One of the movies we missed last year (what with the Geek Baby) was Spectre, the 4th James Bond movie with Daniel Craig in the lead role. We liked Casino Royale and the new take on Bond, although Quantum of Solace being a sequel was pretty jarring. We really liked Skyfall, although the idea of Bond being an actual person born with that name was kind of odd – it throws off the whole continuity of the films.
Even Bond looks Blah.
Anyway, we were intrigued, and had heard both that it was better than the rest – and that it was plain awful, as Julia has mentioned. Our main grocery store just added a Red Box alternative service, and I saw Spectre, so I scooped it up for movie night the other night.
And… eh? There were some Bond movie elements, to be sure. But we’re back to a full-on continuity, a conspiracy tying together all of the Daniel Craig Bond movies. By tapping into Bond’s old opposing spy service, at least in name: Spectre. On the one hand, it seems like an awesome plot. On the other hand, it seems like jumping the shark to the entire Bond franchise…
I could go into spoilers, but don’t even really feel the need. And I might not remember things well enough to do so anyway. Because the movie really was just off for us. Like, I’ve seen bad Bond movies. Something like License to Kill can be kind of fun to watch. And it has some similarities: Bond working outside the system, having his official authority removed, Q coming to give him help out in the field. But while the one film is kind of a joke in its badness, Spectre tries to be way, way serious. So each step in the action is super serious… but it didn’t transition well for us at all. We got lost. We didn’t care.
And the ultimate big bad, the leader of Spectre? Nowhere near as compelling as Silva was in Skyfall. While Silva got a lot of time to introduce and run us through his backstory and why he’s doing everything – and it’s not directed at Bond, but at M, which maybe helps as well. In Spectre, all the vengeance is directed at Bond, apparently, and in fact everything that’s happened in the four movies… or possibly everything that’s happened ever. Ever. I dunno, he just really failed to convince about his revenge plot or need, and the comparison in particular to Silva – or even to the desperate rage of Le Chiffre in Casino Royale – is just not in this movie’s favor.
All-in-all? Glad that we used a free coupon to check it out from the store?… What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!
Comparative Geeks 