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Is Bond the worst spy in the world in Skyfall?
I love Skyfall, but having watched it for the umpteenth time, realise Bond is crap in it.
He arrives late at the start to see Ronson dying and thd drive lost.
He fails to get it back and gets shot
He fails his evaluations
He fails to find info off Patrice before dropping him in Shanghai
He manages to get Severine killed
He fails to realise He is being manipulated by Silva
He is part of the reason a Silva escapes
He fails to capture him on the tube before the shoot out at the commission where lots of innocent people die
He kidnaps his boss and fails to protect her by getting her killed too
Then he's given his job back at the end.
He arrives late at the start to see Ronson dying and thd drive lost.
He fails to get it back and gets shot
He fails his evaluations
He fails to find info off Patrice before dropping him in Shanghai
He manages to get Severine killed
He fails to realise He is being manipulated by Silva
He is part of the reason a Silva escapes
He fails to capture him on the tube before the shoot out at the commission where lots of innocent people die
He kidnaps his boss and fails to protect her by getting her killed too
Then he's given his job back at the end.
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Comments
^ This. Most of the bad things that happen in SF are due to things completely out of Bond's control. It's less of a matter of Bond being a lousy spy and more of a matter of Bond being up against a very cunning villain. One can make an argument that Bond is at his most incompetent in GF. Alot of his success comes down to blind luck.
Not at all my favourite film,if any Bond film is over-rated its this one.
Spot on @barryt007
You could also include AVTAK into that line of reasoning. It's only after Mayday has decided to switch teams after Zorin leaves her for dead, that Bond gains the upper hand. Before that, the booby trapped bomb is going off.
Only with the use of her brute strength is Bond able to foil Zorins plan.
And let's not forget that everyone knows who Bond is in AVTAK. From the San Francisco police department, to a geologist in city hall.
Heading up to Skyfall, just assuming all those guns are there still without phoning ahead.
FRWL? I don't know if he would have reached the end of Dr. No in one piece.
Yes but that was due to two factors ....
1 - He didn't seem to care about them.
2 - He still had bullet shrapnel in his shoulder which was throwing his aim off.
You make some good points though, all in all I'd put the SF Bond up there with Goldfinger's Bond. He botched a lot in Goldfinger but at least he managed to kill Oddjob and he did win the golf game as well. :-p
Let's not forget that he was drinking like a fish during his tenure away and probably not exercising either. Such activities hinder anyone's stamina and fitness level. I loved how he failed his evaluations. This was reminiscent of the literary Bond where the character is much more of a flesh and blood man with flaws than the superman he has been portrayed as in many of the one dimensional films.
Oh and he gets his boss killed.
Sorry if you are grumpy about Bond in Skyfall; I was not disappointed in him. Far from it.
His running along the street trying to reach M, as we hear her quote Tennyson, will stay with me forever.
You could nit pick and say that he did nothing in GF, or lost millions of dollars of the government's money in CR, or destroyed valuable artifacts in GE, or failed to obey orders in LTK, or failed to capture Jaws in TSWLM and MR, or was more out of shape in DAF.
Yes, he was better at some points than at others, but then again, each and every one of us fail at some point when we're doing what we're best at.
This. I'd argue that he was embarrassingly out of shape in DAF though, and didn't seem to care, which was probably worse. And in DAD everybody seemed clueless and incompetent.
The fact that he could have just grabbed a vehicle and got to the enquiry before Silva and his goons will stay with me forever.
That and the fact that he could have phoned ahead and said '' Silvas heading right for you! get M out of there now!!! ''
You like stating 'facts' don't you.
Unfortunately they're not all accurate. Bond informed Q who in turn informed Tanner that Silva was heading for M but she chose to stay at the committee hearing.
Forget about that scene did you?
We don't even know the full story behind the mission, or how close Bond was to the actual room to judge his competence. He was likely on stand by, looking out for Ronson and his men at the front while Patrice slipped in the back and killed the guys guarding the area at the back. Who knows; it's all interpretive since we lack sufficient background.
M gave the order for Moneypenny to shoot, which is why he got hit and failed to get the drive back, which isn't his fault in the slightest. He even resented M for not trusting him enough to get the drive back and shouting the order which made him almost die, showing that the fault was hers, not his.
I'm pretty sure that if you had a huge chunk of shrapnel jammed into your shoulder your aim would be a bit off too. He was also a wreck because he felt he couldn't trust M and his bloody employers were under attack.
Patrice wouldn't have talked anyway (just as he was silent all film), and it's Bond's glove that slips and makes Patrice fall, not 007 intentionally dropping the guy just because.
I'm not even going to warrant this with a response. I've argued this point so many times on this forum it makes me physically nauseated. I'm sorry that Bond isn't a damn mindreader or Superman, and therefore can't stop a bullet he didn't know was coming towards Severine in the first place. Curse him!
Huh? Right from the jump he knows how Silva tries to manipulate people and constantly try to eat at them to gain an advantage. The entire last half of the film is Bond and Silva trying to outdo each other.
That's Q who screws up, not Bond.
If only Bond could have sped through those massive, congested crowds of people who blocked his path; what a bad agent he is. Add to the fact that Silva is dressed like a policeman and there are literally dozens of them around the tube. Do you really expect Bond to find him? He doesn't have superpowers, you know. And is it also his fault that he didn't prepare for a massive train falling in his direction? I think not, my friend. I think not...
This is another one that has been done to death. You give me headaches...
He gets his job back because he's a good agent, though he never really lost it in the first place. He has moments where he falters, as we all do, but the important thing is that he never gives in, and never lays down and dies. Bond always keeps pushing no matter what obstacles are in his way, as Skyfall so poetically displays in the Tennyson scene alone. Bond's courage, determination, loyalty and dutifulness is more than enough to compensate for any human errors he is involved with in the films. He's a prime example why those at the inquiry are wrong, and why human agents are still needed, as M perfectly defends. Once the doomsday arrives there will be but two things alive: cockroaches and James Bond. And when were mistakes considered a bad thing? They serve as learning experiences so that you can grow and improve as a person. How the hell are we supposed to grow as individuals if we never slip up or learn right from wrong, which is in itself an impossibility. Bond's human, I'm human, we're all human.
When it comes to defending Bond's competence in any Bond film I love, I simply quote these words from the great Winston Churchill, another man of great esteem:
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
@Kerim -- You too. Kudos, my friends!
In the film, Mallory accuses M/Bond of incompetence a few times. As does Silva. And a select committee is setup to investigate events. Clearly I'm not alone.
I like the film a lot but basically the whole plot is shifted along by Bonds failings, culminating in Silvas death but at the expense of M. That for me is not a successful resolution. If incompetence leads to failure then (To paraphrase Oscar Wilde seeing as you like using quotations) it "looks like carelessness"
There is no way Bond would be reinstated. There would be a public inquiry and he would likely be found guilty of incompetence or taking the law into his own hands. Or not guilty and pensioned off.
Re the shoot out at Westminster. Presumably a more reasonable solution would have been to up the security on the doors or in the room. Q and Bond are in constant contact. Basically M's stubbornness and pride results in a massacre. Even Winston Churchill would agree. While running up Whitehall maybe Bond should have said via his radio "he's on his way" or something. Might have even upped the tension, intercut with Tennyson.
If Bond was aware of Silvas manipulation the why does Q say " this has been years in the planning" in a revelatory manner to which Bond agrees.
Either way, the film is great. It's an example of the Bond Canon being at its best when stretching plausibility but remaining thoroughly gripping and entertaining.
Bond has always been drinking like a fish, and he seemed to get a lot of exercise with that Greek/Turkish lady.
But anyhow, given the amount of death and destruction Bond left behind from the very start of the film franchise, wasn´t Bond always that kind of lousy agent? And if he wasn´t, we would only get 15-minute-films.
Mallory doesn´t know anything about Bond except from files. And the committee has nothing whatsoever to with Bond. Do your research.
As you youself state further on, Exactly. It´s M who is the connection to Silva. It´s M who misjudges both Bond and Eve (she obviously wasn´t fully trained as a field agent, let alone as a marksman). It´s M who is the rug under Bond´s feet which pulls itself from under him, to which Bond reacts shaken and stirred (not much of a surprise, given that his meaning of life is being questioned), but on the whole his gut feeling still works fine.
I think @Sandy and @Brady have shown that it wasn't Bond's failings, but those around him or just circumstance that lead to the situations, the story that in turn made the whole movie possible. If I follow your reasoning Bond should've known it was Silva all along and killed him, which would lead to a very short movie indeed as @Boldfinger states above.
Again Bond warns Tanner that Silva is on his way, but M takes the risk to at least make it possible for her to defend the service. What would've happened if she hadn't stayed? Perhaps MI6 would've been dismantled as the committee would've thought M's walking away was a sign of their rightness.
Knowing someone is trying to play you doesn't immediately mean you also klow he's been planning that for years...