2012-366 Day 357 – Skyfall

Crossed another movie off the list today since I had to vacate the house while Jess hosted her annual wrapping party. There was only one movie currently on it that Jess didn’t want to see too, so off I went to catch up on the latest (or one of the earliest, I’m not entirely certain of the timeline here, not as into Bond as I am my other movie properties) escapade of Commander Bond. After putting out a call for any interested parties, Brian wound up coming down to the theater, so I actually wasn’t by myself this time.

Now I will have some mild spoilers throughout this post, so if you are still going to see it you may want to read carefully, I’ll try to warn when they are about to occur. Like now, when I say that all I really knew going into the movie was that Bond apparently died in the first fifteen minutes but unsurprisingly resurfaces fairly quickly. I also knew that Javier Bardem continued his fascination with terrible hair (though I haven’t seen No Country for Old Men, so I couldn’t really comment on his acting before this). I also don’t really remember Quantum of Solace (or if I even saw it), but I’ve seen Casino Royale enough times to have a good handle on this incarnation of Bond. In fact, Casino Royale has my favorite Bond moment so far in the early chase where the bad guy runs out of bullets and throws his gun at Bond, which Bond catches and throws right back off the bad guy’s forehead.

Anyway, my overall comment on the movie is this, it was good, but it felt pretty long. Like it could have been about two-thirds of the length too long. It was actually about the two-thirds of the way through the movie where they had the part that ripped me right out of it and had me shaking my head for the next couple scenes.

So here be the spoilers I mentioned. When you have your computer genius good guy spend part of the movie making fun of Bond for his Luddite ways and bragging about how invented some of the secure encryption techniques being used, and you then build up the bad guy as another technological savant who’s initial hideout is an island that appears, at least in the scene where Bond is first imprisoned there, to have entire racks of parallel processor servers set out in an air-cooled environment and is using said encryption techniques, you should not include the following in your movie. When the good guy acquires the bad guy’s laptop because Bond has captured him on the aforementioned island base, the good guy smarty pants white hat hacker SHOULD NOT plug said stolen laptop directly into the network that all the other computers are on! I had one of those stereotypical moments where the audience member shouts out, “Don’t open that door!” at the screen, although the Computer Security version of it is just loudly mumbling “moron” under my breath so that Brian could hear me. Shockingly, the laptop was infected with a virus that allowed the bad guy to break out. Alright end spoilers.

Thankfully a good ending piece managed to revert my attention back to Bond. In all, I would recommend the film if you have an interest in Bond. If not, catch it on TV sometime so you can fast forward through the slow parts. And if you are involved in Computer Science and security in any way, shape, or form, once they’ve captured the bad guy and Bond and M are finished talking to him, just close your eyes, cover your ears, and repeat “La la la” to yourself for about ten minutes. Trust me, it will make things better.

Weight: 222 Loss: 18 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 360.7 miles
Fitocracy Level: 26 ID: disciplev1