20 Easter Eggs You Somehow Missed In Quantum Of Solace
16. Sounds Very Unstable...
Generally speaking, a leading Bond villain must have a spectacular lair, which must be destroyed in an equally explosive style to satisfy the audience.
This was perhaps best demonstrated in 1974's The Man With The Golden Gun, in which Britt Ekland's bumbling MI6 operative, Mary Goodnight knocks a henchman into a vat of liquid nitrogen, ultimately causing Francisco Scaramanga's solar energy laboratory (and his entire island lair) to blow sky high.
Similarly, in the 22nd Bond film, the Perla de las Dunas Hotel is meant to be solar-powered, but various hydrogen energy cells dotted around the building reveal that it is not actually as environmentally friendly as Dominic Greene would have the public believe. General Medrano notes that the arrangements seem very unstable and he is ultimately proven right.
When Bond causes a Jeep to crash into a fuel cell in the hotel's parking garage, it sets off a chain reaction of explosions that ultimately consumes the entire building (and almost Bond and Camille as well).
Although it is an example of deus ex machina (not unlike the destruction of Scaramanga's island), the power behind the hotel highlights even further that Greene is more of a devil than a benefactor. Moreover, even though fans believed that there was no story reason for the hotel to be destroyed, director, Marc Forster had actually chosen this to be the culmination of Bond's various challenging encounters with the elements of earth, air, fire and water in this film.