SPECTRE

Sigh...

For the record, I’d like to state that Daniel Craig is by far my favourite Bond. I love the way he can bring the physicality and shifting temperament of Bond to light, and the way that he plays Bond as a barely restrained psycho. Of course, I also think Timothy Dalton is the 2nd best Bond out there so what do I know? Anyway, I love Daniel Craig, so when I say I’m having serious trouble deciding if SPECTRE, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or You Only Live Twice is the worst Bond movie I’ve seen, I want you to appreciate just where I’m coming from here.

Let’s get the best part of the movie out of the way right now. Appropriately, it’s the opening sequence of the movie. We kick off with Bond in Mexico during the Day of the Dead. He’s hunting terrorists planning to blow up a stadium, and in the course of events levels a building bringing them down. He also catches their leader, a man named Sciarra, by jumping into Sciarra’s escape helicopter with him and throwing him out in mid-air. Bond also does the same to the pilot then flies off into the opening credits. The whole sequence is tightly paced, beautifully shot and encapsulates why Bond is such a dangerous man in maybe 5 minutes of screen time. How the hell do you plan for a man crazy enough to get into a helicopter and throw the pilot out mid-flight? You can’t plan for that shit, you just have to throw enough lead his way and hope some of it blasts through vodka fuelled organs.

Sadly, this is about as good as the film gets. In fairness, I’d like to make it clear from the outset that my hatred of this film is almost all levelled at the writing. The actors are doing their best with what they’ve got, and what they’ve got isn’t much at best, actively insulting at worst. Actors tend to cop most of the flak for bad movies, and in a lot of cases rightly so. But as I pointed out in my Troy review, sometimes actors can turn on decent or even great performance and still be completely let down by an unsalvageable script.

So, once we get back out of the tentacularly odd opening credits out of the way, we find ourselves back in England where Bond is being chewed out by Ralph Fiennes’ M for pulling an unsanctioned op in Mexico. Sure, Bond blew up a building and killed several people without orders, but it’s such an overused Bond move at this point that him being placed on administrative leave instead of being beheaded in the Tower isn’t really that objectionable anymore. Which could say something about what Bond conditions us to expect of him but anyway. We also meet C, played by Andrew Scott. He’s the head of a new intelligence committee focused largely on remote surveillance, data collection, drone tactics etc...All the 21st century SIGINT stuff you line up when you want to call HUMINT outdated. Which he does. Also, he wants the 00 program shutdown because it's apparently outdated, despite Bond pulling off feats that drone strikes were never going to manage. He’s also working on a coalition called the 9 EYES (loosely based off the actual 5 EYES network), setting up a joint data centre for them all to have a single point of analysis and storage. Also, because he’s Moriarty, he’s typecast as evil so let’s get that out of the way now. Besides, after 23 films we should all know by now anyone in opposition to Bond who isn’t M is a bad guy.

We eventually find out the Bond went after Sciarra because the previous M left him a video message. If she died, Bond was to kill Sciarra then turn up at his funeral. No explanation why, but I will admit I like the idea of Bond being loyal enough to M to carry out an unofficial op on her orders. Actually decent payoff for the entirety of the Craig run to date. Bond nicks a shiny new car off Q (seriously, Bond is the most disloyal loyal agent ever seen) and heads to Rome. There he hits on Sciarra’s wife at his funeral (classy) then saves her from assassination by goons that night (ok, actually classy). He also seduces her into telling him just what their deal was, and where he can find them. Wifey is played by Monica Belluci by the way, and reducing her to the initial plot point Bond girl of the film is, sadly, not the worst thing that’s going to happen this film. Not by a long shot.

Anyhoo, Bond heads off to a meeting held in an almost catacomb of a meeting hall. Looks awesome, although I wonder what one has to do to reserve a place like that. He gets in using Sciarra’s ring as proof of membership, and gets a balcony seat to a typically shadowy “we who rule the world do evil shit” meeting where no one can actually see the guy at the head of the table. The only relevant part of the discussion is that they need a volunteer to go whack a former member who’s gone to ground in Austria. Mr Hinx (David Bautista) proves his credentials by savagely murdering the first guy to put his hand up. That’s one way to do a job interview I guess, although probably not recommended for us normal folk. Shadowy man is revealed to be Christoph Waltz (yay!), who promptly reveals he knew Bond was there the whole time.

This kicks off the most boring chase scene I’ve seen in years. Hinx chases Bond across Rome, Bond ditches his car in a river, that’s it. It’s so boring that at one point Bond is pretty much happily chatting away on the phone with Moneypeny without a care in the world. Coming right on the heels of Belluci’s rapid exit from the film, you can mark this as the point where things start to truly head downhill. Pay attention to the chat though – Bond is asking about a man named Franz Oberhauser, who supposedly died when Bond was a teenager. No prizes for guessing who this might be.

Bond escapes from our own boredom and heads to Austria, where he finds Mr White. Remember him? The guy who basically turned Casino Royale into a hint of something greater single-handedly, and proved himself to be the only smart Quantum member at the Opera in Quantum of Solace? Yeah, turns out he’s left the group. And gotten radiation poisoning for his trouble. He is sadly just here to hand Bond his next plot point and die, thus removing all non-Bond connections to previous films. Seems he had a daughter who he entrusted cryptic clues to SPECTRE on. Don’t know why he couldn’t have gone with a lawyer and a dead-letter box under false names, but then we wouldn’t have a film would we?

Skipping to the next stage on our world tour, we’re off to a clinic in the Austria Alps that looks disturbingly like the one from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He also meets Madeline Swann (played by Lea Seydoux) – Mr White’s daughter obviously, but the designated actual Bond girl for the film. She’s not happy when Bond introduces himself as a killer who was the last person to see her father alive (strangely), but gets even less happy when Hinx turns up to kidnap her. Q is also there to help out for some reason – sure, he might have been there officially to bring Bond back, but he doesn’t exactly try very hard. Can’t really blame him though. Bond rescues Madeline by crashing a wingless plane down a mountain into the convoy carrying her (see what I mean about not being able to predict what Bond will do?) and then Q settles in to really turn this film stupid.

So, Q gets to give one more bit of exposition. The ring Bond nicked off Sciarra? It apparently links every single main villain the series has had to Oberhauser. This was such poorly explained bullshit that the Director, Sam Mendes, actually had to address it in interview. Enjoy the stupid:

Q's analysis (if you freeze frame it) is supposed to indicate the ring is made of iridium, which is an extremely rare element known for having high density and resistance to corrosion. Toxicology from the shown members was to indicate traces of this element discovered in autopsy, which is how Q links it together.

So, toxicology from this ring apparently links Le Chiffre, Dominic Green, Raoul Silva, Sciarra and Oberhauser together. I’ll start with the really obvious one first. Theatre screens don’t have freeze frames, dickhead. If I have to wait for the dvd release then start freeze framing to figure out what the fuck is going on in an analysis scene that is central to the plot, you’ve fucked up.

Secondly, if toxicology from all of the dead villains links them to a teenager long thought dead you’d think everyone involved would have also been wearing the rings right? Well, it’s screenshot time.

No rings here at all. This is from the first act of Casino Royale.

No rings here either. This is from Le Chiffre’s last night alive.

Both of these are taken from the Opera Scene in Quantum of Solace (albeit from promo screenshots), trying to get his left and right hand visible.

This is from the middle of Skyfall, before Silva was captured.

Have you picked the common theme here? None of them are wearing any fucking rings, let alone the octopus ring! And I'm still not sure how that would tie them to someone thought dead for 20 years! If you’re going to try and have a plot point tie all your films together, maybe make sure it actually ties the films together instead of being fucking stupid? This is the real nosedive for the film, as the writers start actively insulting our intelligence and no, it’s not going to get better from here.

Moving on, Bond and Swann head to Tangier to locate the next plot point – Mr White’s homebrew SIGINT station where he was collecting data on SPECTRE operations. He’d also found a station in the desert that SPECTRE were building. Swann and Bond have a bit of drunk bonding during this, then head off for a train ride for some more dinner bonding. Perfunctory romance sub plot gets interrupted by Mr Hinx, who engages Bond in the only decent combat scene we’ll see in this film outside of Mexico. Hinx eventually gets dispatched, as our pair of lovebirds head to the mysterious station and capture by Oberhauser. He’s been building this station in the desert to be an unknown focal point for all the 9 EYES data collection. And yes, of course he’s working with C. In fairness, it’s a good idea – having access to the collective intelligence of 9 nations (seems to be commonwealth nations mostly) is a great coup if you can pull it off. Problem is, the West has gotten pretty good at finding even camouflaged training camps in the mountains. Not sure how they expect a massive satellite array/building complex out in the absolute open with no camo at all to go unnoticed.

Still not the dumbest thing we’ve seen though (bloody rings…), or even the dumbest element of this part of the movie. Oberhauser reveals himself to be Bond’s childhood friend, whose father adopted Bond after Bond’s parents were killed. Oberhauser Snr and Jr were thought to have perished in an avalanche when Bond was still a teenager, just to add to his misery bingo card. Turns out Oberhauser Jr set that up to kill his father for adopting Bond, and has spent the rest of his life building SPECTRE. Also, he claims credit for having been fucking with Bond ever since Casino Royale.

So, the rings don’t actually connect jack to shit, and now Oberhauser is claiming to have been behind the last 3 movies combined. For no reason other than his father adopted some other kid. Also, he reveals he dropped the Oberhauser name and renamed himself Ernst Stavro Blofeld. At this point I’d like to point out that the filmmakers spent the leadup to release saying the Waltz was playing someone new, not Blofeld. I realise I should expect nothing but lies out of marketing, but it’s still insulting. Of course, Oberhauser has never been mentioned in any of the previous films but the film plays it like it’s a big moment for Bond. To get those big moments you kind of have to set them up first but hey, what do I know?

Anyway, Bond escapes and trashes the place. It’s not the climactic action scene though, even though Blofeld gets a bit blown up. Climax is reserved for a mess of a showdown in London where M, Bond and the team go rogue to stop C. Bond and Swann get kidnapped (Bond escapes, Swann gets stuck in a death trap), M throws C off a building, a now scarred up Blofeld tries to escape Bond but his helicopter gets shot down. By Bond, with a pistol from at least 100m. Again, can’t predict this fucker can you? Film ends with Bond walking away from M to be with Swann, and nicking yet another car out of Q’s garage.

So yeah, on the surface it’s just another dumb Bond film. Problem is that once you start thinking about it it’s one of the dumbest films in the series. The SPECTRE/Oberhauser stuff is extremely forced and clunky. The plot hooks to link them all together come out of nowhere and don’t actually work if you’ve been paying attention to the previous films. It’s not just bad, it feels actively insulting. Once you realise none of the other villains were seen wearing rings, the whole hook is a complete arse-pull.

Waltz getting stuck with totally-not-Blofeld is a pretty bum deal for him. Man’s an excellent actor, but blockbuster style movies just waste his talent completely on stupid, inane shit. Makes me worried for his role in Tarzan. Just kidding, live action Tarzan should just be a worry in general. Still, I think the man needs another Tarantino film to cleanse some of the shit he’s been involved in the last few years.

Both of the Bond Girls are also wasted in this film, just in different ways. Belluci is just criminally disposed of – she doesn’t die or anything, the film just leaves her and never comes back. After one scene. Seriously, you get Monica Belluci alongside Daniel Craig and then give them pretty much nothing to do together? Wasted fucking opportunity right there. Seydoux is wasted on a generic “main bond girl” plot that the writers genuinely want us to think is worth Bond leaving MI6 for. Another callback to the garbage that was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (and this movie takes a baffling amount of influence from that movie), but made even worse now that we’ve had Casino Royale already. We’ve already seen a woman that could seriously make Bond consider retiring, at a time when he was actually emotionally receptive to the idea. Seydoux isn’t a bad actor, but she hasn’t got half the chemistry Eva Green had with Craig. Which isn’t a slam on Seydoux, because Green could project chemistry with a brick if she wanted to. But following that act just doesn’t work, and feels lazy. Like a lot of the writing in this film really. Of course, if the writers keep just lazily copying bits of On Her Majesty;s Secret Service, she's due for a faster fridging than Kyle Raynor's lovers, which doesn't give me a lot of hope for Bond 25.

Overall, easily one of the bottom 3 Bond films of all time in my opinion. I feel like the work the cast put in to the shit they were given kind of elevates it above bottom spot, but not by much. A shit, lazy film full of bullshit attempts to create “shocking twist!” plot. Hopefully this entire writing team get disappeared by MI6 before Bond 25.