SKYFALL
© 2012 – Danjaq, LLC, United Artists Corporation, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved.

Looks like we’re going to need a DeLorean and 1.21 gigawatts of power for this post to correct the mistake written earlier by Michael! As it turns out, Skyfall IS an energy movie — sort of. (link to Michael’s original Skyfall blog post here)

Without giving away too many spoilers, halfway through the film Daniel Craig’s James Bond is captured by cyber-terrorist, Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Bond is taken to a small, recently abandoned island (based on real life Hashima Island off the coast of Japan) and held captive in a room filled with a seemingly endless array of servers and computers. Silva coyly briefs Bond on his master plan to create chaos around the world, all from the comfort of this cozy remote island, which the world now assumes has become a nuclear wasteland thanks to a few keystrokes by Silva. Here’s where the plot requires the imagination to stretch. While we want to believe that a mastermind like Silva is capable of anything, it would be pretty difficult to operate that much hardware without being detectable. The power required to operate the vast collection of servers and “economy-crushing” computers is huge (a single rack of servers needs something like 15-25 kW, which is equivalent to a whole block of houses), not to mention the cooling system that would also be needed to keep it from overheating. But perhaps the biggest MacGuffin of them all — a massive amount of energy like this would easily produce a thermal signature detectable via satellites or other reconnaissance tools.

Maybe Silva needs invisibility training?

Skyfall lands on VOD today February 5th and on DVD February 12th.