Spectre
by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth
RHG and I both made a point of seeing the 24th Bond installment on opening weekend because Fuck Yeah Daniel Craig. We both had some mixed feelings about the movie.
Spectre ties together the previous three movies in this reboot of Bond, bringing together all the loose ends (some of which weren’t actually loose but were pried from the walls by director Sam Mendes) for one huge black moment involving Bond and his heretofore unseen mastermind adversary (Christoph Waltz).
Bond smexes some ladies. There are car chases. Things blow up. We discuss.
Elyse: Full disclosure, I love the Bond franchise. I saw Dr. No on TV as a kid, missed the misogyny entirely, and was hooked. I’ve read all the books. I LOVE the reboot with Daniel Craig. I think he’s the best Bond–or at least most book-accurate Bond–since Connery. Casino Royale and Skyfall are two of my favoritist movies ever.
I was so excited for Spectre and so disappointed. I mean, it’s pretty for sure, but yeah, the plot was…yeah…
RHG: The perfect lead in! You’re a genius. I am a Craig-y Come Lately, and I admit it. I’ve seen one or two of the Brosnan movies, but I loooooove Daniel Craig. I enjoyed Skyfall a LOT (though I had some issues with it, I really wanted M to get the last stab on Silva).
It was clear to me that Spectre was making a bazillion references to earlier movies (which TV Tropes confirmed for me), but for the most part, I didn’t feel like I needed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bond Ouvre to get what was going on.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Spectre
Elyse: I think Judy Dench was a HUGE part of why the reboot worked–and her character is still bossing shit around from beyond the grave here. They went back to the original Bond from Fleming’s books. If you read the early books, Bond is a misogynist, a thug, and actually a DEEPLY fucked up individual. He is not a good person. This current Bond struggles with that self-awareness. Adding Dench as M helped temper some of the outright dude-feelings-omg that was going on.
Like you said in the intro, part of the reason this didn’t work was that EVERYTHING WAS ALWAYS YOUR FAULT JAMES JUST LIKE YOU WERE AFRAID OF. In Casino Royale, the point they tried to make was that Bond wasn’t special, he was a “blunt instrument” and he was replaceable.
The idea that everything from the preceding three movies was about him in a really confusing, we-didn’t-quite-tie-the-loose-ends way didn’t make sense to me.
RHG: I love Judi Dench and she’s a fucking delight. (“Christ, I miss the Cold War.”) Yeah, having Voldemort as M is fun and all (Sorry, Fiennes, even when you have a nose, you’re still Voldey), but I miss Dench.
You are so right about the Craig-Bond being, you know, well dressed and can stride in adjusting his cufflinks, but he’s a thug, and a weapon you point at things you want to go away, and those people are (irritatingly) necessary in the Game of Nations, but they’re not heroic heroes who hero heroically. They shouldn’t GET happy endings. Craig gets that about Bond, and as long as he is here to say, “No, this dude is a dumpster fire of a human disaster,” I’m here for him.
Shall we discuss the Bond Women of Spectre?
Elyse: Yeah, this movie suffered from two big theme issues when it relates to women: Masculinity, So Fragile and Fridging.
Ernst/ Hans outright states that he killed the women James loved because James made him feel sad about his daddy when he was a boy. WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK. I mean, yeah, he’s obviously insane but JESUS. PICK A BETTER REASON TO TRY AND DESTROY THE WORLD.
RHG: Only not an actually cool motive, bro.
Elyse: I loved Monica Bellucci. I LOVED HER. She’s the bomb. And I love the actress who plays Moneypenny (Naomie Harris). I was not crazy about Madeline Swann. I felt like she was hastily thrown together in a writer’s room. “Um… we need a woman Bond would totes leave spying for. Um… she’s got to be smart, so she’s a doctor… and um, she’ll be the daughter of an assassin so we’ll know she understands him…” She felt like a fan fic heroine. And the actress did not have the chops to pull her off.
I wish he’d wound up with Bellucci’s character, actually.
RHG: Yeah, Léa Seydoux was just… super French. I liked her when she was like “I don’t LIKE guns, but I know guns, you fucking turd,” but that was about it. When are you constantly wearing white and flowey when wandering around the desert? WHY DON’T YOU HAVE SOME GODDAMN BOOTS? She was just kind of there to look European and pale and blonde and tell James she won’t bang him (and then she bangs him) but then she manages to survive where Eva Green did not and well. Ugh.
I was super stoked for Monica Bellucci, but when she turned out to be the first-act-fuck, was like, “Oh Jesus, she’s not in this movie any more at all, is she?” Yes, James, banging a woman your own age! Good job.
Not a lot of people can pull off 6 inch heels and a mourning veil, but there she was, making the rest of look like schlubs.
Elyse: Yup Eva Green and Bond = my OTP.
I did love the interview where Craig shut the interviewer down and was like “Bellucci isn’t an older woman, she’s his age,” and he owned up to the fact that Bond is a misogynist.
There were a lot of little details I didn’t get either–like the train to the middle of nowhere. There weren’t enough cars! There were more interior shots than the number of cars on the exterior shot allowed for. Okay, that’s nitpicky but…
RHG: I can only imagine the offer of the part of “the Giant Thug that follows James and Swann around to try to kill them” to Dave Bautista: “You get one line, and that’s one word, but — AND HERE’S THE BEST PART DAVE — you get to break an ENTIRE TRAIN’S WORTH OF SETS” and Bautista is like “SOLD.” He was very large.
I also am a big fan of long takes- so the opening shot that follows Bond and some random chick through the Dia de Muertos parade and into the hotel, out the window, across the roof until we get a cut a good three minutes in, I loved that. Sometimes Sam Mendes is a REALLY good director.
Elyse: Yes, the opening scene is amazing. So was the car chase between Bautista and Bond. I kept referring to the name of the character as Drax because we never get his name in the movie. It was Hinx, BTW.
But that was another thing that pissed me off. After the whole alpine car/ airplane chase bit, when “Drax” was supposedly dead and Swann and Bond had time for a fucking argument NO ONE CHECKS TO SEE THAT HE’S REALLY DEAD. Bond, you’re supposed to be the world’s best assassin. Go put two in his head JUST TO BE SURE.
RHG: WORD. DOUBLE TAP THAT, JAMES.
(PUN INTENDED)
I love Ben Wishaw as Q. I love love love him. “I have a mortgage and two cats to feed,” because YOUR ACTIONS AFFECT OTHER PEOPLE JAS. BOND. And Q is a bit sassy and shy and so capable and kind of adorable.
Elyse: So do you think this is the end of Craig as Bond?
RHG: I kinda hope so? Not because I don’t like him, but I want him to move on while I still like him. I seem to remember that he’s got one or two more under contract, but I’m not sure if that’s a real memory or something I dreamed up.
OH WE NEED TO DISCUSS VILLIANS.
You get Christoph Waltz and you’re gonna get a scenery chewing gleeful turd of a dude (who doesn’t wear socks. In the desert. MANY QUESTIONABLE FASHION CHOICES IN THE DESERT). It’s what he does. The villains get all the best lines, and I know people who have said, “I want to play a Bond girl” but fuck that, man, I want to play a Bond Villain. They have the most fun.
But C (Andrew Scott), like, you don’t get that little weasel unless he’s a bad dude, and it would have been even more effective, for me, if he hadn’t been a henchman of Ober-whoever, but was instead a True Believer in Watching Everyone In The Name Of Security and it just worked in to Oberwhoever’s hand. Like, it’s the True Believers that are the scariest.
Elyse: Mendes is really, really good at finding actors who play scary-as-fuck bad guys. Javier Bardem. Christoph Waltz. Andrew Scott. All of these guys are convincing in the fact that they are both really smart and also totally off their rockers.
I agree about C. He’s cursed to be the bad guy since Sherlock. Had they gone a different direction, it would have shocked everyone.
RHG: I would like a series of short films of Bond drunkenly interrogating small animals. I would contribute to a Kickstarter for that.
I think we’ve covered a lot of everything? It’s a Bond movie; they killed a lot of vehicles.
Elyse: Yeah, I think that covers it. This was not my favorite Bond film, but yeah, I’m going to buy it when it comes out. And I’d totally let Craig-Bond hit it, even though I suspect he’s a selfish lover (although Eva Green probably taught him stuff). I’m going with B-. You?
RHG: I don’t wanna die, so I would only let him hit it for non-plot relevant hitting it. 😀 I’m more inclined to a C+, but I’ll bump it up to a B- purely for that long take at the beginning.
Spectre is in theatres now, and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.
During opening credits, I couldn’t stop laughing at the hentai tentacles. That was awesome.
I’m a huge Bond fan — I’ve seen all the movies and read all the books (even by the non-Fleming authors). Overall, I enjoyed Spectre. You can always count on Bond movies to have beautiful locations and cool stunts (most of which are not CGI-based, which I really appreciate).
I liked all the nods to previous movies and how they tied everything from the Craig era together in one movie. If he doesn’t do another movie, this was a nice sendoff for him. Not as good as Skyfall, Casino Royale, or Goldeneye (which has Sean Bean as an excellent baddie), but still a good action movie. I’d give it a B.
Also a huge Daniel-Craig-as-Bond fan, so I totally gobbled SPECTRE up. I still get chills thinking about that super sexy/suave opening scene in Mexico City – contemplating buying the soundtrack just to have that one song on tap.
Overall, not my favorite Craig-as-Bond movie – CASINO ROYALE takes the cake – but I thought SPECTRE was super glamorous, from the sepia-toned “in the desert” feeling to the costumes, the locales, the Bond Girls – all super delicious.
Definitely miss M and Eva Green; I wish they’d given Madeline Snow more…I don’t know, personality? Craig oozes wit, danger, and an intriguing taste in ridiculous alcoholic beverages. Maybe if they hired, say, Sarah MacLean, or Elizabeth Hoyt, as a creative consultant, the Bond peeps might actually create a Bond Girl with enough depth and knowledge of fine liquors/bare knuckle boxing to really shake things up a bit…
Great review, guys. I have never been a big fan of Bond (I couldn’t even get through Skyfall), so I probably won’t be seeing this one.
However… Eva Green was perfection as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, and she had some serious chemistry with Daniel Craig. Like, no one after her has come even a little close. I do wish they would have some women writers creating these Bond girls, because so many of them are either fragile manic pixie dream girls or vapid, obviously dude-created love interests (and that’s the entire depth of their personality).
Ugh. I hated how Madeline asserted, “I won’t schtup you, James,” and then totally reversed herself because he beat somebody up. WHUT.
I loved the first 20 minutes. We should have left then, but we stayed another hour, got bored to tears, and finally walked out. I found the movie terribly boring and random, did not need any strings gathered up, and would put it on a par with Quantum of Solace. 🙁
I was irritated in the train fight scene that they didn’t let Madeline kill “Drax.” I was like “oooooh a woman is going to save James Bond!” and she did, but they didn’t let her get the kill. That just pissed me off. It would have been great to see a woman save him.
Guys, I was SO OBSESSED with Casino Royale in college. Like, my friend and I watched it like 20 times and had the theme song as our ringtones (I KNOW) and if AO3 had existed then, I would have been writing angsty Bond/Vesper fic like you wouldn’t believe.
This one was….not Casino Royale. But it also wasn’t Quantum of Solace aka the biggest movie disappointment I have ever experienced. It was fun and silly and there was Daniel in a tux and tight shirts and the plot made no sense, but that is absolutely not a requirement for a Bond movie. So I enjoyed it, though it won’t be one I re-watch often.
Those opening credits were horrendous. My friend and I laughed hysterically through them.
We are Bond fans in this house, so I’ve seen all the movies multiple times. My husband and I saw a preview of Spectre last week courtesy of Omega watches. We were in a theater full of Bond fans and it rocked. You could feel the excitement during the opening scene and beyond.
Loved Ben Wishaw as Q. He is so geeky cute, like so many of the guys I work with on a daily basis. I felt the Bond girls were underplayed this time around and let’s just see how long Madeline lasts. Maybe James’ first “it’s not you, it’s me?”
I think Daniel Craig is perfect for the role at this time in the Bond franchise and appreciate they are letting him show a little age. Heard rumors he and the director coming back one more time.
I definitely had a movie hangover after Spectre, so I give it an A.
Great review! Haven’t seen the new Bond, maybe this weekend, but I wanted to chime in on Daniel Craig who is the sexiest Bond. James Bond ever! I swoon over DC…..gorgeous man not handsome, but oh so thuggishly gorgeous!
Given that Craig has said that right now he’d rather slash his wrists than do another Bond movie I bet they find a new Bond. http://www.timeout.com/london/film/daniel-craig-interview-my-advice-to-the-next-james-bond-dont-be-shit
I am not a Bond person at all. I tried. I was going to work my war through all the Bond movies no matter how much the misogyny made me snarl and I then I got to You Only Live Twice. I majored in Japness literature and the casual racism in that one pissed me off so much, especially combined with the misogyny that I gave up on the whole franchise.
And ugh, I just went to Wikipedia to confirm the movie title and ROALD DAHL wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice? I’m so disappointed.
Huge Bond fan, too. Read the first book at age 10 (I was in a car parked outside the Angostura Bitters plant, to make it better) and knew Bond was a mess but not how much. I’ve seen the movies, except this one. One thing that is amazing to me is how much Bond has permeated the culture. In medical school, second year, one of our lectures started with the professor referencing a Bond book which segued into our topic of the day.
@LF – Oh. My. God. The japanese tentacle porn in that opening. What was going on there!?
@Lisa
I have no idea. I was already laughing when the silhouette of the lady started having sexy times with the octopus, but I really lost it when the tentacles wrapped around Bond’s gun and set it off.
I’m NOT a huge bond fan (watched Goldeneye in high school and thought it was okay, couldn’t handle the torture scene in Casino Royale so I stopped watching it). I did, however love the everliving shit out of Skyfall. I made Good Movie Sounds and screamed and clapped and recited the poem with Judi Dench and had all the feels when she died. So I want to see this one but I kinda don’t want to as well because it will sully the memory of Skyfall.
It’s like that review I read after sitting through the godawful Serena on netflix…the review referred to Serena showing up to piss all over the good name of Silver Linings. Which it did because holy crapballs that was a lousy convoluted movie. I don’t know if I can risk Spectre shitting on my adoration of Skyfall.
I watched it at the drive-in with my husband, and started laughing at the credits. Couldn’t tell him it was because all I had in my head was SBTB and “tentacle-p0rn.”
I thought Waltz was totally phoning it in as the villain. He’s so great in so many other films and so very not in this. I also choose to believe that being the master of surveillance that he is, he just manipulated data to make it look like he was the mastermind behind everyone Bond ever met or cared about dying, because I can’t actually live in a world where that is the result of the Daniel Craig Bond films. He lied to fuck with Bond. End of story.
Monicca Bellucci is a goddess and should have been in the film more. Madeleine Swann showed such potential in the beginning and then they blew it all. She was incredibly underwhelming in the end. Craig is still great as Bond though, and Q is my soulmate (I also have two cats and a mortgage! We’re meant to be!). I love that they gave Moneypenny a boyfriend (or someone she’s hooking up with at least) – modern Moneypenny doesn’t sit around mooning for Bond to give her the time of day.
In Casino Royale, the point they tried to make was that Bond wasn’t special, he was a “blunt instrument” and he was replaceable.
THIS. I feel like they are falling into the trap some of the older movies did, where it became one long-running inside thing where all the bad guys in the world were maneuvering and plotting SOLELY so they could get James Bond, which sorta begs the question, why doesn’t MI6 just take him off the streets and put an end to all the evil genii’s motivations?
Plus I had super high hopes after all the tiny hints they dropped in SKYFALL that we were going to really go back into Bond’s past and see what made him the way he is–a more personal movie, which could still have involved evil and destruction and hot women and that gorgeous Aston-Martin. But no; Walz couldn’t even give a monologue about his motivation while he was running the needle drill.
And yes, casting Andrew Scott as C was a smart move ONLY if he wasn’t allied with Spectre.
Like Patricia, I enjoyed the beginning of the movie and then got bored REAL FAST. I wish I had walked out, but I stuck it out to the end (though not without sneaking a healthy amount of rum in to my diet Coke). By the time the Big Action Sequence happened, I just didn’t care what happened next. I definitely whispered, “My god, it’s never going to end,” at least twice. My butt fell asleep and I was jealous of it.
I didn’t mind Madeline right up until she announced that she loved Bond. Like, really, girl? You’ve known him for what, two days, and banged him once? Is that really enough to form a significant emotional bond? I mean, it must have been really good, if that’s the case. I adored Monica Bellucci, but after she was gone I wondered what the point of her character was. They have this amazing actress and they just used her for five minutes for Bond to get his rocks off? Who made that stupid call?
And then on my way out of the theater, I overheard a couple of dudebros lamenting the fact that all the women lived. In misogynyverse, “Bond girls are supposed to die. That’s the only reason they exist.” Asshat. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. And it wasn’t just the rum.
I was bowled over by ‘Skyfall’ – my first Bond film! – but apart from the glorious Day of the Dead opening sequence, and Supernerd Q, I was decidedly underwhelmed by ‘Spectre’. When it was revealed that Blofeld had survived the explosion I found myself wondering if his cat had also got out in one piece, which probably wasn’t the response the writers and director were aiming for…
And,oh, that risible opening credits montage! It wasn’t helped by the title song, one of the weakest in the franchise’s history.
@Julia
After finishing spectre I turned to my sister and said “The cat died didn’t it?” and she looked at me sadly and said, very gently, “I think it probably did, sweetie” 🙁
the unknown fate of the cat was about the only thing that moved me about this film. I felt sleepy and impressed by the visuals but not particularly interested. I’ve not watched a Bond film in years though and it sounds like this was a bad place to start again. (Also I was hoping they wouldn’t make moriarty a villain – it would have been so great!)
Spectre did a great job but in my view it didn’t got the appreciation from its fans as was being expected.