK and flipped the central concept. Batman is the protagonist, the man with the technological upper-hand, while the Joker is the antagonist, armed with gasoline and knives. This for me, works better. The joker becomes an enigma and the struggle to contain him becomes all the more powerful as he's an ordinary bloke, taking the fight to Gotham with little more than the clothes on his back. We disassociate with Silva because his methods are not based in reality, they are wildly fantastical and not tangible enough for an audience to engage with on any level. It's all just 'push a button and blow up a building' type crap that's been seen in every 80's/90's actioner. I expected much more from SF. Like I said above, if this had been Fleming, he'd have layered on the details to the point where you couldn't help but buy it. The details of Silva's methods are non-existent, we are just expected to believe he can do anything he wants with a computer, and that is not an intriguing set up for a villain.
I understand the reasoning others have given for the details of the finale, some of which are sensible, while others are not. I feel like in their scramble to maintain this old vs. new symbolism, Mendes and co sacrificed a level of logic. It's all based on the idea that Silva is so utterly incredible that there is absolutely no way he can be played at his own game, by anyone in the intelligence services. In essence his digital omnipotence is a conduit for them to focus on the symbolism, making the audience believe whatever anyone does, Silva sees and knows about it. I feel that's lazy. To justify this I want detail, I want to know he's a genius, not just be expected to accept it.
People have been very patient and articulate about the reasons and actions in the film. If you choose to ignore them fine.
As they say in Yorkshire "there are nowt so blind as those which don't want to see.."
The Post above yours is examining the cause of SFs Troubles quite competently. Maybe you should spare the few minutes to read before you denigrate anothers Poster reasoning. What ever happened to " you might have a point here,but...." ( Instead of attacking fiercly anyone, who doesn't live in your Logic freed Universe.)?
I have been patient and articulate about the reasons I consider lacking if you choose ignore them fine.
You are so pro craig-mendes that you you have become a wee bit blind yourself.
And indeed RC7 did write a pretty good piece.
But by your Yorkshire reasoning you are probably too blind to see it. ;)
Well, this is by far the most balanced, intelligent and fair criticism I ever read of Skyfall. I do agree with you that Silva's omnipotence is not explained enough. I accepted it because I find hackers more plausible than say the inventor of a giant lazer, or an underwater utopian society. And working in a company that sells among other things computer software, having to rely on them heavily for my work, I know how apocalyptic a day can be if there are technological dysfunctions, something caused by silly, minor human mistakes. Otherwise competent people quickly become helpless. I can only dread what human malevolence could do on a larger scale.