What’s Aged the Worst?
Severine's storyline and the shower scene
In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:49:50Read transcript
- The hacking is pretty stupid as a plot point, though the stylized Pac Man ghost animation is defended since HTML was further along; M at seventy-seven clicks a message that says click me on her laptop, Q boasts nobody can hack him and then plugs Silva's machine into the mainframe, and Hillary Clinton is invoked.
- Computer plots are inherently un-cinematic; a vodka-soaked Bond reading opaque code, the unused subway station deduction and the red-lines map of London are weird, and Whishaw is trying hard with a script that is not there, though the headquarters screens and the sculptural servers on Silva's island are beautiful art made out of hacking, with jokes about 3G on the island.
- Severine is a classic Bond girl who lives and dies quickly and naked; Bond responding to her account of being a Macau sex worker by sneaking up on her in the shower and discarding her at the villain's island is not a good look, as if two different writers handled the sex-trade thread and the seduction.
- Because the film is so purposeful about stakes and emotion, making her a sex slave and then having Bond offer help, take her to Silva's island and watch her shot in the head is rough; Berenice Marlowe (as transcribed) is good in the bar scene and the hosts are surprised she had no bigger career; the film already has a sex scene in Turkey and Moneypenny tension, so a knock on the door would have been fine.
- Imperialism is a second nominee; Naomi Harris's Moneypenny lacks chemistry and feels jaunty, doing girl-power line readings in a sedate movie where everyone is depressed, as if in a different film, though she is spared the overacting category since nobody is really overacting; the Moneypenny-as-action-hero idea ending in administrative work is totally weird.
- Severine's plotline is the final answer, called a little tough.