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James Bond Film Skyfall Inspired By Stuxnet Virus
Velcroman1 writes "No smartphones. No exploding pens. No ejector seats. No rocket-powered submarines. 'It's a brave new world,' gadget-maker Q tells James Bond in the new film Skyfall. The new film, released on the 50th anniversary of the storied franchise, presents a gadget-free Bond fighting with both brains and brawn against a high-tech villain with computer prowess Bill Gates would be envious of. What inspired such a villain? 'Stuxnet,' producer Michael G. Wilson said. 'There is a cyberwar that has been going on for some time, and we thought we'd bring that into the fore and let people see how it could be going on.'"
Is it really necessary to prove it's possible to ruin a James Bond movie by taking all of the fun out of it?
You heard wrong. Everyone I know who's seen it say its the best yet, critics generally very favourable too.
I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying this -- there's ~30 minutes of ads before the movie even starts. Not coming attractions, not "go buy some popcorn," but television-style ads for products.
Seems MI6 has been hit hard by austerity!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The name is BIND, James BIND
The "brave new world" is "smartphones" (and tablets, wifi, etc.)
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Can't wait for another stunning Hollywood interpretation of computer science. Maybe this time when he flies up to the spaceship and hacks it with his MacBook, it will show a virus check on screen and tell us that it's the Matrix.
You will be pleased with this one then. The editing was particularly good.
Thank you, Anonymous First Post Troll. We'll be sure to give your opinion all the consideration it deserves. I forgot what it was already.
So, the movie's interpretation is that we should be fighting hackers with our fists and they're calling that MORE realistic than previous Bond films? Yes, I'm sure the next time someone from China hacks the US, we can just send someone over to punch them. And that will not only stop them, but undo the virus, somehow. Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter was more realistic than this.
I've watched it and it was good entertainment despite. In contrast to the last one horrible Daniel Graig even does not appear entirely like a psychopathic murderer, so it's a bit easier to empathize with him this time (though still not easy). There are worse James Bond movies but also better ones, and it's fun unless you expect more than a James Bond movie.
Even though I was 12 years old when I saw it, the ejector seat in Goldfinger impressed me as the dumbest gadget ever. "OK, Bond, we've killed two of your Bond Girls in absurd ways, now get in the back of this truck." "Oh gee, is it OK if I drive myself?" "OK, we'll have a henchman accompany you, just promise us you don't have an ejector seat."
Even dumber (though more low tech) is the part where the limousine gets reduced to a metal cube for no obvious reason.
...and it's fun unless you expect a James Bond movie.
FTFY.
To give an explanation, I think Craig is so far from the Fleming character and when introducting him they shouldn't have thrown out the good bits of the existing film canon.
Your ad here.
How often do we see someone being shot where they get thrown back and yet the shooter goes nowhere?
Or where the bad-ass good guy walks away from an explosion that should have turned him into jelly?
Or fighting on a floating piece of rock in a lava stream? AND they don't burst into flames themselves?
Or spacecraft maneuvering like airplanes?
And lastly, sound in space.
Yes it is so boring and not even funny. Whatever, it should not be funny.
The IT stuff are so laughable.
- Q (with all the Geek-chic aparel) : "Oh my god, we have been hacked !" (And splash !, a animated 3D representation of the "thing" in your face.
Ok, go back to school, assholes)
- James Bond (Looking at the hex representation) : "Ok, Let's try that password" (Yes, every "Virus" have a password to decypher it)
- Q : How, what is it ?
- JB : It's map !
There not a single gram of Ian Fleming novel' spirit in that movie, such a shame. This is just a giant advertising for Omega® and Sony® for zombie audience eating pop-corn.
You can leave it.
Oh, so the villain in this movie goes *further* than creating a monopoly, using its power to force suppliers to put competitors out of business, using a file-system hack to implement long filenames, having Notepad write a BOM to UTF-8 files, and, finally, choosing Ballmer to run the business into the ground?
How will Bond ever defeat a villain with such technical skill?
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
He could code (and in multiple languages), in contrast to, say, Steve Jobs.
From what I've read of the experiences of other coders/designers/architects, he had the in-depth technical acumen to make a one-on-one development review a very detailed and rather harrowing experience, as well.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I can't wait to see Bond and his 'modern' love interest, a mysterious blond PHD computer scientist named Kitty Scripter, code up some GUIs in visual basic to save the day
Is Vladimir Putin still playing James Bond?
We need a Bond that looks more like Bond and less like a Bond Villian.
Last time I checked, Bill Gates wasn't a computer genius at all, unlike Steve Wozniak.
Check again.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
In his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by Harry Lewis, one of his professors. Gates's solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years; its successor is faster by only one percent. His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.
and
During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit
Don't forget:
Q: "We're under attack! Strip the headers and find the source!"
Bad Guy: "Good luck, I'm behind seven proxies!".
I for one always take my movie reviews from anonymous people who apparently live on continents where the movie hasn't yet been released.
I had low expectations for this film but came out of the cinema impressed. I wouldn't say it's a Bond film in the classic mould, but a really good, entertaining film.
I also seem to remember Jeff Goldblum disabling an entire civilization's computer system with a computer virus so that it could be destroyed by nuclear weapons, about sixteen years ago.
A computer virus is a brave new world for filmmaking now?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Yeah. It actually /is/ good. Except if you happen to know something about computers, unfortunately.
I wonder how long it will take for Bethesda to start suing over the name, particularly when the inevitable video game comes out. I mean surely the typical gamer will confuse Skyfall with Bethesda's trademarks "Daggerfall" and "Skyrim".
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
state sponsored torture prisons? it was hollywoods job to normalize and flavor it for consumption by the american public using shows like 24.
now we're getting to the point where "cyber" is the new war, and so it must be sold accordingly.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It has been released in most of Europe, and from what I hear, it sucks big time.
I think I know what you are trying to do
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
Oh.
Ow.
My brain.
Oh god.
Easy solution: Don't go and see it!
There not a single gram of Ian Fleming novel' spirit in that movie, such a shame. This is just a giant advertising for Omega® and Sony® for zombie audience eating pop-corn.
You can leave it.
I'd be curious to know if you think any of the Bond movies have featured a portrayal of 007 that is true to the novels. Outside of Sean Connery, Daniel Craig's Bond is fairly close to the source material. Where Craig excels is in his physical portrayal of Bond: not only does he have the physique, but he moves like Bond: an operator, an athletic pugilist, with just a hint of the street; he looks and acts like a hard case.
The fact is, the Bond portrayed in the books is a thug, and at least initially, he lacks sophistication. He is provincial, and somewhat racist (though not consistently so, and actually irrelevant). So if you think that earlier portrayals of Bond (Connery excluded, of course) are somehow more accurate... I don't know what to tell you. Methinks you protest too much (and that you don't know of what you speak).
Millions of people also think the Bach Brandenburg concertos, Firefly, Aliens, Terminator2, the Curiosity rover, seasons 3-10 of the Simpsons and Raiders of the lost Ark were pretty awesome. Your point?
To enjoy the film, which I did, I had to actively ignore anything that was said in relational to IT. Something that I find hard to do.
The concept behind the plot, while at the most extreme of technical possibility, was a valid idea to explore in a piece of fiction. The Iranians would likely have never detected stuxnet if its 'herders' had kept a better control on its spreading. Imagine something like that in a western government (as the victim). No, what annoyed me most is that they didn't even bother. Simply swapping some of the IT buzzwords in the script for ones that actually meant something in the given context, would have greatly improved its palatability. However that would mean employing someone with real IT knowledge on the writing team. Such a person might have gone insane or have made the script 'boring' with too much attention to accuracy, who knows.
One theory I had when leaving the film, was that maybe the makers didn't want to give the general public any ideas or tips in how someone would go about achieving any of the anarchy portrayed in the film. The more misinformed about computer 'hacking' the safer we'll all be...
My favorite was dude's data-center with all the empty racks save those ridiculous cables and odd blinking red light. Also the part where the new "Q" plugs evil dude's laptop directly into the main Mi6 network.
So Woz built a computer, 30 years ago, and built another one 20 years ago, and this makes him a computer genius? Apparently no.
... Bach Brandenburg concertos ...
I haven't seen this one, is it any good?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Why does that remind of this?
In A.D. 2101
War was beginning...
Well, he is just a kid. Probably had some imaging tools on the local server and couldn't be bothered to get the disk out. A beginner's mistake!
But you didn't look closely enough. Those were open racks with motherboards on them. The red lights provide a nice movie style heartbeat status display.
There not a single gram of Ian Fleming novel' spirit in that movie, such a shame. This is just a giant advertising for Omega® and Sony® for zombie audience eating pop-corn.
You can leave it.
I'd be curious to know if you think any of the Bond movies have featured a portrayal of 007 that is true to the novels.
None of them is close to the idea I have of James Bond from the novel. Georges Lazenby and Daniel Craig are the closest ones though. The others being pure jokes (Sean Connery included).
I think a movie like The American is very close to the spirit of the novel. The main problem in the JB movies : there are way too much dialogues, no suspens and they are not subtle for a penny.
In the last one, the references to the Sean Connery era are so lame. What the point ?
A good James Bond adaptation needs more than an actor that fit well the suit. Everything should be in the atmosphere, not in a avalanche of dumb gadgets and unacurate clichés (Martini, casino, James-bond girl, skiing, car, watches, you name it).
Maybe you're right. I only saw the movie once.
Makes me wish I had mod points for your mention of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Slashdot high-five, bra!
Mod parent up.
If the author did indeed know better, it would require a conscious effort from him to mess up the technical aspects. That idiot did not know better; he was pretending to know better in hindsight. The public in general only hear white noise when the technical stuff comes up, so why not get it right if you can? It is of no consequence whatsoever, and a nice nod to technical people.
Did anyone else notice that when Bond figured out the encryption key was "Grandborough", there was a G in the hex dump? I hate when movies try to depict computer hacking/cracking in a movie, it's always completely dumb.
It was very boring for a Bond movie. I fell asleep twice trying to watch it. No one liked bond because he simply completed his mission. They like bond because he did it using innovative technology and gadgets. The same reason Batman movies work, take away his gadgets and he is just a rich 1%'er with mental issues and some anger.
How much effort would it have been for Q to have said something to Bond such as "I'm running this in on a closed, secure network" to indicate good practice. Or for screen to show some semi plausible activity on it. Or for the computer to perhaps have exploited something Q might not have thought of such as scanning for wifi hotspots, e.g. through an agents phone or some router in the secretary pool and compromising the network through that.
Of course the film while pretty good for Bond has a pretty ridiculous plot. I think Javier Bardem's character got his plot ideas from watching The Dark Knight. They're so intricate and rely on an improbable sequence of events that you have to wonder why his character didn't just buy a plane ticket to London, get a taxi to M's house and blow her head off without all the intervening nonsense in this film. He must know where she lived given everything else he was supposed to have known.
he is just a rich 1%'er with mental issues and some anger.
Then, pretty much what everyone on /. aspires to become?
A totally ludicrous computer plot The entire computer "hacking" bits were totally ludicrous in the extreme. The head of Q Branch finds the villians laptop and plugs it into the MI5 network where it promptly takes control and blows up the gas boiler amoung other things. As for Stuxnet, only a f*****g moron would use Windows to power a nuclear centrefuge or plug a USB device into it.
"The new film, released on the 50th anniversary of the storied franchise, presents a gadget-free Bond fighting with both brains and brawn against a high-tech villain with computer prowess Bill Gates would be envious of"
Is this the real slashdot, since when has Bill Gates ever been seriously considered a computer genius
AccountKiller
...and it's fun unless you expect a James Bond movie.
FTFY.
To give an explanation, I think Craig is so far from the Fleming character and when introducting him they shouldn't have thrown out the good bits of the existing film canon.
The Fleming Bond is a brutal psychotic nut. In that way, Craig is much closer than the dandies that previously played him.
Seriously, Craig is the worst James Bond ever. They might as well call it "James Bourne: The Spy with feelings" or something. There are other movies that provide entertainment as "cool_modern_realistic" action. I don't want that, many of my friends do not want that. There is no Bond cheese left. There are no cool villains. They played freaking poker in Casino Royal for 40 min. NO. James Bond comes to a casino, wins against the villain, takes his girl home. She dies in the morning. Die Hard 4 was more "hacker-friendly" movie.
What the hell ?! Would it kill the OP to slap a spoiler alert to this article?
I have tried hard to avoid any information about this movie. I guess I have to try harder next time.
If others have commented about this, my apologies. I dare not skim this thread for fear that more shall be revealed.
Is Bond as sexist in the novel as in this film?
Bond wasn't even looking at the first girl that saved him while having his Heineken® on the bed, and he left without even telling her anything. He appeared like a creep behind the second girl while she was showering and just fucked her.
Women were just sex objects. Despite the film being very long they didn't get any character development at all.
No, it's a meme born on 4chan.
Totally agree.. and yes they did thank god.. No more bourne-supremecy-meth'ed out shots that stop you focusing on the scene before it changes...
this is bond.. its the way its meant to be?
Well, novel::Bond does straighten out a lesbian by having sex with her (IIRC, it is in Live and Let Die, but it might have been another one in America), and his relationship with Tracy is pretty much as it is in the film (although with more nuance, of course), although he does come to genuinely love her. OTOH, in one of the short stories (in For Your Eyes Only, the one set in the Seychelles) he either murders a man or covers up his murder because he's extremely abusive, and he does treat the Ama woman he's living with in You Only Live Twice pretty well.
While he's rather protective of women and has some rather 50's attitudes (funny that), and tends rather to using the slap-slap-kiss method of seduction, he does recognise competent women as his near-equals (and he's James Bond, he doesn't have equals) and can do the right thing by our standards sometimes.
I haven't seen the film yet, so I can't compare precisely.
It was very boring for a Bond movie. I fell asleep twice trying to watch it. No one liked bond because he simply completed his mission. They like bond because he did it using innovative technology and gadgets. The same reason Batman movies work, take away his gadgets and he is just a rich 1%'er with mental issues and some anger.
Wow, how old are you? The tech and gadgets are just shiny stuff for ten year olds. What makes them work is good writing, acting and directing.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So he wrote a single algorithm, 30 years ago, and did some code review, 20 years ago, and this makes him a computer genius? No.
No, but it makes him more technically literate than the entire general population of non-computer scientists.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
A bit slim on fireworks and light effects, but you have to see and hear JSB rock the harpiscord.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
How many Hollywood plots are plausible on a real-world level? Especially given what we know about people?
Think about your average Romantic Comedy. Some movie-star hot girl, who's magically single and doesn't have any STDs, is just pining around her $2 million New York brownstone, waiting for Mr. Right, and then as if by magic she finds him in some awkward social situation and is able to lure him out of his shell, so they can go off and be rich and good looking together?
I give action movies a break. I don't think anyone expects those to be real because they're basically cartoons with machine guns.
Or what about the generic inspirational movie, where a lawyer or mercenary suddenly grows a heart and decides to help a village full of starving blind orphan amputees, and finds "meaning" (noble bankruptcy) as a result?
If you think the physics and CS in movies are unreal, compare movies to real life as a whole. They're not even trying anymore.
I don't want to be the tin-foil hat guy, but... doesn't it seem convenient or maybe just more palatable, that the cyberwarfare villain in the movie is a rich psychopath rather than a powerful state. Makes you go hmm.
Bull ! The tech and gadgets in Bond films were distractions, not movie enhancers. They were generally so unbelievable as to break my willing suspension of disbelief. Trying to make it look like it takes a radio astronomy sized "satellite dish" and a ruby the size of an egg to command a satellite to deploy its weapon? I can push a button on a Spot GPS Messenger which will transmit a signal to a satellite, causing guys in helicopters to come rescue me from a mountain side, and that only takes a tiny plastic toy with three AAA batteries!
Going farther back, Roger Moore used a magnetic wrist watch to drag a boat across an alligator-filled pond. Now there's a technology that would realistically take a magnet the size of the aforementioned radiotelescope to accomplish!
There's gadgets, and there's just plain stupid. Most of the pre-Craig Bond movies never cared if they crossed that line.
Strangely enough, Mission: Impossible did a much better job of showing us believable technology. Go back and watch a few of those old shows, and a lot of the stuff they were doing may have been impossible in the 60's but is everyday tech today.
John