Line #52 Headscratchers/GoldenEye


1	!![[Film/GoldenEye The movie]]
2
3	[[foldercontrol]]
4
5	[[folder:Boris' passwords]]
6	* You sit on it, but don't take it with you - why would a Russian security program have a 5 digit password? Why would that 5 digit password be a word? Why would the 5 digit password give you a hint? Why would the hint be a question in the enemy's language? I know a few of these questions can be chalked up to Boris' arrogance, but the utter simplicity of Boris' riddle just blows my mind. "Chair" was my second guess after "penis".
7	** Because it's not a Russian security program--it's ''Boris's'' security program. It's all about Boris's arrogance. He's a great programmer, but he's also kind of an idiot.
8	** I thought there was a bit of 'cleverness' on Boris' part involved, that he had Natalya fooled into thinking it had to be a body part, James guesses it immediately because he didn't know about Boris and Natalya's prior history.
9	** Sometimes the most apparently simple hints can be misleading enough. Along with the context about Natalya's misunderstanding, if one's head is in the gutter, they might also try "dildo" (along with "penis") and quite possibly end up stumped. Also, the fact that it's only a five character password does not help someone trying to guess it if they do not know that fact (as is almost certainly the case) or if they're under extreme time pressure to guess it; nor is the fact that it's a word is any more probable for them, likewise (the clue could be completely bullshit). Even the question about it being in English, might be accounted for if we presume TranslationConvention could be in play.
10	[[/folder]]
11
12	[[folder:Natalya's captivity at Janus Syndicate]]
13	* When Orumov and Natalya board Trevelyan's missile train, Trevelyan acts as though he is meeting Natalya for the first time. But Natalya was captured by Trevelyan before (by Boris and Xenia at the church) and the next thing we know is that she was placed, along with Bond, in the Tiger helicopter death trap in Statue Park. Why would Trevelyan be ignorant of Natalya's existence and forego trying to enslave her then?
14	** He ''is'' meeting her for the first time. Boris and Xenia handled the abduction of Natalya; he didn't personally load Bond or her into the Tiger, it was his men who did it. That doesn't mean that he is ignorant of her existence either though- he just didn't bother dealing with her because he has people for that. It's only when he is right in front of her (and realises that now she has met Bond and is yet another "Bond girl") that he starts getting sex-slavey ideas.
15	[[/folder]]
16
17	[[folder:The Cuba satellite dish location]]
18	* Why go the bother of hiding your satellite dish so well that James Bond can't find it, only to then draw his attention to it by firing at him?
19	** They uncovered the satellite dish as part of the scheduled plan for Goldeneye, regardless of whether Bond was there or not, and the attack on them afterwards was probably a coincidental random patrol just finding them near the dish. The rocket attack was both so they could adhere to their schedule and because, since they knew that Bond had traced them to Cuba, they weren't taking any chances, regardless of who was in that plane.
20	** Also, they didn't fire on Bond's plane until he decided to do another pass over the lake. If he had just flown on in his search pattern, they likely would've let him go, but his behavior led them to think, "He's found us!"
21	[[/folder]]
22
23	[[folder:The field evaluation]]
24	* Why, knowing full well of Bond's womanizing reputation, would the new M have sent a WOMAN to evaluate him, and such an easily flustered, swooning one at that?
25	** For all we know, she DID do her job: to find out exactly how 007 behaves in such situations. And while she was entirely willing to play along for a while (why not?), she later went back and told M exactly what happened. It's worth noting that M's infamous TheReasonYouSuckSpeech happens after this, though she doubtless knew as much beforehand.
26	*** M tells Bond his "boyish charms....obviously appealed to that young woman I sent out to evaluate you", so the girl obviously gave him full marks. M would probably say she underestimated him.
27	*** Given M's speech to 007 who's to say she didn't fulfill her role? M certainly didn't like the report and may have been evaluating the evaluator and sent somebody better later on.
28	*** Considering that in ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'' she explicitly orders Bond to seduce Elliot Carver's wife for information, she seemed to get useful information out of the assessment.
29	*** Hell, seducing subjects to get information has ''always'' been part of Bond's job.
30	** At one point, Bond quips, "See, I have no problem with female authority." Perhaps, part of the idea was to see how well Bond responds to receiving orders from a woman, since the new M is one.
31	[[/folder]]
32
33	[[folder:"I had to ventilate someone"]]
34	* After Onatopp murders everyone at Severnya, Natalya tries to hide in the ventilation shaft but later we see that she was hiding elsewhere. Yet, Onatopp shoots at the ventilation anyway and we hear someone dying. So, did there just happen to be a different person hiding in there that Natalya accidentally got killed, or is Natalya just really, really good at throwing her voice?
35	** When do you hear someone die? The noise we can hear as Xenia shoots is her screaming/moaning, hence the close-up on her looking satisfied afterwards.
36	*** No, it is a woman being shot, shocked and dying. That's how Xenia "knows" that she killed someone in the first place. Otherwise, for all she knew there really was someone up there but they could have crawled away to any part of the shaft already.
37	*** It clearly isn't, though. We see Ourumov glance to the kitchen after Xenia shoots, and her looking/sounding like the cat that got the canary; the sound is her gasping like she's getting off - she just thinks she's killed someone and isn't thorough enough to check.
38	[[/folder]]
39
40	[[folder: Mooks or Bystanders]]
41	* So, the ''Manticore'' yacht is leased by a front for the Janus crime syndicate, but was the guy who attacked Bond a murderous thug or was he just some random ObliviouslyEvil employee of the front who has no idea he was working for a criminal organization and was simply attacking an intruder who was breaking and entering into the ship (meaning Bond beat up and possibly killed an innocent man)? Ditto for the guy in the sauna when James is fighting / being sexually assaulted by Onatopp- is he working with her, or did he think Bond was attacking (raping?) ''her'' (and got smacked in the face with a metal bucket for it)? And lets not get started on the countless Russian soldiers he guns down escaping the Defence Ministry, none of whom had ''anything'' to do with the villains. These were all cases of self-defence yes, but still- Bonds mantra of "those who I kill are themselves killers" is ''really'' stretched to it's limit here.
42	** Well, you said it yourself; most of these are fairly clear-cut cases of self-defence or similar 'in-the-line-of-duty' matters, to be entirely fair to him. It's not like Bond's going out of his way to hurt or murder clearly innocent people, they're all presented fairly clearly as either soldiers out to kill him or rather sketchy thugs involved on some level with a major criminal enterprise out to get him. As for Sauna Guy, given that Xenia is both one of Trevelyan's top lieutenants and is trying to assassinate Bond / lure him into a trap, it wouldn't be entirely surprising if Trevelyan decided she should have at least one bodyguard posted as back-up and to prevent any hapless civilians from interfering; in short, he's probably a bad guy as well.
43	** Self-defence or otherwise, Bond ''gunning down rank-and-file Russian soldiers'' (and being held responsible for the death of their defence minister) should have resulted in serious international consequences. The UK government cannot extend his license to kill to foreign nations, so by covering for him, they are sanctioning those killings. What do they call that? An '''assassination'''. A declaration of war by default. Bond's actions here (and in a couple of other movies, but especially here) quite easily have reverted tensions to Cold War-levels, if not outright trigger WorldWarThree.
44	*** That's if the Russian government could evidence Bond was there; everyone whose testimony to his being in St Petersburg could have mattered - chiefly Mishkin and Ouromov - are dead, and by the time the dust has settled on Bond's tearing through the city in a tank, Ouromov's involvement in a criminal syndicate would have been exposed and presumably he would have taken the brunt of the blame for putting Russian soldiers in harms way to begin with.
45	[[/folder]]
46
47	[[folder:Expending RedShirt soldiers during Trevelyan's defection]]
48	* The opening sequence makes no sense whatsoever - if the intention is simply to have Trevelyan defect, why slaughter so many Russian soldiers to do so? Why couldn't he just shoot Bond when he had a gun pointed at him when the latter first entered the facility?
49	** Trevelyan was ''already'' the main villain before the intro. His basic motive was that his parents, Lienz Cossacks, were indirectly 'murdered' by the USSR (his father committed suicide after killing his mother), and he believed the British let this happen. Trevelyan is thus consumed with hate for the United Kingdom. He was pretty much conscripted into [=MI6=] by the British government despite Russian blood, as they didn't think he'd remember. [[CaptainObvious He did]]. Trevelyan had to play along with [=MI6=] despite hating it. If he had killed Bond and openly defected, it would have counted as high treason. The British Government could have captured him and imprisoned him for life. He couldn't take that risk, so, as the note below states, he wanted to identify as Killed In Action to prevent suspicion. Of course, he was a giant ChekhovsGun, so it was kind of inevitable he was the villain.
50	** Trevelyan also wanted to be confirmed as KIA. No one suspects a dead man.
51	** As for Trevelyan killing so many Russian soldiers during his defection, well, that's not far from real life. [[TruthInTelevision The USSR had a very, VERY frightening willingness]] [[WeHaveReserves to expend dozens if not hundreds of infantrymen]] in order to cover up ONE defection. For the KGB and GRU, a few dozen dead soldiers and scientists in a burned out husk of a weapons plant that was manufacturing a weapon they could literally not use unless all the gloves came off? That's worth it if the reward is acquiring one defector of high standing in [=MI6=] or another major Western intelligence organization with fresh intelligence and knowledge about how the organization worked.
52	*** This also becomes an example of {{fridge brilliance}} when it's said that Ourumov sees himself as the next "iron man of Russia". Even this early in the timeline, when Trevelyan was defecting, he was cultivating a bloodthirsty reputation, willing to expend men to meet his goals. In fact, considering Trevelyan is the one calling the shots, Trevelyan may have convinced Ourumov that doing things the way they ultimately unfolded would allow him to rack up some more bodies to cement his reputation.
53	** Worth noting that aside from the ones we see Bond and Trevelyan shoot, we don't know how many people were still in the facility when it was destroyed. It's possible that they could have been evacuating the bulk of the staff during the final confrontation. But again, this is the USSR. They had a huge population to begin with; it was a central part of their military strategy. [[WeHaveReserves A few dead soldiers / technicians can be easily replaced.]]
54	* How did Trevelyan [[StagedShooting fake being shot in the head]]? Ourumov clearly was using a pistol that was firing real bullets as he uses it to kill another soldier who shot at Bond and almost blew the gas tanks. So did Ourumov just shoot to the side or did Trevelyan have some blood packs on hand?
55	** Perhaps his gun was loaded with X amounts of live rounds, then a blank and he knew to only fire off so many rounds before "shooting" 006. Yeah, a blank at close range'll still do some damage, but then this franchise isn't exactly known for its realistic treatment of firearms.
56	** He'd only really need the first bullet in the chamber to be a blank for the effect. He makes sure to load a blank round into the chamber, and then the rest of the bullets in the magazine can be live rounds and no one's the wiser. Then it's just a matter of making sure everyone with live bullets keeps away from Trevelyan.
57	[[/folder]]
58
59	[[folder:Trevelyan's grudge against Bond]]
60	* A related matter: Why did 006 hate Bond so personally? Yeah, Bond represented the British government that he hates, but 006 keeps mentioning the 3 minutes that Bond switches the bomb to. However, Bond only changes the timers to 3 minutes after 006 is captured and after 006 goads him to. And then Ourumov "executes" him, giving Bond no reason to assume that 006 is still alive and needing rescue.
61	** It is pretty easy to establish that Trevelyan isn't running on all gears by the time of the Goldeneye operation, and so probably isn't thinking that rationally. However, it probably boils down to a combination of Bond's undying loyalty.
62	** MoralMyopia. Trevalyan outright tells Bond that he was "supposed to die" for him, and he resents that Bond put the mission above their friendship, even if he predicted it.
63	** If we consider the Trevelyan vs. Bond duality, then it makes so much sense. Bond is the antithesis of Trevelyan: unswervingly loyal, noble, proud in his service. Trevelyan is the complete reverse, a man with no morals whatsoever, completely obsessed with revenge. The money is just a sweetener for him. In effect, Bond is everything Trevelyan despises about Britain, right down to the hypocrisy: Bond halving the countdown time, always taking time out to screw women, and always failing to protect them. He's a symbol of Britain to him, which is why he goes out of his way to kill him.
64	** Trevelyan ''doesn't'' tell Bond to shorten the timers, though. He just tells Bond to finish the job. In all likeliness he probably expected Bond to escape, but to give ''him'' time to escape the facility too.
65	** Trevelyan has nursed a grudge over the death of his parents that has seen him enact a complex long game to revert the entire United Kingdom "back to the stone age" in response. Holding disproportionate and kind of irrational grudges is kind of his thing, so given that Bond indirectly got ''half of Trevelyan's face disfigured'' by the bombs during the defection, is it any ''wonder'' that Trevelyan might be a bit pissed and hold a disproportionate and kind of irrational grudge?
66	*** Trevelyan must have spent years feigning friendship with Bond and hating every minute of it. It would be have been bad enough to put up with that for so long, but then to have Bond turn around and shorten the timers, and realise that Bond didn't care enough to give him enough time after all must have made things even worse.
67	*** If you take him at his word at least, he wasn't feigning anything since he considered inviting Bond to join his scheme (of course, this could have been a lie to taunt Bond further).
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:Trevelyan's plan]]
71	* Trevelyan's plan is to steal a ludicrous sum of money electronically then use the EMP pulse from the [=GoldenEye=] satellite to erase his tracks. One: if you cripple the British economy that way then the pound would drop in value significantly, causing your newly-acquired money to become useless. Two: if you use the EMP pulse to erase the records, then you'll be the ''only'' person who suddenly has a vast amount of British pounds following the crash, making it even easier to track you down. Three: it's 1995; most people still have banking books and physical records, and you still don't have the physical cash to spend. Four: never heard of back-up copies?
72	** Even if he couldn't actually get rich off the scheme, he could still raise all manner of hell in London with a massive EMP. [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation It's possible that the promise of money was just to gain support]].
73	*** That's a given. His primary goal is revenge against England for turning against his parents. The promise of a huge lump sum of money was, at best, his way of gaining followers like Ourumov, Boris, and Xenia.
74	** Trevelyan is a major arms dealer and professional criminal mastermind; he's probably got hiding places for the money so he can't be tracked. And as he says, he isn't ''only'' stealing money- he is stealing records of ''everything'', which means he can potentially buy or steal huge swathes of land or property in the aftermath. And though the value of the pound might drop, he would still be friggin' rich if he stole enough.
75	** Speaking of Trevelyan's plan, why did it take so so long to execute it after stealing the Goldeneye? After the event at Severnaya, he obtained Boris, he had the satellite, yet he doesn't do anything with them until after Bond has been deployed to Russia and uncovers the plot. Why wait? Why not execute the plan as soon as possible?
76	*** Probably because he's got a score he wants to settle with Bond as well. He ''does'' blame him for half his face being burned off, he's probably been alerted from Xenia that Bond's on the case, so he might as well kill two birds, lure Bond out and deal with him as well.
77	*** He might also need to finish getting the Cuba side of the operation set up as well.
78	*** Presumably they were waiting for Ouromov to "investigate" the crime and blame it on Siberian separatists- thereby covering their tracks and making sure that the Russians won't be looking too closely-, only to hit a snag when Ouromov learns that someone survived the attack. So they decide to go after Natalya first since she knows too much (that there is another satellite still out there), and while waiting for this to be dealt with they learn that Bond has shown up and ''he'' needs to be dealt with too.
79	** Whoever said he had to keep the money in pounds? He could steal a bunch of money, transfer it to overseas accounts, convert it all into other currencies, and ''then'' fire the GoldenEye. If he's got it all planned in advance, the transactions could be completed in a matter of minutes.
80	[[/folder]]
81
82	[[folder:Alec Trevelyan and age]]
83	* Isn't Creator/SeanBean a tad too young to have had his parents killed by Stalin after the war? He was born in 1959 and was 35 at the time of filming.
84	** They explicitly were NOT killed by Stalin. His parents escaped only for his father to snap and kill both himself and his wife in a case of murder-suicide because he could not live with it. [[WildMassGuessing And a few fanfics have proposed the idea]] that while it is implied that Trevelyan was orphaned shortly after Lienz, he was actually orphaned quite a bit later (possibly even decades after the war) as his father fought a losing battle with his latent guilt until he finally lost it.
85	** The character of Alec Trevalyen was originally written as an mentor to Bond, with Creator/AlanRickman in mind.
86	** Basically, it's likely a form of DawsonCasting. Trevalyen is presumably supposed to be a few years older than Sean Bean is, and is simply slightly (say about five-ten years) OlderThanHeLooks in-universe.
87	** Assuming this Bond is the same one who first appeared in ''Film/DrNo'', he'd be around 60 years old by 1995, but was played by the 42 year old Pierce Brosnan. Double-0 agents age ''good''.
88	[[/folder]]
89
90	[[folder:The 250m antenna problem]]
91	* Why use a 250m antenna? They're not astronomers, they don't need the enormous gain from a dish of that size. A ordinary, $100 satellite dish, plus a bit of tracking hardware, wouldn't look out of place bolted to a Moscow tenement, and would be completely adequate for communicating with any reasonable satellite.
92	** You can't be a Bond villain without an [[ElaborateUndergroundBase elaborate hidden base]]. It's in the contract.
93	** It's not "any reasonable satellite". Its a Cold War-era KillSat that isn't even supposed to exist. Petya and Mishka might have particular security measures so that you ''do'' need a giant antenna to make contact with it, which might even explain why the West had never noticed either of them before. Severnaya was almost as over-the-top, and that ''was'' an astronomy dish.
94	** Basically, RuleOfCool. It's a James Bond film. They're going for "holy shit this is an awesome secret base for spy KillSat purposes", not "Hmmm, how can we make this grindingly realistic and cheap?".
95	[[/folder]]
96
97	[[folder:Spike program]]
98	* The whole point of Boris's Spike program is that it hacks into a target computer and stops them from hanging up. OK - this is 1995, instead of scratching your head or frantically extracting control boards... what's stopping you from just pulling the phone line from it's socket?
99	** It's Hollywood. Remember, to them, [[MagicalComputer it's all magical]] after all...
100	** It could be that its still linked up even after pulling the plug. That's actually how some police traces work in RealLife - once they've got you, you can't sever until they let you.
101	*** I don't care how much magical technology you've got; if you remove the Internet connection there's no way for it to keep broadcasting. The most it could do is release a virus onto the computer that will activate the trace again if you plug it back in.
102	** Just because the rest of us were stuck using [=CompuServ=] back then doesn't mean the Department of Justice and a Bond super-villain are. It seems likely that he couldn't disconnect the hardline in time (he was yanking out electronics IIRC)
103	*** Yeah, he was ripping control boards out of the server. God only knows the amount of damage that caused. I guess seeing him pull a phone cord out of the jack is less dramatic?
104	*** It really doesn't matter WHAT year it is. Every internet connection can be severed by pulling a power cord or a data cable somewhere. Now in the case of public WiFi or mobile wireless, that connection could be not known or inaccessible. However, any office (private or government) will have cords that can easily be pulled kill any connection. This is different from a police trace in that they are looking for the general location of where the call is routed (i.e., your house, not a specific phone in your house).
105	** Boris is temperamental and over-dramatic. Pulling the plug is the simpler option, but he's getting stressed at the thought of someone being a better hacker than him. He's panicking and throwing a tantrum, basically.
106	[[/folder]]
107
108	[[folder:Setting the timers]]
109	* Bond thought Alec was dead when he set the timers for three minutes. What the heck is Alec's beef? And why doesn't Bond ''point this out'' to him?!
110	** As mentioned, MoralMyopia. He's upset about the scars, and he's selfish enough to hold it against Bond. He also dislikes how Bond's first thought when Alec was shot was to go to the timers (ie. the mission). And, of course, his plan involved ''Bond'' dying for ''him'', for his evil scheme. He never intended to let Bond leave that building alive. He's an asshole plotting mass murder; LackOfEmpathy is kind of a given.
111	** He's planning to essentially destroy the entire United Kingdom due to his grudge over the death of his parents. Holding disproportionate and kind of irrational grudges is kind of his thing.
112	** Bond did ''not'' think Alec was dead when he set the timers for three minutes. He saw that Alec had been captured, then he set the timers for three minutes, ''then'' he saw Alec get shot, and then he made his escape. By setting the timers for three minutes, he boosted the odds that the mission would be completed (since the bad guys would have less time to disable the charges), but at the same time he reduced the odds of saving Alec (since he'd have less time to come up with some way to save him). Alec is pissed off that Bond put the mission above their friendship, even though the entire thing was secretly fake.
113	[[/folder]]
114
115	[[folder:Boris passcodes part 2]]
116	* "You sit on it, but you don't take it with you." Why is Natalya convinced it's your butt? Is hers detachable?
117	** Previous scenes established Boris as a pervert, she was just too fixated on that. Assuming that this password would follow his typical pattern (like "knockers"), she was so busy looking for the double entendre associated with "you sit on it" that she missed the meaning of the second part of the hint.
118	** Something you sit on, that you don't take with you when thought of through a pervy mindset seems to be leading to a penis joke, but censors probably didn't want tallywacker, wingwang, or whatever cute name Boris would have thought up so they had her to go with a safer entendre.
119	* How is a chair not something you can take with you?
120	** Do you carry a chair around you all day, or do you use the chair already in the room when you get there? Yes, chairs can move, but they're not something you carry around with you.
121	** Deck chairs?
122	*** An exception that proves the rule -- 99.9% of the chairs most people sit on on a daily basis will be chairs that are already in that location waiting for them to sit on. Unless you're some kind of obsessive compulsive who can only sit on a special chair that he or she carries around with him absolutely everywhere, most people will not carry deck chairs around with them except on special occasions.
123	[[/folder]]
124
125	[[folder:Cuba dish base]]
126	* Not that supervillain lairs haven't been built underwater before, but how did Trevelyan build that satellite dish in Cuba where Jack Wade explicitly points out that you can't light a cigar without the CIA knowing about it?
127	** Because Jack Wade was using hyperbole and was, quite simply, wrong.
128	** Also, who says ''he'' built it? Could have been the USSR.
129	*** It almost certainly ''was'' built by the USSR, back when the killsat was first made operational. They'd need stations in as many places across the globe as possible to operate and track it, and would be much better positioned to construct it in secret.
130	*** Except that still doesn't explain why the U.S. doesn't know about it. We watched Cuba VERY closely during the Cold War. That's why The Cuban Missile Crisis happened.
131	*** The Cuban Missile Crisis happened because the USSR was shipping nuclear weapons into Cuba. The United States obviously cares very deeply about that, but they likely cared a bit less about what was, so far as they could tell, basically a satellite tracking station.
132	** Where's it said the CIA ''didn't'' know it was there? Bond and Natalya had to find where it was somehow, as did Jack Wade and his special forces guys. They just might not have known exactly what it was for. It was probably just hidden because Trevalyan didn't want the ''locals'' to know what he was up to (seeing as the Cuban government might not have been overly thrilled at his running an off-the-books operation to completely destroy London in their back yard).
133	*** When Wade meets up with Bond and Natalya in Cuba to give them the airplane. He says that the giant satellite dish the pair are looking for doesn't exist, because the CIA watch Cuba far too closely. That the dish was hidden underwater proves him wrong but also explains why the CIA never found it.
134	** Also, the Cold War had been over for about five-six years by the time the movie was released; their attention might have lapsed slightly.
135	[[/folder]]
136
137	[[folder:The entrance to the weapons plant]]
138	* In the beginning Bond bungee jumps to the bottom of the dam's entrance, but he exits from some building at the top of a mountain. How did he get there?
139	** I think thats meant to be either the other side of the dam, and / or the other side of the mountain. Its to do with the geography of the building, but its the same building.
140	** The complex wasn't inside the dam, that was just the weak point in security. I think he's probably climbing through vents and whatnot for a long while before emerging in the bathroom.
141	[[/folder]]
142
143	[[folder:Opening car race]]
144	* How is Bond, driving a [=DB5=], able to keep up with Xenia, driving a Ferrari 355? On the roads upon which they were driving the Aston Martin would likely have been outpaced by a Mazda [=MX5=], let alone a supercar capable of going from 0-60mph in 4 seconds.
145	** Heavily-modified cars are a staple of the series, to the point where RL auto manufacturers compete to have their cars featured in the films - and, as is mentioned throughout these pages, the BMW Z3 Roadster product-placement deal was finalized fairly late in the production and it didn't get to play, so they had to stick with a "traditional" Bond car for this sequence.
146	** Also, [[RuleOfCool he's James Bond.]]
147	[[/folder]]
148
149	[[folder:Bond's cars]]
150	* Speaking of cars: why did [=MI6=] take the trouble to fly Bond's BMW to the USA?
151	** [[WatsonianVersusDoylist Doylist answer]]: BMW, despite delivering the car too late to perform any stunts, had still paid to have their car driven in the movie and that was the only place they could fit it in so late. Watsonian answer: [=MI6=] needed to use up some excess budget before the end of the financial month and decided that flying it out on a cargo plane ought to fit the bill.
152	** [=MI6=] always takes the trouble to fly out Bond's cars. In most cases, it turns out to be fully justified; this is one of the rare cases he ''doesn't'' need his weaponized death mobile.
153	[[/folder]]
154
155	[[folder:Tank chase]]
156	* Bond is chasing the bad guys with a tank. When he's about to reach them, they jump on a train, which immediately departs. The train is traveling at a high speed, so you'd think the bad guys managed to escape, but then they see that the tank is waiting for them in a tunnel ahead. How the heck did Bond manage to drive the tank there and place it in a tunnel well before the train got there? Did he use a teleporter or something?
157	** Trains drive on tracks. And who is to say that those tracks go in a straight line? Maybe they loop around a bit, whereas the tank is able to take a shortcut, et voilá.
158	*** If Bond did indeed take a shortcut, it would've been nice for the movie to show it, instead of making it look like he got there by magic.
159	*** I can see that criticism, but I think the filmmakers didn't want to show a tank race a train ''right'' after a tank chase through a city. Also, Bond just standing there with his tank is way cooler. Think Dirty Harry atop the bridge when Scorpio kidnapped the school bus. The most unrealistic aspect is, I think, that Bond seems to have the St. Petersburg railroad network memorized. But then, what ''doesn't'' this man have memorized?
160	*** Also, in the scene where he watches them boarding the train, he drives the tank (tremendously noisy in RealLife) on a ''steel'' bridge, which would make the Earth tremble with noise. Nobody turns to look back.
161	*** It's not like the bad guys don't already ''know'' that Bond's chasing them in a tank; they probably did hear him, but they're also seconds from boarding a train when he arrives and are likely operating under the assumption that he's too far behind them to catch up to them before they're steaming at full speed away from St. Petersburg. They just don't anticipate him cutting them off further down the track. On rewatching, it also looks like the tank is just about to but hasn't quite entered the bridge before the other characters enter the train, meaning it's not as loud as it would be if it had already started rolling on the bridge.
162	*** As for memorising the St. Petersburg rail network, Bond probably did a lot of business (so to speak) in St. Petersburg back when it was Leningrad. He might indeed have a reasonably good knowledge of the local terrain.
163	[[/folder]]
164
165	[[folder:The shooting of Mishkin]]
166	* Why didn't Ourumov just kill Bond first (since he was the more dangerous guy) rather than kill the defense minister and hand Bond a loaded gun?
167	** At that point Ourumov is clearly flustered, panicking a bit about his disloyalty being exposed, and not really thinking clearly. The plan to frame Bond was an afterthought after he realised that he'd kind of dug himself in a hole. Besides which, it's a James Bond movie. The bad guy's ''never'' just gonna shoot Bond in the head and have done with it, deal with it and move on.
168	*** In-universe, he needs Bond to be seen by a whole bunch of witness and causing damage/random death in order to have his own story be accepted and not be seen as orchestrating a coup (which is what he is doing). He knows Bond is going to have to run, and given they are in the heart of Russian's military HQ the chance of him escaping ought to have been nil.
169	*** So In-universe, Bond needed to shoot a couple casualties and get kind of far but not too far and kill a few Russians but not a lot of Russians? Not a very good plan.
170	*** In-universe, Ourumov was pretty much winging it by that point so while it wasn't a very good plan, it wasn't completely terrible either. Out of universe, well if he was capable of showing truly good judgment he wouldn't a Bond Villain would he?
171	*** The Walther wasn't loaded when Bond got it back. Ourumov picked it up, shot the guard and Mishkin, and then popped the clip and removed the remaining bullets. Ourumov tossed the now-empty gun into Bond's hands (for the fingerprints) and THEN came up with the shot-while-trying-to-escape plan. So Ourumov calls for the guards to help with the cover story: he calls for the guards like Bond is trying to escape, but Ourumov planned to kill Bond right there in the cell (so the arriving guards see Ourumov as a hero who killed an extremely dangerous pain-in-the-ass enemy). Ourumov never wanted Bond to leave that cell alive but, Bond being Bond...
172	*** Mishkin was already leaning toward suspecting Ourumov was a traitor and believing Bond's story. At minimum, Ourumov would have been under surveillance from this moment on, limiting his freedom to do anything for Trevelyan. He possibly would have been relieved and arrested. Killing Bond in custody or "trying to escape" would only make the minister more suspicious. And that's assuming Trevelyan didn't have something else in mind for Ourumov (considering Trevelyan's displeasure when Ourumov makes it to the train).
173	* On that note, Mishkin calls for the guards just before Ourumov shoots him. No one comes, despite two gunshots. Yet when Ourumov comes up with his plan and calls for the guards himself, suddenly they hear?
174	[[/folder]]
175
176	[[folder:Bungee problem]]
177	* So in the opening, Bond bungee-jumps off the side of a dam and shoots a grapple line at the ground just before getting yanked back up. This means the bungee cord must have been at or near its maximum level of extension. How could James have possibly held onto that grapple gun with the bungee cord pulling him in the other direction? Shouldn't it have been ripped out of his hands?
178	** He doesn't shoot the grapple line until well after the bungee-cord loses most of its momentum and his descent has slowed to a crawl.
179	** But that's when the force is at its strongest, pulling him upwards with more acceleration than gravity is pulling him downwards.
180	** [[RuleOfCool Because he's James Bond.]]
181	[[/folder]]
182
183	[[folder:Xenia Onatopp's death]]
184	* Did Onatopp's death make sense?
185	** If it didn't break her back or her ribs, then it simply deprived her of air; Realistically she should've been pulled through the 'V' of the tree branches and possibly been fine, but then that wouldn't have given us the ironic death or Bond's punny quip.
186	[[/folder]]
187
188	[[folder:Sauna fight]]
189	* Why the heck did Bond drop his weapon while making out with Xenia in the sauna?
190	** One could argue that while he knows she was involved in the death of the Admiral and the theft of the helicopter, he doesn't know how dangerous she actually is - and seeing his expression once she gets on top of him at last, it's quite likely he was unaware of her MurderousThighs - plus it's along the same lines as Bond in ''Thunderball'' knowing that Fiona Volpe is a SPECTRE operative but still having sex with her; Also, in some respects, Bond is seduced by these women and believes he can handle them, only to be proven wrong. Both Volpe and Onatopp essentially use him for sex, only in the latter instance, Xenia doesn't even need to make love to him.. So, yeah. Basically, she seduces him. Watch the scene and after a point, Bond keeps going for the gun, but Xenia actively stops him, kicking him around until she pins him on the bench.
191	** In the end, [[ImAManICantHelpIt he is a man, he can't help it]].
192	*** [[Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough Unless you're the bad guy and trying to play on his affections, that is]].
193	[[/folder]]
194
195	[[folder: Bond and Trevelyan, Drinking Buddies]]
196	* Would Bond, infamous for being a huge wine snob, really want a "pint"? Or is this a subtle characterization moment to suggest that Alec is one of the few people around whom James doesn't put up airs?
197	** It's a quip in the heat of battle, not a plan for what they literally plan to do later on. You're thinking about it too much.
198	** Even taking into account the above, he usually drinks wine and vodka martinis and the like when he's in a classy high-class hotel-casino environment when that sort of drink would be expected. If he's just out with a friend for a quiet drink down at the nearest pub after a long day at work, he might be more willing to knock back a pint or two. He probably drinks fancy expensive stuff imported from Germany, even.
199	** It's just banter. Alec says "Closing time, James. Last call!" which is just a banterous way of saying "The mission's nearly over. Let's get out of here!". James keeps the joke going by responding "Buy me a pint!", which is what you stereotypically drink in a pub.
200	** [[TheAlcoholic Let's face it, it's Bond]].
201	[[/folder]]
202
203	[[folder:Xenia Death Redux]]
204	* RuleOfCool aside, why didn't Bond just shoot Xenia right in the face rather than attaching the cable to her, then shooting down the helicopter and indirectly killing her (which seems a lot harder, plus how could have have predicted the helicopter would land in just the right place for this to work?)
205	** Because he's James Bond - how many times have you seen him shoot ''anyone'' right in the face? Besides, his plan doesn't seem to be to kill her indirectly, more removing her from the immediate area and attempting to kill him.
206	** Onatopp is wearing the gun on her back, slung around her shoulder. To get it into a position where he was able to get it off her, aim it, and shoot her anywhere (never mind in the face), Bond would have to fight her for it. And he's already losing, or at least at a disadvantage, while fighting her. In the circumstances the movie set up, it actually ''is'' quicker and simpler for him to just hook her up to the cable, shoot the helicopter, and see what happens next.
207	[[/folder]]
208
209	[[folder:The Helicopter that Shoots Itself]]
210	* Trevelyan meets Bond in the graveyard and takes him out with a sleeping dart. Next he puts Bond and whatshername in a helicopter which he's rigged up so that it'll fire missiles at itself. Bond, of course, wakes up just in time to hit the eject and evade the missiles. Is there ''any'' reason, besides BondVillainStupidity, why Trevelyan doesn't just shoot Bond with a gun in the first place?
211	** He's setting Bond and Natalya up to look like the helicopter thieves (helped by Bond being on the scene in Monte Carlo), and presumably the Severnaya attackers, too. Shooting Bond would leave traces and evidence of a setup.
212	*** What's the story, in that case? The helicopter thieves accidentally shot themselves with their own missiles? Isn't that a really hard thing to do? You'd think that if someone knows how to fly a helicopter, they'd also know not to fire their own missiles directly at themselves.
213	*** Considering that his plan is going into its final stages in the next couple of days, he doesn't need a scenario that makes ''total'' sense; Trevalyan just needs something that causes enough confusion that by the time the investigators realise they should be focusing on something else, he's achieved his goal and they're more focused on the current financial collapse.
214	*** Presumably he'd be relying on Ouromov to lead the government investigation as to what went on - he turns up at the interrogation pretty quickly, after all - and Ouromov would be able to say 'it was a malfunction'; if they were also able to identify Bond, the bigger question would suddenly be a more political one of 'why is this British intelligence agent in Russia with a missing programmer and a stolen NATO helicopter?'
215	[[/folder]]
216
217	[[folder:Sneaky Marines]]
218	* After defeating the evil scheme, Bond and Natalya kiss in a random clearing. Then Wade shows up and it turns out that the entire clearing is full of marines in camouflage. What were those guys ''doing''? Did somebody order them to hang out in this random clearing and do nothing for awhile, just ''waiting'' for Bond to coincidentally show up? Speaking of marines, Wade had told Bond that they'd be available as backup, so why didn't Bond call them in during the mission? Heck, why didn't the marines just make an assault on their own authority once the obvious enemy base revealed itself?
219	** They're Bond's back-up, if needed. They're waiting there because it's presumably their rendezvous point; it's a flat clearing perfect for helicopter dispatch and retrieval. They don't do anything because Bond doesn't call them in, and Bond doesn't call them in because, well, he doesn't need them, he's James Bond. They weren't there waiting for Bond specifically, but yes, it's a coincidence that Bond and Natalya happen to end up there (though not a wholly implausible one; again, it's a good place to land a helicopter if needed). And they don't do anything on their own because they're US soldiers on a secret mission in an unfriendly country, and going hot without being properly authorised could potentially lead to negative repercussions. They're the last resort and would rather Bond sort things out himself under the radar if possible.
220	[[/folder]]
221
222	[[folder:Natalya Criticizing Bond]]
223	* Goldeneye is practically founded on highlighting the flaws of James Bond. Natalya contributes to that in this scene, where she calls out his tendency to drop friends and relationships when convenient. It's a great scene, marred by a bizarre backpedal in which Bond forces a kiss on Natalya, to which ''she reciprocates''. Not wanting him to be lonely is one thing, but acting like ''this'' is ok, especially after so much of the movie has been spent tearing his behavior down?
224	[[/folder]]
225
226	[[folder:Other]]
227	* When Bond and Xenia arrive at the statue graveyard, she's disheveled, as one would expect as she had to hurriedly dress at gunpoint. Bond, however, [[BeautyIsNeverTarnished is as impeccably dressed as ever]]. How did he manage that while holding a gun on her?
228	** The novelisation suggests that once she was done dressing, Bond bound her arms and legs while in his hotel room.
229	** Or alternatively, the other way around; he binds her arms and legs with towels at the sauna, gets dressed, then makes her get dressed at gunpoint.
230	* Ouromov fakes shooting Trevelyan at the beginning of the film with presumably blank cartridges, but moments later he shoots a guard dead for nearly setting off the flammable gas tanks. Did he load only a single blank into his gun?
231	** Ouromov and Alec clearly had a deal beforehand, otherwise there's no reason Alec would still be alive, so yes. One blank for Alec, live rounds otherwise.
232	** The guard was never hit by anything, as evidenced by the lack of blood. The backflip of 'death' was more out of shock.
233	*** Err, nope. This would be filed under BloodlessCarnage. They don't have to show blood spreading in every single shot with a bullet wound. You can even do a frame by frame and see there is indeed a bullethole in the soldier's chest. Of course Oruomov would kill this underling for putting the lives of all the other soldiers, himself, and Trevelyan at risk.
234	** Alternatively, Ouromov could have intentionally missed Trevelyan rather than using a blank. He wasn't pointing the gun directly at Trevelyan's head and it cuts away before he pulls the trigger.
235	[[/folder]]

Context Headscratchers / GoldenEye