I think it's much better; his emotional crisis in QoS felt more believable and justified, whereas in Skyfall it felt more like it was playing to the audience by trying to show a 'realistic' Bond.
What emotional crisis? The Vesper story is touched on at the very end of the film, but apart from that I don't get any hint of it.
It starts at the beginning of the film with a car chase with Mr White...
But when is Bond showing his emotional crisis other than at the end of the film? The whole Mr. White thing just seems more professional and not personal at this point.
But when is Bond showing his emotional crisis other than at the end of the film? The whole Mr. White thing just seems more professional and not personal at this point.
When he steals Vesper's picture... when he drinks himself silly on the plane...his whole tone is dour throughout, it's only in saving Camille that he finds solace himself... they heal each other.
Up until Craig, the Bond films had a formula. The joy of each new film was watching the formula being applied to different plots, villains and themes. With Craig, the formula has been seriously tampered with. If Eon want to come up with a new concept of what a spy is, they should start a new franchise rather than mutating Bond until he is longer recognizable. The formula was working - why reinvent the wheel. I mean for Gods sake - a Bond film without gadgets? Leave the formula alone and just come up with some great new grandiose plots and villains. They don't have to be as over the top as Gustav Graves, Drax, Stromberg or Zorin but give us villains who are really entertaining with bat sh*t crazy plans to take over the world. That's the formula. It works. It generates great popcorn flicks. Leave it alone.
Well..it worked until DAD. The Bond films, like all films, have to keep up with the times if they are to stay relevant and continue to be profitable as well as maintain some artistic integrity. They are not like someone's favorite beverage or candy. These products maintain they're popularity precisely because they don't change from their inception. Remember the marketing fiasco of New Coke? Everyone screamed "leave my soda alone!" and they realized they screwed up.
The old EON formula (or what I call the EON Bond Commandments) for making the films worked for a very long time. There were hits and misses, but mostly they did well enough to keep the money flowing in. However, being the longest running film series in history and with the world changing so much politically and culturally, there comes a point when it was going to prove itself irrelevant and even archaic - and that was after 9/11. That event threw an historic monkey wrench into the global culture and it effected everything - including the arts. Though prior to that the Bond series was satisfying for most audiences because they just went to see one as an escapist adventure, it's roots in the novels revealed it's dark side after 9/11. Had they continued to make them as they were, the series would have become a parody unto itself (which it almost became in a few of it's entries) and though some may have still enjoyed them, they would have become the minority.
EON decided that after DAD and 9/11 and that adventure movies were taking on more realistic, darker shades (Batman, the Bourne films, etc), they realized they had the chance to return to the dark roots of the novels (and getting the right to do CR was a fateful nod to do it) and start the series over. As far as thinking they were reinventing the wheel. They weren't trying to. What they did was really dress up an old building. They didn't even have to tear it down - they just took down a few walls and redecorated so that a new generation of buyers would line up to see it. They did and they sold it for many times over it originally sold for.
Though I can appreciate your yearning for the old series and the nostalgia it offered, continuing to make the films this way and only changing actors would not have continued to be commercially or artistically successful. Fans who are of that mind can take solace in the fact that they have so many Bond films that were done in the original formula that they can enjoy watching forever. There are very few film series that can make that same boast.
Though I realize you disparage at the passing of the old series and have a distaste for the "New Coke", you are unfortunately in the minority and the mountain of box office profits and positive critical reviews of Craig's turn at the wheel (save for the slight foot slip of QOS) are practical proof of that.
Wonderfully put. Agree with that 100%
I liked Casino Royale but the last 2 films have been neither entertaining nor sound plot-wise. I live in hope that Spectre will be better.
When others have fallen by the wayside I believe the storyline will hold up.
Storyline?!?! SF's plot twists are as absurdly stupid as the most absurd Moore era Bond films. Every time I watch SF, the movie gets worse in my eyes because once you get past the cinematography and Bardem's portrayal of Silva you start to realize that nothing in this movie makes any sense.
Totally agree - a colossal waste of time and money - theirs and mine.
Yeah an underwater car is so much more plausible than an invisible car, every man and his dog now has an underwater car 40 years on.
*Yes I'm aware someone did such a thing, except they wore scuba diving gear in a convertible Lotus.
And I don't get what's wrong with the clown outfit, except maybe the makeup is too perfect. It's a good cover to get into the circus
Its not how over the top the gadgets are, its how they fit in with the the theme and action. The underwater car scene in TSWLM is one of the most exquisite scenes in the whole of Bond - both as action and romance.
The invisible car in DAD makes for a good twist but overall it was under-utlised. it certainly isn't deployed as effectively as the underwater car.
Bond is at least 1 part fantasy because it is romance as well as action - or was until the romance got killed by the Craig reboot. While Vesper and Bond's relationship in Casino Royale is good, it has nothing of the glamour and sexiness of Bond's many earlier encounters.
That is what I really miss from rebooted Bond - the romance factor. Im talking about romance in the classic literary sense - Bond as a modern Arthurian knight on a quest, but with Q as his Merlin giving him the right magic weapons to defeat his enemies. Thats where the magic of Bond was.
Having said that the formula became over-used with Octopussy - that's when Bond began to parody itself too much.
There are plotholes a mile wide and impossible feats aplenty in most of the Bond films, even the classics. SKYFALL hasn't really got that many, and many points people are confused about will rise again in SPECTRE.
What are the plotholes in the first three Bond films?
I love Goldfinger and it's one of my favorite movies and my No. 3 Bond film. But it's full of plot holes.
The whole scene with Mr. Solo is full of plot holes, starting with a high level Mafia hoodlum traveling without bodyguards. Why not take the gold out before crushing the car? Why not transfer the body to another cheaper car instead of destroying a brand new Lincoln? And, most of all, the Lincoln weighed 5000 pounds, not counting the gold but the Ford Ranchero pickup the crushed car was dropped into had a maximum load capacity of 1,000 pounds. I wince everytime I see that scene, thinking the axles would get crushed.
But it is a really cool scene in a really cool movie.
None of what you describe fits the definition of a plothole. A plothole is a major missing element that causes the plot to not make sense. A gangster can travel without an army of bodyguards if he chooses. A multi-millionaire like Goldfinger, who stands to increase his wealth from his evil scheme, can choose to let a $3,500 car be crushed. There's no reason to believe the Ford Rachero is a factory model -- certainly, a man who smuggles gold in the form of his Rolls Royce, has a butler whose hat is a lethal weapon, own an industrial laser beam capable of neutering a captured secret agent, or can make clandestine deals with the Chinese for a commando operation at Fort Knox can trick out a Ranchero to his specifications.
A plot hole is more like when Batman must fight the Joker's thugs on top of Gotham Cathedral but there's no plausible explanation for how those thugs got there.
If we're going to nitpick choices -- a word which suggests there is more than one -- then Goldeneye would be a better model. Two even harder to reconcile of many ham-fisted ideas in that film are Bond diving from atop a dam into what appears to be an underground weapons facility only to later emerge from said facility now on a mountaintop with an airfield overlooking a deep valley and his infallible ability to figure out Alex's secret train depot while driving around Russia in a stolen tank and then somehow figures out where he is head and also gets ahead of the train in said tank to intercept it speeding toward a tunnel.
A plot hole is more like when Batman must fight the Joker's thugs on top of Gotham Cathedral but there's no plausible explanation for how those thugs got there.
When others have fallen by the wayside I believe the storyline will hold up.
Storyline?!?! SF's plot twists are as absurdly stupid as the most absurd Moore era Bond films. Every time I watch SF, the movie gets worse in my eyes because once you get past the cinematography and Bardem's portrayal of Silva you start to realize that nothing in this movie makes any sense.
Totally agree - a colossal waste of time and money - theirs and mine.
Skyfall is perhaps one of the least plotted of any of the Bond films, working mostly because you've seen it before in The Dark Knight and Straw Dogs. It's more a series of implausibilities and two or three major set pieces. As with hit films like Dead Poets Society and Forrest Gump, it mostly succeeds because of its sentimentality, but when you examine it closely, it's rickety construction is obvious.
The ending is rather strange. Bond's plan succeeds in flushing M out but fails in keeping her alive. Why did he even need to take her to Skyfall in the first place? If the goal was to get Silva -- and Silva hadn't already just killed M outright at her flat, as apparently Bond can just walk in any time he wants -- then why not just lead Silva to believe he has M and take him on by himself?
But that's just one of the qualities of Skyfall's script that seems dumb. Silva can hack into any computer system he wants, but he can't hack a laptop to get the list of agents? M is being hunted down by who knows who, but the review board she faces is so poorly guarded? Silva is such a genius he not only knows well in advance what the British Secret Service will do and when, but he also has the forethought to plant charges in a disused portion of the tube at precisely the location to send -- at precisely the right time -- a subway train careening at Bond? Bond has a tracker inserted into his arm in Casino Royale, but a few years later, they have no idea where his body is? And on and on.
These aren't plotholes. They're just dumb writing.
A plot hole is more like when Batman must fight the Joker's thugs on top of Gotham Cathedral but there's no plausible explanation for how those thugs got there.
Don't dare dis the Batman masterpiece !
That scene didn't make sense when I saw it 25 years ago, and it still doesn't make any sense.
Joker had hired hitmen planted in case of trouble with his master plan. 8-)
Of course. The Batplane randomly crashes in front of Gotham Cathedral, the Joker then arbitrarily chooses to go inside with Vicky Vale, the helicopter he calls for is still minutes away when Batman arrives, and a group of thugs is there waiting to fight Batman. Of course the Joker has thugs just wait around in random buildings if the need would ever arise for them to be needed. That makes perfect sense. No way that could be a plot hole because anyone would do the same thing.
Joker had hired hitmen planted in case of trouble with his master plan. 8-)
Of course. The Batplane randomly crashes in front of Gotham Cathedral, the Joker then arbitrarily chooses to go inside with Vicky Vale, the helicopter he calls for is still minutes away when Batman arrives, and a group of thugs is there waiting to fight Batman. Of course the Joker has thugs just wait around in random buildings if the need would ever arise for them to be needed. That makes perfect sense. No way that could be a plot hole because anyone would do the same thing.
Joker had hired hitmen planted in case of trouble with his master plan. 8-)
Of course. The Batplane randomly crashes in front of Gotham Cathedral, the Joker then arbitrarily chooses to go inside with Vicky Vale, the helicopter he calls for is still minutes away when Batman arrives, and a group of thugs is there waiting to fight Batman. Of course the Joker has thugs just wait around in random buildings if the need would ever arise for them to be needed. That makes perfect sense. No way that could be a plot hole because anyone would do the same thing.
I would. )
It's a plot hole and a pretty dopey one. Some plot holes can be explained by editing -- a scene cut out inadvertently by someone not paying attention to the script. In this case, there's no way to reconcile it except to be delusional.
There is no problem with the exaggerated, implausible and even the odd plot hole in Bond.
However, I think it's pretty essential that it is accompanied by Sean's one-line smirk, Rog's knowing eyebrow raising or Pierce's tie straightening.
The number of crashing "inconsistencies" - ie **** appallingly written plot holes - in SF stand out in a film being sold as serious and emotional by Mendes and played as such with po-faced pretentiousness by Craig and The Dench. At least Bardem's camp, over the top work suggests he had actually understood the garbage in the script he was given.
There is no pickup made even today that can carry more than 2,000 pounds in it's bed (a so-called "one ton"), let alone more than 5,000 pounds + the weight of the gold + the weight of Mr. Solo (who was admittedly a little guy).
What happened in Goldfinger was physically impossible just like it was impossible to have thugs suddenly appear on top of Gotham Cathedral.
Wikipedia's definition of a plot hole "A plot hole or plothole is an obvious mistake or missing element in the plot of a fictional work, such as a book, play, film, or TV show. These include such things as illogical or impossible events, and statements or events that contradict earlier events in the storyline."
I would also point out that at $35/ounce (the price of gold in 1964), Mr. Solo's $1 million dollars in gold would've weighed almost a ton, but Oddjob was able to carry that box around like it was nothing. I know the guy was strong, but that's Superman strong.
But when is Bond showing his emotional crisis other than at the end of the film? The whole Mr. White thing just seems more professional and not personal at this point.
When he steals Vesper's picture... when he drinks himself silly on the plane...his whole tone is dour throughout, it's only in saving Camille that he finds solace himself... they heal each other.
Well said!
1. For Your Eyes Only 2. The Living Daylights 3 From Russia with Love 4. Casino Royale 5. OHMSS 6. Skyfall
In SF Bond gets shot & falls 100 feet into a river & lives.
But it's okay because it's Dan.
In TND Bond shoots a machine gun a lot.
But that's not okay because it's Pierce.
Bond politics.... 8-)
Bond getting shot and falling three hundred feet into a river and living is just Bond being Bond. If he got shot and fell ten feet and lived that would not be very interesting.
The important thing is that it's possible to get shot and live and it's possible to fall three hundred feet (or a lot more) and live unlike the Goldeneye PTS where Bond does the impossible and catchs up with a more aerodynamic airplane in mid-air. When that happens we're in the realm of the super-human and that's not James Bond.
Bond exists in a world of unlikely but possible.
It is possible to get shot and live (though in many instances, getting shot usually results in sometimes a very lengthy and sometimes permanent disability - just ask war vets), but it is not possible to survive a 322 foot (98m) drop from the Varna Viaduct into the Çakıt Deresi creek - especially if one is not conscious.
This has been covered in older posts. There have been a few (very few) suicide survivors of Golden Gate bridge jumps, but even that is 100 feet lower than the Varna, and they survived because they were conscious.
Hitting the water as Bond does in the film from that height would have not only broken his spine in many places but would have done lethal damage to most of his major organs including his brain.
The only person to survive a record high dive without injury was Dana Kunze in 1983 at 172 ft.
All other divers who exceeded him sustained injury. Laso Schaller dove 192 ft (the highest) but pulled his right leg out, slightly dislocating his right hip.
Bond's fall in the film for me was one of the weak points in the film. He had already been shot and was unconscious. Had he merely fallen ten or fifteen feet it would not have bothered me. I just dislike it when action films use cartoon physics for exaggeration to entertain. It's fine in comedies, but it irks me in these.
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,485MI6 Agent
Storyline?!?! SF's plot twists are as absurdly stupid as the most absurd Moore era Bond films. Every time I watch SF, the movie gets worse in my eyes because once you get past the cinematography and Bardem's portrayal of Silva you start to realize that nothing in this movie makes any sense.
Totally agree - a colossal waste of time and money - theirs and mine.
Skyfall is perhaps one of the least plotted of any of the Bond films, working mostly because you've seen it before in The Dark Knight and Straw Dogs. It's more a series of implausibilities and two or three major set pieces. As with hit films like Dead Poets Society and Forrest Gump, it mostly succeeds because of its sentimentality, but when you examine it closely, it's rickety construction is obvious.
The ending is rather strange. Bond's plan succeeds in flushing M out but fails in keeping her alive. Why did he even need to take her to Skyfall in the first place? If the goal was to get Silva -- and Silva hadn't already just killed M outright at her flat, as apparently Bond can just walk in any time he wants -- then why not just lead Silva to believe he has M and take him on by himself?
But that's just one of the qualities of Skyfall's script that seems dumb. Silva can hack into any computer system he wants, but he can't hack a laptop to get the list of agents? M is being hunted down by who knows who, but the review board she faces is so poorly guarded? Silva is such a genius he not only knows well in advance what the British Secret Service will do and when, but he also has the forethought to plant charges in a disused portion of the tube at precisely the location to send -- at precisely the right time -- a subway train careening at Bond? Bond has a tracker inserted into his arm in Casino Royale, but a few years later, they have no idea where his body is? And on and on.
These aren't plotholes. They're just dumb writing.
So my question is always.. how is it any plotholes would exist in any film when they go through so many drafts and revisions? Are they really that hard to eliminate? Yes, we can blame the writers, but what about the producers, directors, actors and even the DP's? They all read the script at some point or get involved in the process...and none of them go.."hey, the villain, hero, heroine, etc. can't do that because of a/b/c". I can understand a book writer overlooking some and even their editor, but not with film scripts.
Sometimes, I think the plot hole is intentional. It's done for effect. One genuine plot hole in SF is Silva's disfigurement. The story is that he took a cyanide pill and it didn't kill him but it did disfigure him. But that's nonsense. Cyanide can kill in the proper dose but it doesn't cause bone/tissue damage.
Mendes wanted a WTF moment and he got one.
It's like the girl being painted with gold in Goldfinger and dying of asphyxiation because a small bare patch hadn't been left at the base of her spine. Nonsense, sheer nonsense, but it made for a very memorable scene.
And who says he wasn't injured in the fall? He was shot twice and he seems to have recovered from those by the time we see him again. Maybe he broke a few bones. I think there are about three months there that are unaccounted for where he could have recovered.
There is no pickup made even today that can carry more than 2,000 pounds in it's bed (a so-called "one ton"), let alone more than 5,000 pounds + the weight of the gold + the weight of Mr. Solo (who was admittedly a little guy).
What happened in Goldfinger was physically impossible just like it was impossible to have thugs suddenly appear on top of Gotham Cathedral.
Wikipedia's definition of a plot hole "A plot hole or plothole is an obvious mistake or missing element in the plot of a fictional work, such as a book, play, film, or TV show. These include such things as illogical or impossible events, and statements or events that contradict earlier events in the storyline."
I would also point out that at $35/ounce (the price of gold in 1964), Mr. Solo's $1 million dollars in gold would've weighed almost a ton, but Oddjob was able to carry that box around like it was nothing. I know the guy was strong, but that's Superman strong.
Seriously, Wikipedia?
That nothing is manufactured does not preclude Goldfinger building such a thing. What's particularly baffling about your explanation is that in the same film we see a car outfitted with machineguns, oil slicks, road spikes, and an ejector seat -- none of that is manufactured in a car either, but it is custom built by an organization with the appropriate resources. So, you're willing to believe the fantastic for one car but not the other?
How do you know, too, that all of Solo's gold is actually in the car? How do you know they weren't just ordinary bricks plated with gold?
The fact that no automotive manufacturer, military or civil, produces such a vehicle, doesn't mean it doesn't exist! )
Exactly. In the same movie, Q outfits an Aston Martin in a way that is equally as fantastic, yet somehow that gets a pass? What about Goldfinger's Rolls Royce made at least in part of gold?
The mechanics in my hard-top Z4 adds hundreds of pounds to the vehicle weight alone. Can you imagine what an ejector seat with an explosive would weight?
Comments
But when is Bond showing his emotional crisis other than at the end of the film? The whole Mr. White thing just seems more professional and not personal at this point.
In the Sixties they had those in the back of American comics, as well. I always wondered how they were supposed to work.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
I liked Casino Royale but the last 2 films have been neither entertaining nor sound plot-wise. I live in hope that Spectre will be better.
Totally agree - a colossal waste of time and money - theirs and mine.
Its not how over the top the gadgets are, its how they fit in with the the theme and action. The underwater car scene in TSWLM is one of the most exquisite scenes in the whole of Bond - both as action and romance.
The invisible car in DAD makes for a good twist but overall it was under-utlised. it certainly isn't deployed as effectively as the underwater car.
Bond is at least 1 part fantasy because it is romance as well as action - or was until the romance got killed by the Craig reboot. While Vesper and Bond's relationship in Casino Royale is good, it has nothing of the glamour and sexiness of Bond's many earlier encounters.
That is what I really miss from rebooted Bond - the romance factor. Im talking about romance in the classic literary sense - Bond as a modern Arthurian knight on a quest, but with Q as his Merlin giving him the right magic weapons to defeat his enemies. Thats where the magic of Bond was.
Having said that the formula became over-used with Octopussy - that's when Bond began to parody itself too much.
OP is reasonably straight by comparison. :v
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
A plot hole is more like when Batman must fight the Joker's thugs on top of Gotham Cathedral but there's no plausible explanation for how those thugs got there.
If we're going to nitpick choices -- a word which suggests there is more than one -- then Goldeneye would be a better model. Two even harder to reconcile of many ham-fisted ideas in that film are Bond diving from atop a dam into what appears to be an underground weapons facility only to later emerge from said facility now on a mountaintop with an airfield overlooking a deep valley and his infallible ability to figure out Alex's secret train depot while driving around Russia in a stolen tank and then somehow figures out where he is head and also gets ahead of the train in said tank to intercept it speeding toward a tunnel.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
The ending is rather strange. Bond's plan succeeds in flushing M out but fails in keeping her alive. Why did he even need to take her to Skyfall in the first place? If the goal was to get Silva -- and Silva hadn't already just killed M outright at her flat, as apparently Bond can just walk in any time he wants -- then why not just lead Silva to believe he has M and take him on by himself?
But that's just one of the qualities of Skyfall's script that seems dumb. Silva can hack into any computer system he wants, but he can't hack a laptop to get the list of agents? M is being hunted down by who knows who, but the review board she faces is so poorly guarded? Silva is such a genius he not only knows well in advance what the British Secret Service will do and when, but he also has the forethought to plant charges in a disused portion of the tube at precisely the location to send -- at precisely the right time -- a subway train careening at Bond? Bond has a tracker inserted into his arm in Casino Royale, but a few years later, they have no idea where his body is? And on and on.
These aren't plotholes. They're just dumb writing.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
However, I think it's pretty essential that it is accompanied by Sean's one-line smirk, Rog's knowing eyebrow raising or Pierce's tie straightening.
The number of crashing "inconsistencies" - ie **** appallingly written plot holes - in SF stand out in a film being sold as serious and emotional by Mendes and played as such with po-faced pretentiousness by Craig and The Dench. At least Bardem's camp, over the top work suggests he had actually understood the garbage in the script he was given.
What happened in Goldfinger was physically impossible just like it was impossible to have thugs suddenly appear on top of Gotham Cathedral.
Wikipedia's definition of a plot hole "A plot hole or plothole is an obvious mistake or missing element in the plot of a fictional work, such as a book, play, film, or TV show. These include such things as illogical or impossible events, and statements or events that contradict earlier events in the storyline."
I would also point out that at $35/ounce (the price of gold in 1964), Mr. Solo's $1 million dollars in gold would've weighed almost a ton, but Oddjob was able to carry that box around like it was nothing. I know the guy was strong, but that's Superman strong.
I'm sure oddjob beefed up the suspension. Probably fitted skirt lights and
Spinners. He did like a nice set of wheels.
Well said!
It is possible to get shot and live (though in many instances, getting shot usually results in sometimes a very lengthy and sometimes permanent disability - just ask war vets), but it is not possible to survive a 322 foot (98m) drop from the Varna Viaduct into the Çakıt Deresi creek - especially if one is not conscious.
This has been covered in older posts. There have been a few (very few) suicide survivors of Golden Gate bridge jumps, but even that is 100 feet lower than the Varna, and they survived because they were conscious.
Hitting the water as Bond does in the film from that height would have not only broken his spine in many places but would have done lethal damage to most of his major organs including his brain.
The only person to survive a record high dive without injury was Dana Kunze in 1983 at 172 ft.
All other divers who exceeded him sustained injury. Laso Schaller dove 192 ft (the highest) but pulled his right leg out, slightly dislocating his right hip.
Bond's fall in the film for me was one of the weak points in the film. He had already been shot and was unconscious. Had he merely fallen ten or fifteen feet it would not have bothered me. I just dislike it when action films use cartoon physics for exaggeration to entertain. It's fine in comedies, but it irks me in these.
http://www.oddee.com/item_96967.aspx
Quite frankly, I'm amazed.
So my question is always.. how is it any plotholes would exist in any film when they go through so many drafts and revisions? Are they really that hard to eliminate? Yes, we can blame the writers, but what about the producers, directors, actors and even the DP's? They all read the script at some point or get involved in the process...and none of them go.."hey, the villain, hero, heroine, etc. can't do that because of a/b/c". I can understand a book writer overlooking some and even their editor, but not with film scripts.
Mendes wanted a WTF moment and he got one.
It's like the girl being painted with gold in Goldfinger and dying of asphyxiation because a small bare patch hadn't been left at the base of her spine. Nonsense, sheer nonsense, but it made for a very memorable scene.
And who says he wasn't injured in the fall? He was shot twice and he seems to have recovered from those by the time we see him again. Maybe he broke a few bones. I think there are about three months there that are unaccounted for where he could have recovered.
Mind you I was only standing on the second rung
at the time.
That nothing is manufactured does not preclude Goldfinger building such a thing. What's particularly baffling about your explanation is that in the same film we see a car outfitted with machineguns, oil slicks, road spikes, and an ejector seat -- none of that is manufactured in a car either, but it is custom built by an organization with the appropriate resources. So, you're willing to believe the fantastic for one car but not the other?
How do you know, too, that all of Solo's gold is actually in the car? How do you know they weren't just ordinary bricks plated with gold?
It's not a plot hole.
The mechanics in my hard-top Z4 adds hundreds of pounds to the vehicle weight alone. Can you imagine what an ejector seat with an explosive would weight?