Spectre

David Jimerson

David Jimerson

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Staff member
John Logan is a thieving hack.

The script was terrible, and the brilliant Cristoph Waltz was criminally underused, but it was shot and acted well. A mixed bag, this one, unlike the home run of Skyfall.
 
In agreement, except for Skyfall. I wasn't crazy about that one either, although it was much better than this. I don't know why they keep telling stories where the villains know who Bond is from the get go and the plot is all about setting some elaborate trail of bread crumbs for him to follow and lead him into a trap. Just makes Bond look stupid, and it was especially bad in this. I want to see a spy doing spy stuff, infiltrating an organization unbeknownst to the villains to steal information and foil their plans. It seems in every Craig Bond he's always been several steps behind the bad guys. They've just turned Bond into a simple assassin. Yes, Bond has a licence to kill, but I always took that as he has permission to kill in the line of his duties. His primary duty wasn't to be a hit man. It was to get information on the villains, and stop them if the opportunity arises, with a bullet if necessary. Now he's just a thug.
 
So much in the Craig movies is directly personal to Bond. That's not a good direction.

SPOILERS:

Cribbing from Austin Powers and making Blofeld Bond's "step-brother" was one of the most infuriating things I've ever seen done to a long-standing franchise.
 
Agree. My take was it was tired, lazy and self-dirivitive abject pap. When Bond is referencing films that are a parody of the franchise you know it has jumped the shark by some distance.

I saw Sicario on Wednesday, now that is a proper movie.
 
To me I see it as a return to form for Bond. Throughout the vast majority of the films, they've been fairly ridiculously plotted, with Bond far too easily stumbling his way into some evil mastermind's grand plot and with a few bit of action and womanizing he saves the day. It's only been with the last few films that they've gotten a bit deeper and tried to be something more serious. So, kinda a throwback to a regular Bond flick for me.

I did think several bits of the plot were painfully stupid, even distractingly so. And I had very little interest in watching Ralph Fiennes save the day. Absolutely nothing against him, it just wasn't what I was there for.

One interesting aspect of the style of storytelling I enjoyed was the lack of dialog. It felt like there were huge swaths of the film with no one saying a word. I guess that plays well for an international audience but it also made for an intriguing stylistic concept. Other faults aside I did feel that this worked well.

Mommy issues in Skyfall, brother issues in Spectre. Freudian Bond is fairly pedantic stuff from Mendes.
 
I really enjoyed this actually. I'm a huge fan of all the Bond films and I felt like finally Bond was back. Casino Royale is still my favorite by far as I have a thing for origin stories, poker and parkour, but this takes a close second. After watching Spectre, Skyfall simply feels like it's only purpose was to plants seeds that pay off in Spectre. I thought it had the epic feel of some of the Bond's from the 60's, but still felt grounded. I thought that making Blofeld Bond's brother was a nice touch, it will really up the stakes in future films as Bond takes on Spectre. I'm planning to see it again.
 
I really need to see it again as well.

I think the opening long shot was absolutely amazing. So so good.

There were a lot of really terrible low moments in it though, just tacky stuff.


*minor plot details below*

Like when bond is walking through the old mi6 building and there's just 8x10's of all the past villians and M on the walls. Like what!?

There was some little minor things like that in there that really jumped out at me, but the plot was a mess too.

This movie felt like a wasted opportunity
 
I'll probably not see this in theaters... the Wife is not a Bond fan...

But... if you have read the books, you will understand that the suave character of most of the Bonds till Daniel Craig, are not the Bond of the Books. Bond is always 'one step behind' because the Villians are the ones with an operational plan of Ultimate Evil...

Bond almost always is Bond... and is recognized as such... the times when Bond goes 'undercover'... end up like this...

james-bond-japanese-agent.jpg
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Bond is always 'one step behind' because the Villians are the ones with an operational plan of Ultimate Evil...
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One step is fine, but Craig's like...a whole city block behind...And I'm not a book Bond purist. Just because it's a certain way in the books does not make it better, or more importantly, better for films. I just don't like Craig's Bond. I find him to be an impenetrable actor with a very limited range. He's good in that range, but it gets boring.
 
Well, I haven't seen Spectre yet. Certainly seems to clean up at the box office, at least so far. I don't know if that's because there's simply no competition for a good action flick, or because audiences genuinely like it. Skyfall - not much of a fan, personally; suffers from a problem with many special effects laden action flicks these days - too much random razzle dazzle, instead of focusing on a few impressive concepts, you get lots of little fireworks that you forget about the moment they pass from the screen... lack of imagination on the part of the writers. It simply lacks good writing - really witty dialogue, interesting predicaments, unexpected developments - and all with some internal logic are hard work, and the writers have not been up to snuff. So what they try to do is distract with lots of random "action sequences" which are really very generic, and seemingly designed to run out the clock. Additionally Skyfall to me displayed the classic symptoms of late stage soap opera disease - you have a long running series and have long since given up on coherence and story continuity, and any remaining plausibility, so the exhausted writers resort to truly desperate ploys a la "lost brother", "unknown twin", "ex-wife from another life", "and did you know the father was X and mother is not actually dead!" trying to inject some life into the corpse that's long since been stripped of all meat and picked clean.

I'm one of those hopeless completists who has to collect/hear/see all in a given series, and with Bond, I've seen all of them, so Spectre is certainly something I'm going to see come what may - but I'm not sure I'll see it in the theatre.
 
Batutta said:
They've just turned Bond into a simple assassin. Yes, Bond has a licence to kill, but I always took that as he has permission to kill in the line of his duties. His primary duty wasn't to be a hit man. It was to get information on the villains, and stop them if the opportunity arises, with a bullet if necessary. Now he's just a thug.
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Saw Spectre last night and I was thinking exactly the same thing. When did Bond transition to assassin as his primary duty?
 
norvan5 said:
Saw Spectre last night and I was thinking exactly the same thing. When did Bond transition to assassin as his primary duty?
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From the books/short stories... "For Your Eyes Only" Bond is given an assassination assignment, and is nearly completely 'different' from what the film ended up being... other than some basic elements that were lifted.
 
Saw "Spectre" last night, and pretty much agree with what you guys have already said. It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't nearly in the same category as "Casino Royale" or "Skyfall" were for me. I actually thought the cinematography took a step backwards on this one, with uninspired choices all around, except for that first scene.

Oh, and the audience at the Alamo I was at laughed at the opening credits sequence.
 
OldCorpse said:
Well, I haven't seen Spectre yet. Certainly seems to clean up at the box office, at least so far. I don't know if that's because there's simply no competition for a good action flick, or because audiences genuinely like it.
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It has more to do with the gargantuan marketing spend and all guns blazing PR campaign than anything to do with actual moviemaking.
 
This franchise is looking tired fast cars, ultra villains , over the top stunts. Seen it all before 20 times over . Storyline is forgettable, the long opening title shots are so yesterday and just scream un- originality.

Maybe next reiteration should by Jamie Bond and he should be female.
 
Surf it Mike said:
This franchise is looking tired fast cars, ultra villains , over the top stunts. Seen it all before 20 times over . Storyline is forgettable, the long opening title shots are so yesterday and just scream un- originality.

Maybe next reiteration should by Jamie Bond and he should be female.
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I though Laura Croft was something of that sort... didn't do the shaken not stirred Martini... but sort of that uppercrustish brutish type, that was a Bond trope until Craig.

Or... transgender Bond Girl... oh, wait... "For Your Eyes Only"(1981) and Caroline Cossey... ok, lead Bond Girl...
 
Well I saw it last night and I had a wonderful time and was smiling throughout. The opening scene with the long take, huge explosion, foot chase and then fight scene on a helicopter was terrific and probably the best Bond opening so far. The film is far from perfect but I enjoyed it. When Waltz says 'Welcome James' I couldn't stop smiling as Bond **** himself and ran for his life.

If it was my film Bond would have watched that VHS tape marked 'Vespa Interrogation' and gave it the ending that Quantum Of Solace should have had. I was always upset that Solace had no solace, in fact Solace was one of the biggest cinematic disappointments of my life. Why didn't Bond kill him at the end of the film?

IMO Craig is the best James Bond by far and when the next guy takes over I won't bother watching because I have found my James Bond. Casino Royale along with On Her majesty's Secret Service will always be my top Bond films, these guys kick the crap out of people and I take great pleasure in watching them do it. Yes I was a Lazenby fan rather than the wooden Connery (Yessh) and humorous Roger Moore (sporting flares and a big stomach).

The biggest mistake with any of the sequels to Casino Royale was not letting Martin Campbell direct them. Still I hope we get one more Craig film before Eon go back to the dreaded Blockbuster Brosnan type films.
 
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