Daniel Craig’s stint as James Bond has been overall pretty good. Even though I didn’t think a reboot was needed, Casino Royale was a fresh take on the mythos and really did a great job bringing Bond into the twenty-first century (much like GoldenEye did for a post-Cold War Bond).
Quantum of Solace was a hot mess and the less said about that the better. But Skyfall felt like a return to greatness in more ways than one. The third act was a little bit of a mess and I didn’t think we needed a Home Alone-esque showdown. But Silva was in the mold of a classic Bond villain, we got to see some of the old staples of the series return, and it set the stage for a neo-classic Bond film. So I was really excited when it was announced that Craig’s fourth outing would be titled Spectre.
For those of you who aren’t Bond aficionados, SPECTRE was the name of an international organization run by Ernst Stavro Blofeld in both the Bond novels and the Connery/Lazenby films. He appeared in shadow beginning with From Russia With Love but was shown in full in You Only Live Twice (played by Donald Pleasance). But due to legal issues, EON Productions wasn’t allowed to use SPECTRE or Blofeld for decades. Now that’s all been resolved and SPECTRE was brought back.
So how was the film? Well…it’s no Casino Royale and it’s not quite the neo-classic I’d been hoping for. But it’s still pretty good.
Before I get too deep into this, please note that spoilers are going to follow. If you haven’t seen Spectre and care about spoilers, then you should probably turn back now.
The movie hits a lot of familiar notes. This is a movie for people who are very familiar with the entire film series. There are tons of callbacks to earlier movies, from locations to clothing to characters. And as someone who really missed those elements in the Craig series to date, it was wonderful seeing them again.
The basic story is more or less pretty good. Spectre is basically trying to convince the world that they need more surveillance and that they need to share that intelligence with others, so Spectre will have access to all the world’s intelligence data. It’s a story that has real relevance in the modern day and also has some commonalities with Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
But where things start to get shaky is with Franz Oberhauser’s relationship with Bond. Here’s the biggest mistake made with this film: the movie’s called Spectre, the head of Spectre is played by Christoph Waltz, but everyone involved tried to claim that he wasn’t actually Ernst Stavro Blofeld. That was total bullshit. Of course Waltz was playing Blofeld. Everyone knew that from the start. It was the same kind of lying that JJ Abrams tried to pull with Star Trek Into Darkness, when he swore up and down that Benedict Cumberbatch wasn’t playing Khan.
There was simply no need for this deception. It was a waste of energy. And the big reveal had me sitting in my chair going, “Yeah? What else is new?”
The second big misstep is the Bond/Blofeld relationship. One of the revelations in the movie is that Blofeld and Spectre have been working behind the scenes of all of Bond’s enemies—Le Chiffre, Dominic Greene, and Raoul Silva. It makes sense with Le Chiffre and Greene at least, Quantum was essentially a poor man’s Spectre anyway. Silva’s a bit more of a stretch. But Blofeld’s reason for this? Because when Bond’s parents died, Blofeld’s father adopted him and Blofeld resented the attention his father gave Bond.
Not only is this completely unnecessary, but it also strains believability. Blofeld kills his father, changes his name, builds up a terrorist organization, and coincidentally his adopted brother who he hates also becomes a 00-agent and their paths are going to cross.
Blofeld doesn’t need to have a past with Bond in order to be a threat. Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre was the most brilliant of all the enemies Bond faced off against, the most ruthless as well, and yet they had no personal connection whatsoever. But Le Chiffre was a far more effective villain than Greene, who was partly responsible for Vesper’s death, or Silva who also had this weird twisted familial view of Bond and M.
All that being said, the movie is very entertaining and it’s definitely a step in the right direction for the series. The future is up in the air. Waltz has said he’d come back for the next two films in the series, but only if Daniel Craig does as well. Craig isn’t contracted for any further films and he’s been pretty vocal about how difficult a film like this is to make, so it’s unknown if he’ll come back for any future films.
You can pick up Spectre online at Amazon or iTunes.
If you enjoy spy fiction, consider checking out my Infernum series of books.