Skyfall

After watching a movie with your children or students, we encourage parents and teachers to look for education opportunities to teach with movies. Here are a few discussion topics that can help with lesson plans or teaching in the home.

M seems to have no compassion for a wounded agent in the opening scenes of the movie. What kinds of life and death decisions do commanders have to make in these types of situations? Should he have been left to die in exchange for Bond staying on the trail of the thief? What other lives were in danger because of the compromised information? What other human collateral damage is depicted in this movie?

The bad guy in the script seems to have no regard for human life. What would motivate you to work for a man like this? Do you think his thugs have a choice in their employment?

Why does M believe orphans make the best recruits for secret agents?

CNN commentator Wolf Blitzer appears as a newscaster in this movie. Does it discredit journalists’ credibility when they play a celebrity in a movie? Are TV personalities, including reporters, becoming more of celebrities than hardcore newsmen or women?

Bond is forced at times to face the inevitability of his age. What is the alternative? How does this script play on the old vs. new theme? What do both sides of the age gap learn from the other? Although our society seems obsessed with youth, what do older people have to offer? What role does life experience and wisdom play in this script?