10 Ridiculous Movie Premises Everybody Fell For
2. Silva's Scheme Is Astonishingly Clever - Skyfall (2012)
Even by the standards of most Bond villains, Raoul Silva's scheme in Skyfall is inept yet, astonishingly, many critics of the film rate it as a Machiavellian masterpiece of planning. Silva's plan supposedly requires him to be captured by MI6 and held at their underground base on a specific date. This relies on Bond surviving any and all attempts at assassination, turning Silva's accomplice Sévérine in order to be taken to his secret island lair, and then not simply shooting Silva in the face with many, many bullets, something that 007 is notorious for doing on a regular basis whether ordered to or not. Further, this plan assumes that Silva, upon capture, will be taken directly to the UK from the Chinese island he's captured on and will be held in London rather than any one of a dozen other operational decisions that could be made on what to do with him (for example, like holding him on an offshore black site in order to interrogate him extralegally and very painfully, as security services are also notorious for doing).
Want more? Oh, there's more. Silva's plan to escape the underground fortress base that he might never have been taken to relies entirely upon the idiots holding him deciding to connect his laptop to their mainframe. These idiots are, of course, the vaunted espionage and security services of Great Britain: and this is, let's not forget, a laptop belonging to a known cyberterrorist... a cyberterrorist whod already breached their computer security when he blew up the previous MI6 headquarters. Once he'd escaped - according to plan! - he then left the underground base hed worked so hard to get into, obtained a stashed police uniform, ID and weapons, and turned up to a public enquiry attended by M, charging in through the doors and beginning to shoot people. At that point, anyone watching the film whos been paying attention should be asking why he needed to be captured in the first place, and why he didn't just sneak into the country unannounced and in disguise if all he intended to do was start a firefight in a London court room.
None of this was necessary, or even plausible. There was no need to lure Bond to Macau, no need to be captured, no need to set up computer jiggery and explosive pokery. There was no need to do any of this, in fact. All he had to do was kidnap M from her home, whisk her away to some exotic lair and then slowly Bond villain her to death while Judi Dench frosted out some impassive oneliners and Bond crept ever closer to freeing her which would have made a far better - and more Bond - final act, and given us the same outcome.
Literally the only reason that Silva's plan works is that the film is as stupid as he is.