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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6045384" data-attributes="member: 2011">I enjoyed the film, but there were quite a few issues that bothered me and reminded me that I was watching a movie during the movie (it kicks me out of the moment).1) The need to have action scenes that cannot be seen. Grabbing the elevator was a nice addition, but it was followed up by a scene in the dark with reflections off a bunch of glass where it's hard to see some things, then followed by a fight scene where the audience cannot tell who is who part of the time because the fight is in the dark. Or, the fight scene on the island where they zoom in, so one doesn't see how James manages to take out five guys, instead one has to fill in the blanks themselves as to where each bad guy was at the time that James makes his move and takes them out. This type of shakey, hard to see filming started appearing in the movie The Rock and has been a staple of action films ever since (the opening scene of Quantum of Solace was this way as well).2) When James enters the tunnel at SkyFall, the first thought in my mind (and my wife's as she later told me) is, why did he not close the door behind him? He just set up a huge bomb behind himself.3) Using a flashlight on the moors in the dark when there are dozens of bad guys a few hundred feet away? What was up with that? "Hey bad guys! Here we are!"4) I was also bugged by how incompetent they made Bond appear to be in his testing. He went from being the cream of the crop to not even capable. That was too much of a stretch IMO. Not quite on par with Bruce Wayne being a cripple with a cane, coming back, getting his back broken, and then coming back again, but similar. They are trying to make Bond seem more vulnerable and human, but then have him do superhuman things anyway.5) And just standing there and watching an assasination happen without trying to stop it is just plain creepy and way out of character for Bond. It's one thing to kill someone to accomplish a goal, but not to just watch murder as it is happening. He could be cold when necessary, but not totally callous and unfeeling. This isn't the Bond in any of the other movies, or the books that I remember. In the other movies, he actually helps people or saves people. That's why he is a hero, not a villain. The scene where he was concerned about his fellow agent at the beginning was Bond, but not the assassination. I was also bugged when the painting had no blood or a hole on it, even though it was in the line of fire of as assassin's rifle bullet. Huh?6) The villain was just willing to blow M away in the courtroom, but was then suddenly suicidal at the end? What was up with that? I prefer villains that are consistent in their behaviors. He was only a little nuts on the island, but a lot nuts there (Joker level nuts). He also could have blown James away on the ice, but instead stands there talking? Just a few minutes earlier, he was throwing firebombs into the building, but now, it's time to talk? And the villain has henchmen on the island that he trusts so much that he doesn't even carry a weapon? This villain wasn't a world class Bond villain. His biggest threat was to kill a few agents and cause some harm to the reputation of MI6. Where was the threat to the well being or the economy of the world, or at least the destruction of a major city? In the end, James didn't even save M the main target of the villain, he just killed the bad guy. He didn't thwart the bad guy's plan. Meh.7) And, of course, hooking a captured laptop into a secure intelligence network. Hmmm. That just fails on so many levels.8) No cool gadgets. The homing radio hardly counts as cool and the earpiece/headsets are items that regular people sometimes use. The souped up DB5 shouldn't have even existed (due to the Craig reboot). The best they could do was the gun that only works for him.The recent Craig films have been heavily short of gadgets, but it's pretty bad when wikipedia lists a smart phone, just to get the list up to 4 items.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_gadgets" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_gadgets</a>9) Villain bases are affected by the recession I guess. What a dump. I guess film location budgets are limited these days. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />10) What was with the major bomb that allowed the subway train to derail into a totally different area? When did the villain have time to set that up? Was it in that little bag that his henchmen handed to him with the clothes in it? He wasn't carrying it on the train. I guess he was psychic enough to know the path he would be taking when leaving and his henchmen set it up off camera.It's just little things like this that take a great movie and drop it to the level of an ok movie. Sure, some of them are required in order to keep the plot moving, but isn't there a better way? If it is required to have the bad guys follow on the moors, then instead of crashing the helicopter into the building, have it fly around the moors and spot M. M gets lucky and shoots down the helicopter, but everyone then knows where she is. When supposedly trained professionals do stupid things, it's annoying. The flashlight felt extremely forced.All in all, it was an ok film, maybe even a good film. Better than some Bond films, especially several of the Roger Moore ones. It just wasn't a great film or really a Bond film. And most of it was because they are trying to do a James Bond reboot of some sort. Take away his gadgets. Take away his motivations. Take away the threat of the villain. Meh.The opening action scene, the Komodo dragons, the casino (sort of, but no gambling), the yacht, and the DB5 felt like a Bond film. Little else did. He didn't save the day, he killed the (fairly lame with respect to goals) villain.Get rid of the insecure semi-normal Human Bond and bring back James Bond. This was a decent standalone action spy film. Put different character names on it and except for a few minor nits, it would have been a pretty good film. But they ripped the guts out of it being a Bond film.The hero insecurity and physical incapability, the villain being a deluded maniac, the villain being captured and imprisoned, but having a way out. This just feels like a ripoff of the most recent Batman movie.</blockquote>

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