Sequel Month - Mini Review - Spectre

It’s Sequel Month

Ah James Bond, it’s been around for so long that it’s a part of British Culture but I have a dark secret. Skyfall was my first Bond and even now, over 2 years after my review of Skyfall, I’ve only watched the Craig movies in full. I’ve caught snippets of the other movies whilst on television but I’m usually not hovering around long enough to see it entirely.

But yes, I’ve seen Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace now, if you want my thoughts, they’re on my Facebook page. But it’s interesting leading into Spectre, the one that tries to connect them all.

Made on a spectacularly high $250m budget, the movie made over $800m, the second highest bond gross but for the movie immediately after Skyfall’s $1bn performance. Whilst it was at least successful commercially, critics were not as kind to this one, with a 64% Rotten Tomatoes rating compared to Skyfall’s 93%. Is that fair? Well here are my thoughts

The story revolves around a secret organisation involving purportedly dead agents who commit acts of terrorism to excite global change, all whilst the body of our lead is declared irrelevant by the people above. Wait, am I describing Spectre or Rogue Nation?

Whilst the movies have enough differences to avoid calling one a ripoff of the other, and the fact they came out less than a year apart with widespread promotion, the similarities between the two are a remarkable co-incidence, but let’s get to the rest of it.

Bond heads to Mexico on the only day that ever exists in Mexico any more, the Day of the Dead, he was under orders by a tape recording of the former M to kill someone, he does so but in the shootout a bomb that they were using takes out a city block of conveniently few people. Bullsh*t ensues and we can say goodbye to the first bond girl before the credits even roll. This is enough to the get the 00 department shut down, all the while people are being frightened into a joining a new intelligence alliance where all intelligence data will be shared under the governance of a single unelected leader. So, the EU of intelligence alliances… I jest of course.

Let’s talk about the bond theme. Sam Smith’s Writing on the Wall was the first Bond theme to get to #1, it’s a good song on its own merits, as a Bond theme I’d take a more fast-paced song personally, plus the fact that unlike the song of Skyfall, this one doesn’t have the word 'Spectre' in it at all.

This movie has interesting characters, the new M is interesting, Q and Moneypenny get better roles than they did back in Skyfall, even some involvement in the finale, well, M and Q anyway, and they have a non-spy Bond girl who is actually somewhat of an interesting character in Dr Madeline Swan. I say she’s interesting, but by Bond Girl standards she still starts out confrontational and somehow falls into his arms anyway and does spend the final battle as a hostage.

But this movie does have one big weakness, and it’s the villain. Spectre is a re-imagining of the organisation S.P.E.C.T.R.E. from the books but the focus is less on them and more on the head of the organisation, the guy who towers over the villains of the last 3 movies, he’s James Bond’s step-brother who killed his father because he has daddy issues and wants something something something revenge against James by killing all the women in his life, ignoring the couple that have managed to survive.

He’s not interesting, he doesn’t have much personality and it hurts this movie spectacularly. It doesn’t help that James has literally no reaction to the knowledge that he’s alive, there’s no sibling relationship between them, he could be some random guy who hates James for some other reason and it would be more or less the same story.

The finale to this movie tries to go for a more personal touch, because they ran out of money for a proper action climax, or just wasted it on however many explosions took out the Spectre base. But Bond is placed in the old MI6 building and is forced to find Dr Swan and get out before the building is demolished by controlled explosions, all whilst M and Q work to sabotage the alliance thing that nobody actually cares about. Still, M gets some great lines here. I honestly think it’s a great finale

Unfortunately, the lacklustre villain cripples this movie and makes it hard to give it a great rating. As it is, it’s well shot, the action is well handled, some of the characters are given good development, there’s great location work and the effects are well handled. Plot-wise we’re given a pretty pathetic reveal of who’s behind the curtain and rehashes of a lot of the political stuff from Skyfall.

Rating 65/100