Bondathon: Spectre

Skyfall was the most successful Bond film. It was the first Bond film to make over $1 billion, has a 92% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and won two Oscars, as well as winning other awards. EON Productions wanted to repeat that success and brought back SPECTRE for the first time since Diamonds Are Forever (or Never Say Never Again if you include the unofficial film).

Bond goes on a private mission in Mexico City to assassinate a terrorist. This action leads to M suspending Bond, so Bond continues his investigation in Rome. Bond discovers a secret organisation led by a man from his past. On the home front, British intelligence is undergoing major reform, and the head of this new service, C (Andrew Scott) wants Britain to join the Nine Eyes Committee.

Bond fans had high hopes for Spectre because of the success of Skyfall and EON Productions went to a lot of effort to bring back Sam Mendes. However, the result was a film that felt like it was a Bond film made on autopilot and made some of the worst decisions in the franchise’s history.

EON saw the success of Skyfall and pretty much wanted to do that again. Spectre had similar themes to Skyfall because the plot in the background involved MI6 facing a crisis and used another modern threat in the world of espionage, this time it was surveillance. Sadly, Spectre came off as a repeat of Skyfall because the Double-0 section was still under threat from bureaucrats who don’t understand what espionage entails. Bill Tanner (Rory Kinnear) tells Bond there were people who think Double-0s can be replaced by drones. This felt similar to what Q and Silva said in Skyfall where hackers could achieve more than field agents.

Bond films have been criticised for being formulaic and in Spectre’s case, it was particularly apparent. Spectre opened in a similar manner to Casino Royale: both start with Bond causing an international incident, leading to M suspending the agent and Bond carries on with his investigation in an unofficial capacity.

Spectre does reference previous Bond films. Bond goes to a remote health facility in the Alps which felt similar to going to Piz Gloria in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This was a deliberate reference because Bond was meeting his love interest. One of the major fights in the film takes place on a train, which was like From Russia With Love, Live and Let Die, and The Spy Who Loved Me. When Bond arrives at the SPECTRE lair it felt like Dr. No when Bond and Honey Ryder had a hospitable reception.

Spectre was a notoriously difficult production. Mendes initially didn’t want to return to direct, and EON did have a shortlist of alternatives like Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive), Tom Hopper (The King’s Speech), Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and Bond fan Christopher Nolan. In the end, EON got their man and Mendes came back, but it seemed like his heart wasn’t in it.

Skyfall was a fantastically paced film with great action sequences, a thrilling plot, and tremendous character drama. This was lacking with Spectre because the drama was less compelling and whilst the action was well made it lacked the thrills of Skyfall. In this film Bond met Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), a love interest who was meant on the same level as Tracy and Vesper. She’s the woman Bond is willing to risk everything for. However, Bond and Madeleine had little chemistry with each other, and I didn’t believe they were meant to be together. Bond had more of a connection with women like Aki (You Only Live Twice), Octopussy (Octopussy), and Kara (The Living Daylights).

The Sony leak of 2014 revealed the production issues, along with most of Sony’s dirty laundry. Spectre suffered from a ballooning budget and issues trying to solve the third act. There were story issues because the filmmakers weren’t sure what story they wanted to tell. The filmmakers wanted Bond to have a personal connection with the villain, Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz). This led to most of the controversial aspects, the reveal that Oberhauser was really Blofeld. When I was watching Spectre in the cinema I feared was the series going to go down this route and show Blofeld to be Bond’s stepbrother.

That reveal was one of the worst decisions in the franchise’s history! It made Bond seem like a spoof because the third Austin Powers film did a similar reveal. To show how bad this moment was to the fandom, it’s on the level of Deadpool’s man being sewed shut in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the alien reveal in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The filmmakers tried to tie all the previous films in the Craig together with Spectre. This was a disastrous move because it undercut the emotional journey of Casino Royale and Skyfall. Casino Royale was about Bond falling in love and finding out he can’t because of his profession, whilst Silva’s motivations were so personal. Oberhauser/Blofeld harboured a hatred for Bond his dad liked the Brit more than his own son. So, this made it seem like Blofeld just created a secret terrorist organisation so he could screw with the British secret agent. If Bond had a different career like a news producer at the BBC would Blofeld have created a utopia just to screw with Bond?

The villains’ scheme was they wanted to create enough fear through terrorist attacks that nations of the world would unite and share surveillance data that SPECTRE would harvest. It was the same plot in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation. Those films did that plot a lot better. This danger was in the background for most of Spectre so that sense of peril was never there. The better plot would have been Bond investigating one man that leads him to discover the existence of a secret organisation and Bond has to race to stop their terrorist attack. It would have given the film more of a sense of urgency.

I like Bond films to have at least one foot in reality. The series is meant to be set in something close to the real world. Spectre strays from that. The change in British intelligence sees MI5 and MI6 being merged and moved to a new HQ in London. The old MI6 building was set to be demolished and this took Bond away from the real world. It would be like a Bourne or Jack Ryan film destroying Langley and moving the CIA. Another unrealistic aspect of the film was Q injecting Bond with smart blood, basically nanobots so MI6 could track Bond’s movements. It was an invention as improbable as the invisible car from Die Another Day.

Whilst Spectre had a lot of issues there were also things I liked. The most memorable moment was the pre-title sequence, particularly the opening few minutes where there was a long take following Bond from the streets to performing an assassination. It was a great piece of cinematic craftsmanship. Dave Bautista was a surprising delight as Hinx, the main henchmen of the film. Hinx was a big, strong man who let his fists do the talking. Hinx had a great introduction where he just murdered his rival within SPECTRE like Gregor Clegane killed Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones. He also had the best action sequence in the film when he fought Bond on the train. Hinx was clearly meant to be a henchman like Oddjob and Jaws: a big strong brute.

Spectre was sadly the worst film from the Craig era. It managed to be dull and infuriating in equal measure.