[SPOILERS] Skyfall: Post-Viewing Discussion

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

No, it doesn't fit into the story.

It could, however.

When M gets the second message from Silva, the one that shows the identities of the undercover agents posted on the internet, she is trying to work out where the image of her used in the first message came from. She has it narrowed down to a photograph showing her and an Asian man. This man could become the art buyer Patrice shoots - a former member of M's staff (maybe her Chief of Staff in Hong Kong) who played a part in Silva's capture in 1997.

After all, it's made pretty clear that Patrice is a freelancer and Severine is his girl. If she is present at a job Patrice is carrying out, then that means the job was sanctioned by Silva, which raises the question of why Silva wants him dead in the first place. It's unlikely Silva helped Patrice carry out the assassination as repayment for acquiring the list, because Bond finds Patrice's payment - the casino token - in his equipment.

This makes good sense to me. I'll keep an eye out for the man's face in my second viewing - may very well be the one on the photograph with M.

I'm fairly certain you don't actually see the face of man in the skyscraper. I'm just speculating, because I find it odd that Silva would send Severine to oversee the assassination (and no reason is given for the assassination, either). Given that Patrice is a mercenary, it implies that Silva wants the "Shanghai art buyer" (as the man is credited in the film) dead. I'm just trying to think up a reasonable explanation for it.

We know some content was cut from the Shanghai scenes. Production stills showed Severine and Patrice making an exchange; that's how he got the rifle he used to carry out the shooting. If some stuff was removed, then it's conceivable that other stuff was, too. Given the long running time, an explanation of the scene would probably be one of the first things scrapped.

It would also explain why Bond knows Severine and Patrice are employed by the same person. If Patrice is a mercenary, then it is conceivable that someone hired him to steal the NATO list, and that someone else hired him to shoot the art buyer. Yet Bond somehow knows that the same person hired Patrice for both jobs (though he may just be following a hunch). If the man in the photo and the art buyer are one and the same person, that would explain how Bond knows, since the art buyer is connected to M. It would also create an opportunity for conflict between Bond and M, because Bond would ask M if she knew the art buyer. M says no, but then we cut back to Bond with a copy of the photo of the two of them.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

I'm fairly certain you don't actually see the face of man in the skyscraper. I'm just speculating, because I find it odd that Silva would send Severine to oversee the assassination (and no reason is given for the assassination, either). Given that Patrice is a mercenary, it implies that Silva wants the "Shanghai art buyer" (as the man is credited in the film) dead. I'm just trying to think up a reasonable explanation for it.

The original explanation was that Silva was tricking art buyers into nearly buying the Modigliani and killing them before the painting changed hands.

... Why?

And that still doesn't explain how Bond knows Patrice is being hired to kill the art buyers by the same person who hired him to steal the list.

As a source of revenue.

Largo's Shark wrote:

As a source of revenue.

Can't he just hack into some savings&loan? Must take less time and effort than finessing his way into VI's digital bowels.

I get the sense Silva does sadistic things just for fun (ala the backstory for Hashima's island).

At any rate, the backstory with the art dealers was cut from the film, so you're free to fill in the gaps how you want, I suppose.

Harmsway wrote:

I get the sense Silva does sadistic things just for fun (ala the backstory for Hashima's island).

I think it's quite the opposite, really. I get the sense that he kills without hesitation, but never without a reason - even if that reason is simply proving to Bond that he's lost his killer instincts. I think the concept of fun is beyond him, as he is driven by his rage and his pain and his grief, and he has no real intention of living beyond the hour that he kills M. I see him as believing he exists halfway between life and death, and that he has existed like that since his cyanide caspule failed. He cannot cross back over to being truly alive, but if he kills M, he can finally make his peace with the world and die.

Twice he gets the opportunity to polish off M and loses his nerve. So, he does hesitate, although I guess at the Enquiry you could say he compensates for failing to kill M by randomly killing the dude by the door as he exits.

FourDot wrote:

Twice he gets the opportunity to polish off M and loses his nerve.

Silva doesn't lose his nerve. He thinks he wants to kill M but finds he can't go through with it.

Skyfall tells of the triumph of emotion over intellect. Master and servant. Or servants in M's case.

FourDot wrote:

Twice he gets the opportunity to polish off M and loses his nerve. So, he does hesitate, although I guess at the Enquiry you could say he compensates for failing to kill M by randomly killing the dude by the door as he exits.

I wouldn't call the inquiry scene "losing his nerve". He clearly has every intention of killing her, and he probably wanted to do it with the first bullet. But someone got in the way, panic set in, and the police started firing back and he nevr got a clear shot.

No, I don't think so, there's the very deliberate shot of Silva, gun wavering, the extreme close-up of Dench, and the digital zoom (IIRC) when we go back to Silva...

Silva walks into the room and raises his gun. He's about to shoot M, but someone stands up in front of him and gets shot instead. At that point, the police react and Silva is forced to deal with them. Mallory yanks M out of the way and gets a bullet in the shoulder for his troubles, but that is about as close to M as Silva ever gets because Bond arrives in time and starts shooting back and arms Eve. Mallory also grabs a gun as Tanner tries to get M out.

Any close-ups of Silva and M were probably just intended to show the principal characters of the scene. An although Silva plans to shoot M, he clearly doesn't want to shoot her from behind - he wants her to know that he is the one pulling the trigger.

To me that ignores completely how Mendes presents that information. Silva's gun wavers - it's an echo if you want of Bond's shaking gun in the target range earlier. The visual language of the scene is trying to tell you something beyond just "hey, someone wants to shoot someone else"

Yeah I noticed hesitation on Silva's part and there was a lot of emphasis on that. Notice how he shoots a bunch of guards without batting an eye too, so there's definitely something going on there.

I'm going with everyone else on this - Silva hesitates. He gets so close but he wavers because that won't end it, who knows, but for him it demonstrates something isn't right which is why the end is so powerful - Silva wants her dead but he can't kill his 'Mommy', he can't actually do it hence the double suicide - ends both of them at the same time and brings him peace. He hesitates because that moment wasn't right - and all then everything else happened so he didn't have another choice.

Or something like this.

Furthermore he's quite deliberately not looking at her in the chapel when he's going to kill her. Mostly because it's physically impossible, but his eyes are shut as well. Quite a contrast from the stare-downs in the holding cell and at the enquiry.

FourDot wrote:

Furthermore he's quite deliberately not looking at her in the chapel when he's going to kill her. Mostly because it's physically impossible, but his eyes are shut as well.

I got the impression that Silva simply couldn't look at her anymore. His own reaction to seeing her there, wounded and defencless, surprises and disgusts him. For a moment there, he has this look about him that suggests he wants nothing more than to return to her side and be her favourite agent once again.

Seeing that again, I find it hard to believe that the M he knows is the same M who we have seen in CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE. When she tells Bond Silva's real name, she clearly regrets losing him as an agent, and that it has come to this. I like to believe that when she was stationed in Hong Kong, M was the the opposite of the M we know. Rather than coddling her agents, she was distant with them and unconcerned with their methods. But when Silva started operating beyond his orders - he's clearly eager, if not desperate, for her approval, even when he is about to kill her, and I doubt that much about him has changed - and she was forced to hand him over to Beijing, she totally reassessed her way of handling agents and started guiding them directly the way she does Bond. Silva's capture left just as much of an impression on her as it did on him.

Fae wrote:

Hehehe ... any excuse, eh? ;)

I enjoyed it
the boyes liked it
the girls thought it was boring, with too much talking in the middle and not enough gadgets

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

FourDot wrote:

Furthermore he's quite deliberately not looking at her in the chapel when he's going to kill her. Mostly because it's physically impossible, but his eyes are shut as well.

I got the impression that Silva simply couldn't look at her anymore. His own reaction to seeing her there, wounded and defencless, surprises and disgusts him. For a moment there, he has this look about him that suggests he wants nothing more than to return to her side and be her favourite agent once again.

Seeing that again, I find it hard to believe that the M he knows is the same M who we have seen in CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE. When she tells Bond Silva's real name, she clearly regrets losing him as an agent, and that it has come to this. I like to believe that when she was stationed in Hong Kong, M was the the opposite of the M we know. Rather than coddling her agents, she was distant with them and unconcerned with their methods. But when Silva started operating beyond his orders - he's clearly eager, if not desperate, for her approval, even when he is about to kill her, and I doubt that much about him has changed - and she was forced to hand him over to Beijing, she totally reassessed her way of handling agents and started guiding them directly the way she does Bond. Silva's capture left just as much of an impression on her as it did on him.

that's my biggest problem with the premise of the movie
M betrayed Silva back then, giving up an agent and trying to justify it on the basis she got 5 to 1 is morally bankrupt even for the secret service
leave someone exposed or cut them loose, sure, but make a deal with the opposition to actively betray them…
she deserves all she gets

then she says take the shot, another betrayal and another low percentage poor decision in any case
why would Bond or Silva have any respect or affection for her at all?
it makes no sense to me

she follows that up by pressing a button which publishes the names of 5 over her agents on line (M = "sorry guys I just couldn't resist")
"click here to collect your prize" yeah right... (M - "but, I thought it might be the latest iphone or xbox game")
no, in fact, we aren’t clicking anything that the villain invites us to click

and then she agrees to run off to the back of beyond with a single agent for support, in order to have it out with the villain and his numerous henchment
very bright
how did such a person ever come to head MI6?

this sort of nonsence is far more easy to accept and forgive in a lighter more fantastical Bond, than in one which takes itself as seriously as the Craig Bond series does

Seve wrote:

that's my biggest problem with the premise of the movie
M betrayed Silva back then, giving up an agent and trying to justify it on the basis she got 5 to 1 is morally bankrupt even for the secret service
leave someone exposed or cut them loose, sure, but make a deal with the opposition to actively betray them…
she deserves all she gets

She makes is pretty clear that Silva was a danger to the Service. He was ignoring his orders, penetrating further and further into the Chinese networks until the Chinese started to pay attention. They started coming after him, and with the transfer of sovreignty of Hong Kong coming up, M decided to trade Silva for those agents to protect the Service and make sure the transfer went smoothly. Silva had stopped being her best agent and started becoming a liability.

Seve wrote:

then she says take the shot, another betrayal and another low percentage poor decision in any case

She does rationalise it, and it's hard to disagree with her logic: namely, that they could not afford to risk letting the list get away. In retrospect, it was a bad decision, but the film looks at how decisions are made based on what is known at the time, and the way there is no provision for second-guessing.

M's ability to run the Service and whether or not she is making the best decisions is a recurring theme in the film.

Seve wrote:

why would Bond or Silva have any respect or affection for her at all?

Bond is Bond. he answers to whoever runs the Service.

As for Silva, it is implied that M was distant from him (and by virtue of that, her other agents, since he was her best) and that he craves her approval, which would explain why he was ignoring his orders.

Seve wrote:

she follows that up by pressing a button which publishes the names of 5 over her agents on line (M = "sorry guys I just couldn't resist")
"click here to collect your prize" yeah right... (M - "but, I thought it might be the latest iphone or xbox game")
no, in fact, we aren’t clicking anything that the villain invites us to click

She has no idea what is waiting for her on the other side of that link. No doubt she thought that there might be some kind of clue to what was going on. And there was obviously no other way to get rid of the animation on the screen. In fact, M may not have had any control over the link - she was invited to click on it, but if she did not, then the virus probably would have led to the video anyway. Silva wouldn't have let his entire plan hinge on whether or not M followed a hyperlink.

Furthermore, following the link takes her to a YouTube video. Clicking the link did not upload the video, it just showed the video to her. At that point, the agents' identities had already been uploaded.

Seve wrote:

and then she agrees to run off to the back of beyond with a single agent for support, in order to have it out with the villain and his numerous henchment
very bright

By that point, she already knew she had lost control of MI6 (or that if she hadn't, she would lose it soon). She agreed to follow Bond because Bond was the only one willing to lead her. She couldn't command a single resource otherwise.

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

I'd love to know how Silva got out of the glass cage...

When Silva's people hacked MI6, they fried the electronics and/or pneumatics of the doors in the building. This included the door to the glass cage presumably.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

I'd love to know how Silva got out of the glass cage...

When Silva's people hacked MI6, they fried the electronics and/or pneumatics of the doors in the building. This included the door to the glass cage presumably.

One doesn't need to presume, PK. :)