The Spy Who Broke Me: 2015’s ‘Spectre’

For most of my life, I had no way to connect with James Bond. I knew the name. I knew the ‘shaken, not stirred’ line. I knew he was spoofed in the Austin Powers films. Even the Pierce Brosnan era passed me by without leaving a mark. I enjoyed seeing some of the cool gadgets they came up with, but they were never enough to get me interested.

Then came Daniel Craig’s Bond. When Casino Royale hit 10 years ago (!), it rather deservedly changed everything. It told a compelling story with an even more compelling Bond girl in Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd. It had an interesting villain in Mads Mikkelsen and populated the screen with great British actors. The promise had been established; a new Bond had arrived, with sparkling new pedigree, and some badass, memorable action. I saw it at just the right time, when my interest in movies and their production had exponentially grown. I left the theater satisfied and excited for the new Craig adventures.

Two short years later, I spent my senior year of college mentoring some 45 freshmen, and it is such a strong memory of mine seeing how disappointed they were with 2008’s Quantum of Solace. Several students wrote “QOS Sux” on their whiteboards, after they had breathlessly waited for its release. That whole experience turned me off to the point where I never bothered to see it – even as it has earned back some goodwill over the years.

By the time Sam Mendes took over for 2012’s Skyfall, it felt like a beautiful course-correction of sorts. It had a compelling, haunting villain played by Javier Bardem, and it was expertly lensed by cinematography god Roger Deakins. I become punch-drunk in love with this movie as I saw it, enraptured by the confluence of images, action, and story.

So when 2015’s Spectre was announced, with Sam Mendes back at the helm, I was excited. By the time the movie came out, however, the response felt so much like Quantum of Solace: sharply divided opinions that praised the filmmaking craft but cared not one iota for the storytelling. Just as I ultimately didn’t get around to Quantum of Solace, I put off Spectre for months.

I finally saw it last week, and I understand the anger: Spectre is effectively the end of four movies of Bond origin, which is three more than was ever needed, leaving Craig’s Bond in a weird place both from a contractual and storytelling standpoint. Drew McWeeny of Hitfix and Devin Faraci of Birth.Movies.Death both articulated this much better than I. Skyfall finally ended with Bond where we all expected him to be, and yet Spectre almost immediately reneges on that.

My problems with Spectre are myriad, so I will just list them:

• I am normally a fan of Sam Smith’s music, but that theme song has to be one of the least-deserving Oscar winners in a long time. It certainly didn’t help that it was coming off the heals of Adele’s all-timer of a Skyfall theme. It also didn’t help to find out the song Radiohead made for Spectre is massively better.
• The movie begins with a helicopter fight scene that takes place over a massive Dias de los Muertos crowd. While it’s not weird to see a helicopter fly over a crowd, it is definitely weird to see one in which the helicopter is violently turning in unnatural ways with two men punching it out on the landing skids. And yet, the crowd never moves. Only when it is increasingly obvious that it will crash do people finally seem to go anywhere. Even worse: this should be a rousing fight, and yet it just seems to happen. Not great.
• The main villain, while Bond’s most popular and well-known, was already devastatingly spoofed as Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies. To have your villain wear nearly the same outfit and get the same scar – and even throw in a cat! – feels so wrong in ways I cannot fully articulate.
• It can be compelling when one character knows more than the others. It can be compelling when the audience knows more than the characters themselves. But it is never compelling when both rival characters know more than the audience does, and for no good reason. Bond and Blofield seem to know exactly what is going on, and they never bother to let us (or anyone) in on it. It just makes everything drag.
• A lot of effort is made to take Bond and his new Bond girl to Blofield’s lair aka The House of Spectre. It’s blown up completely only 20 minutes later (or so it seems). What a waste.
• The explanation for why Blofield is effectively destroying small pockets of the world (and thousands of lives) to chase one Mr. Bond is so lame that it’s infuriating.

However, you can’t spend 250 million on misguided storytelling without having some highlights, so in the spirit of having a Bondian Compliment Sandwhich (that doesn’t leave a bad aftertaste like the movie) here are some highlights:

• The cinematography is pretty great. Even if Hoyte van Hoytema (Her, Interstellar) is not quite Roger Deakins, I do think he managed to do his best with a problematic story.
• Mr. Hinx, played by Dave Bautista (Drax the Drestroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy), is a fantastic character and the highlight of the film for me. The only bummer with his performance is that it’s so short; I wanted him to hang around just a bit longer. In the meantime, he gets a couple scenes to rough people up a bit before really roughing up Bond in a spectacular train fight. I’m not sure how they pulled it off, but it looks as brutal and fun as possible. It just might top Spy‘s kitchen fight scene for Best Close Quarters Fight of 2015.
• I’ve always wanted to see Ralph Fiennes get a little spy action in, and he gets a few pretty killer moments here. But having a delightful Ben Winshaw and resourceful Naomie Harris show up as Q and Moneypenny as well only reinforces how much these Craig Bond films would benefit from taking a more team-centric approach to missions.
• It’s highly possible that you will watch this film, and absolutely none of the problematic areas in this will register with you and it will be a rather enjoyable movie-watching experience.

Considering how the press around Spectre seemed to dictate how much Daniel Craig does not want to play Bond again, who knows where the series will go from here. It could definitely do with bringing in another actor, but please, for the love of film and all things wonderful, do not make it another origin story.