"Badly done!"

Rating: 1/10 (12 November 2012)

I have been a James Bond fan for years, but this movie was just badly bolted together. Why?
1. How did Eve, who was chasing the train in the truck and barely keeping up, suddenly get two or three minutes ahead of the train in time to set up for when it emerged from the tunnel? The timing simply doesn't work. 2. M orders Eve to "take the shot" three times. Bond heard them, and Eve's complaint that the shot wasn't clean. So why didn't Bond simply drop to the roof of the car and let her have the shot? If she missed, he could easily resume his fight in the next tunnel. 3. Why didn't Eve take a second shot at the henchman on the roof of the train after she shot Bond? The henchman had enough time to turn to her and all but wave a 'thank you', yet she didn't bother. 4. Bond survives the fall from the train how exactly? He is on the roof of a train moving at approximately 40mph when he is shot, catapulted backward, and falls hundreds of feet into a river. Because he is unconscious, he can not enter the water at a safe angle, and should have been killed. As if this isn't bad enough, the unconscious Bond is then swept over a high waterfall. The title sequences explain nothing of his escape, and when they end, Bond is in a hut on the beach bedding some girl. Not explaining his survival is a critical error which borders on ludicrous, yet somehow the audience is meant to take it all seriously. 5. It is clear that Eve is a poor field agent. Later, Bond suggests that she simply doesn't belong in the field. However, this raises the question: how did she acquire field agent status to begin with? 6. Bond always attempts to keep collateral damage amongst civilians to a minimum, and protects the defenseless. However in this film, he allows the villains to do their dirty work before he intervenes. 7. To this Bond, as developed in the last two films, women quickly became anything but 'disposable pleasures'. The death of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale was a terrific trauma; when Ms. Fields is killed in Quantum, he is again visibly angry. However, in Skyfall Bond not only makes no attempt to save Sévérine (not even attempting to fight the henchmen to provide a distraction until the backup he knows is en route arrives), but he shows absolutely no glimmer of distress over her death. In fact, his first response is a fast, and badly delivered, quip about it being a 'waste of good Scotch.' 8. Silva had tried to take his own life by a hydrogen cyanide pill. Instead of killing him, he merely felt a burning sensation and had most of his teeth and jaw fell off. Such 'suicide pills' kill; they do not merely give one a little heartburn and bad teeth. 9. What was the point of Silva setting up his own arrest? Ostensibly, it is so that he can talk to M one last time. But why not just travel to London, abduct M from the hearing, and talk to her before doing her in? 10. If Q was good enough to have invented the security on Silva's computer, how was it that he was unable to stop it from freeing Silva? 11. How did Silva know that within just a few seconds of the blast an empty train would be coming through to conveniently fall on and crush Bond, allowing him to escape? 12. The 1964 Aston Martin made its triumphant return in this film, but unfortunately it did so in a way that created continuity errors and glaring reboot issues. It is not a 'company car,' so it must be the same Aston Martin that Bond won from Dimitrios playing cards in Casino Royale. However, it has all of the Q-branch add-ons from Goldfinger If this had been Dimitrios' car, why did it have the Goldfinger configuration from Q Branch? This thoroughly wrecked the film's continuity with the reboot. 13. What was the purpose of taking M to Skyfall? In the film, it is openly suggested that the plan is a trap to catch Silva, with M serving as the bait. However, if it is a trap, one would expect Bond to create a scenario where they would have a significant advantage. It is poorly explained why he doesn't want backup (he depended on them for extraction from Silva's island); he also takes no weaponry with them. Instead, the unlikely trio is forced to create a "Home Alone" style defense of Skyfall which is doomed to failure before it even begins 14. Why did the monk's tunnel lead, not all the way to the chapel, but into the middle of the moor? A half-tunnel is barely worth the effort to build. 15. When M and Kincade enter the tunnel to leave the house, Kincade closes and locks the door from the other side. Yet, when Bond decides to leave, he has no difficulty simply opening the door. 16. Why would M and Kincade, while secretly fleeing the attack through the moor in the middle of the night, use a flashlight to illuminate their path? This could only be a dead giveaway of their position to Silva and his henchmen. Why not just pull out a Las Vegas-style neon sign and have M cry out from the moor: "Oh, Silva, come and get us!" 17. Silva's death scene was preposterous, and very nearly Monty Python-esque. Bond stabs Silva in mid-back with a blade; it would have severed the spinal cord, causing instant paralysis before death. Yet Silva bizarrely laughs and staggers toward Bond. 18. There were many continuity mistakes introduced into the film through sloppy editing (such as M's handbag in Mallory's office).
Very badly done film.