Skyfall, which marks the 50th anniversary of the James Bond films, is packed with references to 007’s storied past with nods to both the earlier movies and the original Ian Fleming novels. Here are a few of the movie’s most notable homages, with some additional intelligence on the saga’s literary roots. (Warning: major spoilers ahead).

The New MI6

Following an explosion at MI6, M (Judi Dench) and her staff evacuate to new underground offices, packed with state-of-the-art computers and high-tech displays. In 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, M was also sent packing after close friend Sir Robert King (David Calder) unwittingly opens a booby-trapped suitcase at headquarters. M may have gotten the idea to relocate underground from 1967’s You Only Live Twice, during which Japanese intelligence chief Tiger Tanaka (Tetsurô Tanba) sets up shop in a vacant subway station.

Additional Intelligence: While no similar attack on MI6 occurred in the novel series, a Soviet-brainwashed Bond did attempt to kill M in his office in 1954’s The Man with the Golden Gun. 007’s attempt to assassinate M is stymied when M deploys a “great sheet of armor-plate glass,” shielding him from Bond’s poison-filled gun.

Bond’s Gadgets

Q (Ben Whishaw) equips Bond with two items this time around. “Not exactly Christmas,” responds Bond. The new Walther PPK/S 9mm, encoded to Bond’s palm print so only he can fire it, is “less of a random killing machine and more of a personal statement.” It’s a far cry from the original Walther Sean Connery receives in 1962’s Dr. No, much closer to the “signature gun” Bond obtains in 1989’s Licence to Kill. As in Skyfall, the personalized sidearm proves vital in saving his life at the hands of unfriendly agents. Q also gives Bond an emergency radio transmitter, an homage to the “homer” device that allows Bond to track Goldfinger in the eponymous 1963 film.

Additional Intelligence: In the first few Ian Fleming novels, Bond was armed with a .25 Beretta pistol. After weapons expert Geoffrey Boothroyd penned a letter to Fleming in May 1956 complaining of 007’s “rather deplorable taste in firearms,” Fleming changed it to the Walther.

Q

Ben Whishaw’s Q is a young, smart, tech-savvy cyber strategist. In a word, he’s a nerd and a marked departure from Desmond Llewelyn’s cantankerous gadget master. “Were you expecting an exploding pen?” Q teases Bond. “We don’t really go in for that sort of thing anymore.” The comment reflects the producers’ back-to-basics approach in the Craig films, stripping the secret agent of the outlandish gadgets of films past. But some things never change. As Q sends Bond into the field, he utters his classic plea for 007 to return his equipment “in one piece.”

Additional Intelligence: The exploding ballpoint pen appears in 1995’s Goldeneye. Three clicks of its top will detonate the powerful grenade within. In one of the movie’s more tense scenes, Bond barely escapes death when villainous computer genius Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming) absent-mindedly clicks away.

The Aston-Martin DB5

Bond’s iconic DB5, license plate BMT 216A, makes a triumphant return in Skyfall, nearly five decades after its debut in Goldfinger. The silver roadster retains its full suite of weaponry—headlamp machine guns, bulletproof chassis, and an ejector seat. The control mechanisms remain the same too, with a switch-filled armrest and the infamous red button in the gearshift. With M a reluctant passenger, Bond toys with pushing it as he asks her, “Are you going to complain the whole way?”

Additional Intelligence: In Fleming’s Goldfinger novel, the Aston-Martin lacks the more memorable features of its film counterpart. The “certain extras” of the book’s DB Mark III include “switches to alter the type and color of Bond’s front and rear lights if he was following or being followed at night, reinforced steel bumpers, fore and aft… and plenty of concealed space that would fox most Customs men.”

Resurrection: Bond’s Death and Rebirth

Skyfall is a film of beginnings and endings. It shows us Bond’s death in the form of an obituary penned by M, a nod to 007’s apparent demise in You Only Live Twice. Shortly before the explosive finale, we see where Bond spent his childhood and learn how he emerged from the crucible of his parents’ death to become the secret agent we know today.

Additional Intelligence: Skyfall reveals the names of Bond’s parents, which appear on their tombstone and in the inscription “AB” on Kincade’s (Albert Finney) hunting rifle. The names originally appeared in the novel You Only Live Twice, where M was tasked with writing a similar obituary for Bond after a disastrous mission to Japan. (Incidentally, we also learn that Bond began his academic career at Eton, but was quickly asked to leave after “some alleged trouble with one of the boys’ maids.”).

The Bond Girl

Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe) lives an opulent life in China, but is desperately seeking a way to escape the clutches of villain Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). The notion of the unhappy “kept woman” is a common one in the Bond series, exemplified by Domino (Claudine Auger) in 1965’s Thunderball and Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto) in Licence to Kill, both of whom, like Sévérine, spend a good portion of their screen time onboard their villainous boyfriend’s yacht.

Additional Intelligence: Ursula Andress, the actress who portrayed the original Bond girl, Honey Ryder, makes a cameo in the literary On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Undercover at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps, Bond’s attention is drawn to “that beautiful girl with the long fair hair… Ursula Andress, the film star.” Her “beautiful tan” was no doubt acquired in Jamaica, where Dr. No was produced a year before.

Scotland

The movie’s last act takes place in Scotland, which literally brings us back to Bond’s roots and reminds us of the first actor to portray 007 on the silver screen, Scotsman Sean Connery. Bond chooses to bring M there, a place “back in time… somewhere where we’ll have the advantage.” In the end, Scotland proves a formidable refuge against a siege from former MI6 agent Raoul Silva. Sadly, M is a casualty of the assault, and a sober Bond returns to headquarters to find Moneypenny in from the field and back in her traditional role. Her outer office, with its iconic hat rack, outside M’s sound proof door, brings us full circle to the first meeting between 007 and M (Bernard Lee) in Dr. No. Dame Judi Dench’s reign, which began 17 years ago in Goldeneye has drawn to a close witha more traditional M (Ralph Fiennes) left to carry on the grand tradition of the Secret Service.

Additional Intelligence: Fleming originally intended Bond to be British (though the secret agent muses in Moonraker that “there was something alien and un-English about himself”). After Sean Connery was cast as Bond, Fleming established Bond’s heritage as half-Scottish.

This month, Facebook opened a Hong Kong sales office in China’s special administrative region (SAR), its second in Asia. This follows the opening of a Singapore office last summer. It already has over 3 million users in Hong Kong.

Facebook made the low key announcement during Hong Kong Social Media Week to a small group of local journalists: “We are excited about being a big part of the Asian market, in general.”

When asked specifically about the company’s China strategy, Blake Chandlee, Vice President and Commercial Director, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Emerging Markets said “there are a lot of reason I do and don’t want to talk about China.”

The Chinese government currently blocks Facebook, along with Twitter and YouTube, making it inaccessible to over 420 million internet users. That’s only a fraction of China’s 1.3 billion population and statistics show explosive growth online over the next few years as more Chinese get on the net.

Experts say after Google’s very public departure in 2010 and the subsequent political fallout it caused, Facebook has been staying away from both Hong Kong and Mainland China, so as not to offend Beijing.

According to Charles Mok, Chairman of Internet Society Hong Kong, “the main reason why Facebook [is here] is for business reasons and be where the advertising revenues are, but it is choosing to do it in a low-profiled way to minimize any political overtones or unnecessary speculations.”

This could explain why Chandlee called co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to Beijing last year a “vacation” with his girlfriend Priscilla Chan, explaining “Mark is learning Mandarin.”

During that trip, Zuckerberg is widely reported to have met with the head of Baidu, China’s top search engine, as well as, Sina CEO Charles Chao, Billionaire Jack Ma and China Mobile’s Wang Jianzhou.

Zuckerberg appears to be well aware of the network of social media players vying for users on the mainland. These include: Sina’s Weibo, a Twitter-like micro-blog; RenRen, a Facebook equivalent with 170 million users; and Youku/Tudou, video sharing sites modeled after YouTube. As his meetings show, the young American CEO clearly wants to learn from them how to navigate this difficult market.

While Zuckerberg works to climb over the Great Firewall, Facebook’s Chandlee and others are focused on the rest of the region. “We are north of 500 million users and we are growing… and a lot of that is in Asia.”

Figures show Asians are flocking to Facebook and it is quickly becoming the region’s leading social network. After the US, Facebook’s largest market is Indonesia, which has tripled its users over the past year to an estimated 29.4 million people. India and the Philippines are also showing explosive growth.

So what’s next?

When asked about the future, Chandlee said simply “mobile is the future of our business, especially in Latin America and Asia.

Zuckerberg recorded this nerdy infomercial about mobile phones for Taiwan’s HTC so he could tell you himself.

See original article here