While I thought Skyfall was okay as far as action movies go, and I am not familiar enough with the franchise to judge it by the other movies (I've only seen the Brosnan & Craig films, and not all of those: I know I saw the last one, but for the life of me, cannot remember what it was about), it felt like they were messing with the audience. Between allowing Daniel Craig to look old and grizzled, with numerous references in dialogue to his age, and with M on the verge of forcible retirement, you get the impression they were ready to call an end to the franchise (or at least set up a reboot), until the coda where the new M is revealed to the surprise of no one and Bond scoffs at the idea of a desk job.

With the idea that they had been trying to trick the audience into thinking this was the ending, I have to wonder if they were deliberately portraying M and Bond the way they did in the rest of the film. I thought that the movie was really trying to send the message that these two dinosaurs were past their expiration date and not suited for the modern world, but the movie seems to think they were right all along.

Now I can ignore the general defiance of natural laws of physics and anatomy and the villain's preternatural talents of anticipation (such as the diversionary subway train he had all ready to go if someone pursued him through an underground labyrinth and caught up to him, in the exact right chamber, or the ground-level explosion that shoots down a helicopter from blast and shrapnel, but three people standing much closer to the explosion get up uninjured). I go into movies like this and turn off the questioning part of my brain that I apply to movies that try to be clever. I was not expecting miracles or a hole-free plot. But this was a bit absurd.

For one thing, when they move MI-6 after the previous HQ is bombed, they note that the tunnel complex is unexplored. 2' /> Seriously? Y-you respond to a security breach by moving your headquarters with its most sensitive equipment, vital personnel and dangerous prisoners into a place you don't know? That has parts you are "still discovering"? Yeah. Time to get rid of the organization.

Then on to Bond. His apparent arc for this movie is that despite being wronged by his organization, he nonetheless comes back in its moment of crisis and even puts aside his momentary resentment of his boss to save her from a vengeance-seeking former agent.

In reality, he's being a whiny little bitch. He was not betrayed, he was shot by friendly fire. Like Pat Tillman, only Bond DIDN'T DIE. He shows zero animosity to the person who shot him, despite her, A. missing the bad guy and hitting him, and B. being stupid enough to accept the order to shoot him from a desk-bound bureaucrat sitting in an office on another continent, with absolutely no information on the situation other than what the shooter is verbally describing. Yet, for some reason, Bond is fine going out into the field with the same she-tard operative will calling M a bitch. Hey, Jimbo, you've been murdering people on the orders of this horrible woman for how many years now? Maybe give that a thought, hmmm?

And even if he WAS being screwed over, it was all for the greater good and her national interests, right? As Kipling wrote, "That is England's awful way o' doing business/She would serve her God (or Gordon) just the same" Chinese Gordon could tell him a thing or two about getting hung out to dry in Indian country in her majesty's service.

Then there's the issue of his return to duty. He comes in when he sees a news report that his agency's headquarters was bombed. Because when the HQ is taken out a bunch of analysts and technicians and clerks are killed, that's when they need somebody who isn't any of those things, right? When he turned down the desk job at the end, I wanted to say "Hey, wait! They NEED people working desk jobs! A whole bunch of them DIED in this film! I counted at least 8 coffins, plus M."

Regarding M herself, in the film alone, aside from her abusive-relationship-pattern behavior with Bond, we see she micromanages field operations from an office, not only passing judgement on one officer's chance of success with only a verbal description from a less-experienced spectator, but also forcing one of two officers on the scene to perform a bunch of fairly difficult tasks in high stress circumstances, while providing a running commentary. Also, if you are going to tell your operative to shoot without regard to the safety of the other agent, why tell her to empty the magazine of her rifle at them? It was an assault rifle. Even if it did not have full automatic capabilities, she could have got off a couple more shots. So M not only endangers an agent, she does so in the way that will be least likely to result in success for the mission. Speaking of that mission, I really want to go to Istanbul and take a tour of those rooftop sidewalks featured in this movie, and Taken 2 (and maybe BtVS 7.01, IIRC).

When she is called to task by her superiors, we see her defying their orders to leave office gracefully, saying she's not going to leave things a mess. Okay, M: A. If things are a mess, it's your fault, having run the damn place for 6 or 7 movies now (and at least 13 years, if this is taking place in 2012, since she has been in charge at least since 1999). B: If any head of any agency that does the kind of stuff yours does, EVER gives any crap about not listening to her superiors in the government, she should only leave the building in a body bag. That kind of attitude leads to things like coups and whatnot.

Then, during her testimony before what appears to be the British version of a Congressional inquiry, she rips into the official who questions her utility by saying that what she's scared of are the invisible enemies, the single foes who are not a nation on a map anymore, but lone men with a grudge. This is interspersed with shots of the lone man with a grudge coming to kill her, supposedly to prove her right, except for the fact that this exemplar of the threats the UK requires M to protect it from, is a threat entirely of HER making! M armed, trained and created this dangerous creature, and then betrayed him!

M herself describes her actions to Bond, in the case of Silva, the villain. Silva had been a brilliant MI-6 agent, until, in a move completely unprecedented in the history of the Bond universe, he exceeded his brief, so M turned him over to the Chinese in order to expedite the transfer of Hong Kong to the ChiComs. She also got four agents back out of the deal, attempting to justify the swap in terms of quantity, which, incidentally, was a betrayal of basically every employee of the agency. You simply do not do things like that, unless the agent in question volunteers for it or has committed treason for the enemy you are trading him to. And in a way, that only makes it worse that she traded him for other agents. That is how you get a personality cult started within the agency. Things like that cause everyone to start sucking up to the bosses, hoping to end up on the list of people she would betray colleagues to save, rather than getting stuck on the list of people she betrays to recover her pets. Also, apparently the Chinese captured four agents on her watch as well. So much for her competence and leadership.

During this committee hearing, M receives a warning that Silva is on his way to kill her, thanks to the for-shit security of her uncharted underground hideout (they lock him up in a room with guards that have no remote monitoring or communications, forcing Bond to run through several hallways to check on the cell when he gets a hunch about the escape), and rather than allow her minions to whisk her to safety, she refuses on the grounds of pride that she will not turn tail. She is in a room with several legislators and officials who outrank the head of MI-6! It is her solemn duty, as a member of the UK's national security apparatus, to take a bullet for every person on the other side of the committee table, not stay in the room with them and bring down on all their heads a dangerous psychotic who has shown a blatant disregard for collateral damage and innocent bystanders thus far! Even worse, her boss takes a bullet for HER! Way to do your job, you horrible old bat.

What is more amusing is that in defense of her near-obsolete self and institution, she quotes Tennyson's "Ulysses" reciting the ending lines that are a classic last-gasp-of-an-old-fart rally cry. As I recall the backstory of that poem, it was inspired by Dante's Inferno when Dante meets the speaker of the poem in the lower depths of Hell. Ulysses was damned for an act of bad leadership that got his crew killed! Ulysses supposedly convinced his friends to sail off on one last voyage with him, and they crashed and died. The poem she recites is supposed to be the speech that got Ulysses condemned to the Hell for false councilors, the epitome of bad advice and bad leadership!

It appears that fictitious British authority figures have come round full circle from Gilbert & Sullivan's Modern Major General who was so well-educated in all the classics that he was deficient in knowledge pertaining to his ostensible field of expertise, to a crabby old technocrat who quotes a poem (she heard from her husband, and not her own love of the art, she hastens to assure her audience) that completely undermines the point she is trying to make. Speaking of that husband, I wonder about the context in which he was reciting it himself, considering the line about "matched unto an aged wife".

Other nitpicks:
- Speaking of M's skills, it turns out, that despite advising agents in Istanbul on their shooting from an office in London, she herself is a crappy shot.

- And in the final showdown, as Bond & his companions spend quite a while rigging homemade anti-personal mines and despairing over their small complement of breech-loading firearms, only to spring an ambush using the headlight machine guns of one of Bond's classic cars to kill like two guys. The rest of them start blasting away at Bond, stuck in the front seats until he gets a chance to get out and fight with his two-bullets-&-reload antique rifle. With all the careful carving up floorboards to place shotgun shells, you'd think they'd have been able to pop off the fenders and pull out the two machine guns so Bond & Kincade can, I don't know, AIM THEM?! Maybe point them at guys who are not standing directly in front of the fixed points from which the guns emerge? Maybe even aim them at the torsos and heads of people, rather than the headlight-level legs?

- Do London subway operators really just let a guy who jumped onto the back of a moving train into the control room just because he tells them to? Despite a terrorist incident in the London subway just a few years ago?

- So James Bond is Scottish, apparently... I'm American, so I can't tell a brogue from a burr, but I thought I remembered reading years ago that each actor who played the character comes from a different country. Are they playing him Scottish, with the appropriate accent? Is Daniel Craig Scottish? As I recall from Braveheart, there was a Scottish guy named Craig, and that is an absolutely reliable source for all things Scottish as far as I know, so I suppose he COULD be, but I have usually heard him described as English. Or is that an immaterial distinction these days?