Because the last one, though brilliant and witty and full of incisive critique, was lost by WordPress, and because I couldn’t duplicate the jaunty late-night feel of it, I offer only this:

How is it that we started out with a powerful, strategic leader (M) and a capable, daring field agent (Eve) and we ended up with a dead mother/grandmother and a secretary?  I’m all for fourth wave feminism and the power of the administrative pen, but this is the MOVIES.  M dies of a wound to the HIP?  At least she was shot, I suppose, instead of falling and breaking it.  And we did get to see a cinematic first: grandma making dirty bombs from household objects.  But the movie did such great and unprecedented things with sexuality (clearly, the director spent some time working out how best to use Daniel Craig’s thighs — and we’re glad he did).  You’d expect something more novel than M’s “at least I raised one good son” sentiment and Eve’s transformation from ass-kicker to note-taker.

Maybe this was the audience-development Bond, wherein new structures and conventions are pioneered even as old ones (like sleeping with the battered woman he purports to try and rescue) are maintained.  Maybe the next one will rock the planet.

One last note: what was up with the macro-lessons about technology?  Q lays a bread-crumb trail that either fails (since Silva shows up at Skyfall) or leads him there without the requisite corollary ambush.  Since Silva clearly uses technology (and psychology, that useful tool of field agents everywhere) to find Bond, I’m not sure the much-touted argument over Techwork v. Fieldwork really goes anywhere.  Your thoughts?