Are we all happy now that dust has settled? -Spectre Spoilers

vzok

Tuck91 wrote: »

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dramaticscenesofQOS wrote: »

The biggest way that Spectre missed an opportunity to become a much more interesting and captivating film was the very fact that it does not show Vesper's interrogation footage.

Bond might not have really wanted to see that footage at first, which is natural.

Bond 25 still has a chance to show this tape and maybe include Jesper Cristensen reprising his role as Mr. White and also Guy Haines be there during the interrogation as Eva Greene has not aged all that much since the days of CR.

This tape could hold key clues about Spectre.

I was hoping oberhauser would play the vesper tape instead of whites suicide. They would have been so much better and relatable to bond and the audience

If only he had a VCR

JamesStock

I just watched Spectre for the first time since I saw it in the cinema. I have to say, I like the film a lot more this go around. It does have some good moments.

I still despise the retcon of the all the previous Craig films and I really hate how they kept reiterating it. (Did they really need to have the MI6 building decorated with pictures of Silva, Vesper, M, White?)

While I actually don't mind the brothergate concept, it was used too heavily for my liking. The dialogue in the drill scene pushes it too far (granted I get the desire to try to explain motive).

The pacing is good, but it still feels long to me. To me some of the scenes/locations feel like they are purposefully nodding to previous films - namely the pans of the Hoffer Clinic (OHMSS) and the Day of the Dead festival (MR). Every time a Skyfall track is re-used, it took me out of the film, barring a few spots where it made sense (ie the Dench M video).

My biggest complaint is that while it's extremely cinematic, it almost is goes too far in being so - there's a bit too much dark drama for it to feel like a Bond film. I mean, Casino Royale seems like a comedy to this film.

If some of the dialogue was dialed back a little bit (ie. "I love you") I think it would've helped a lot. The film just feels like it was overthought with trying to explain everyone's motives.

That said, there's still a lot to like. Love the L'American and subsequent train scenes. The opening sequence and the funeral through the Rome meeting are good too. I actually like the nine eyes plot, but it does take the back seat.

JamesStock

Came across this awesome post by @thelivingroyale in another thread and that it made very good points about SP:

thelivingroyale wrote: »

Tuck91 wrote: »

And what was skyfall and spectres plot again? Kill M and reunite with my brother Blofeld.

Skyfall, I'll give you that one. Silva's plan didn't make much sense at all. But I think Spectre actually has one of the best villain schemes of the series, they just didn't execute it as well as they could have done.

First of all, yeah, the brother angle was pointless and distracting. It made such little impact that it easily could have been taken out anyway so I don't get why it was necessary at all. I'd get rid of that.

Also I think Blofeld's scheme should have had more consequence. As cool as it was seeing Bond effortlessly being Bond in the PTS, I think it should have been a bit more intense, with him stopping the bomb at the last second instead of blowing it up early. I also think that we should have seen shots of the other terrorist attacks instead of just hearing about them and it should have been a lot harder to stop Nine Eyes instead of Q just casually turning it off by hammering away at a keyboard.

I also think Blofeld himself should have done more to talk about his plan when Bond was at his base. He could have talked about how people's paranoia about terrorism and the eagerness of groups like ISIS to claim responsibility made it easy. And he did have that little speech about information being power but he should have talked about what he'd actually do with that information.

So yeah the execution was off. But I think the villain's plan in Spectre is actually the one of the best things about it. Carry out terrorist attacks to trick the government into giving him surveillance power that would make his criminal organisation unstoppable. Very clever and modern while still feeling high stakes. I know it sounds ridiculous because they already had four years to get it right but I think if it'd had a few more drafts then we'd easily be talking about that films story as one of the best.

mattjoes

Quoting some specific parts of the post you shared, JamesStock.

thelivingroyale wrote: »

I also think that we should have seen shots of the other terrorist attacks instead of just hearing about them and it should have been a lot harder to stop Nine Eyes instead of Q just casually turning it off by hammering away at a keyboard.

I agree with all this. There is a potentially big sense of threat and dramatic urgency in the terrorist attacks, but this aspect is unfortunately underplayed in the film, since we only hear about them or see them very briefly on TV screens.

thelivingroyale wrote: »

I also think Blofeld himself should have done more to talk about his plan when Bond was at his base. He could have talked about how people's paranoia about terrorism and the eagerness of groups like ISIS to claim responsibility made it easy. And he did have that little speech about information being power but he should have talked about what he'd actually do with that information.

Yes, totally. It's a fantastic plan, very clever, but both Blofeld's motivation, and what he intended to do with the information he was going to obtain, are not clear. One can imagine what he'd have to say about it, but this is something we definitely needed to hear to really tie the plot together.

thelivingroyale wrote: »

So yeah the execution was off. But I think the villain's plan in Spectre is actually the one of the best things about it. Carry out terrorist attacks to trick the government into giving him surveillance power that would make his criminal organisation unstoppable. Very clever and modern while still feeling high stakes. I know it sounds ridiculous because they already had four years to get it right but I think if it'd had a few more drafts then we'd easily be talking about that films story as one of the best.

Absolutely. It's especially frustrating since they were really close to Bondian greatness, just a few drafts away. I still love the film despite these shortcomings. It's a success for me.

Superintendent

Tuck91

Had I known five years until the next one. No

Benjamin

MrBond wrote: »

Spectre has only risen in my eyes during the last couple of months, from being very disappointed in it after my 4 viewings on it in the cinema and putting it on my lower half of the list to now being one of my favourites. It is a delicate, sublime and quite harrowing look on the role of assassins, family and western culture.
It moves with a steady pace through empty streets, dusty environments, never with losing the classical elegance of what is atypical for a Bond film.
All this is crowned with Mendes and Hoytema's approach with moving between hot/cold, heaven/hell, love/purgatory. The way the colours are almost scrubbed of the screen in Blofelds communications center, in a way showing the gray-zone of Blofelds inherent vices, and how deep blacks casts hellish shadows on Bonds final ruminations in the ruins of his own world in the films last act.

Spectre is not the typical Bond-film, it plays with the norms and subverses everything we know and think about Bond behind the classic, international facade. We are being subjected to the very core of what Bond is and what he represents. The film is centered around what Madeleine says to Bond, at a culminative moment, when they finally can settle down and have their respective outlooks of the world shared: "Is this really what you want? Living in the shadows, hunting, being hunted, always alone" and this mantra is displayed in all departments, the aforementioned cinematography, the set design (the transparency of Madeleine's office, the classic rustic style of Lucia's apartment), the score which builds more on themes and motions than on actual scoring on the events (omnious callbacks from the past, both from Skyfall and use of diegetic sounds within the score that creates a very different sound picture).

The action-scenes is something that I have noticed is one of the things that have drawn the largest criticisms. Sure I can see where they're coming from compared to the often superb scenes from Craig's earlier films, but the action in Spectre has a very clear sense of forward momentum. It derives from being vehicle-bound, Bond is caught in a kind of metastasis, flying ahead, driving ahead. The iconic vehicles is an extension of Bond himself, he is controlling and heading non-living things, much like how he infuses life in a profession filled with death and non-living entities. It's a roaring experience, but which creates an detachment between the narrative and us as an audience. That is something that is different from the earlier Craig films where he is a more direct and physical being in the vivacious action-scenes.

Speaking of which, Daniel Craig's performance as Bond was one thing that I was sorely disappointed in when I first saw the film. I saw him as bored and slightly sluggish, wispering many of his lines and just looked uninterested. But now I rather see his performance as a relaxed, laid back man, he conveys that certain kind of calm and cool that only Connery could exuberate. Craig displays the kind of man Fleming so often described, a man at ease with the world around him but not with himself. The conflict between those two is interesting and very well displayed.

Christoph Waltz as Blofeld, a subject for much controversy is something of a revelation for me. He was the actor that I since 2009 had hoped to see play Blofeld, and when he finally did it he did it with bravur! He downplays himself, he plays with the smallest of movements, he barely blinks and when he does it feels almost as his minds works on. Blofeld here is a quitely displayed maniac, a man who seems himself as the forefront of the human race, a man with a heavy inferiority complex but ironically enough can never be seen for what he is when he is the leader of a shadow organisation as tangled and substantial as SPECTRE. One can see how a man like Ernst Stavro Blofeld could have risen to power, he is cunning, he is charismatic, and he is a visionary. Imagine if this character was someone who really lived in Austria in the beginning of the 20th century...
I have always seen the major conflict between Bond and Blofeld in this film as something as a sidepoint, sure Blofeld sees himself as mistreated by his father and wants to rationalise his behavior and doings (killing his father) by having to applicate it to someone. He puts the blame for himself on Bond. It is also displayed quite clear that Blofeld never built SPECTRE for the sole purpose of undermining Bond, it rather seems like a way of getting inside Bond's head (which he also does quite figuratively). Blofeld is the indirect reason of the events in the earlier films, but he never did it for the sole dismay of Bond.
Just look at how Waltz says the word "brother" in the film, he accentuates it in a mocking way, not even Blofeld believes that they once were brothers.
No, Waltz plays Blofeld very discreetly, miles away from how Silva was displayed and this was precisely what the film needed. He is the leader of the greatest shadow organisation there is and can't then be flamboyant in the apparent way.

As a way to end this I can't quite say if I prefer Skyfall or Spectre, they both are two very strong and thematically driven films. Ones opposites one might say. Skyfall poses questions which then Spectre answers. Skyfall represents new beginnings, youth and modernity whereas Spectre represents passing of time classicism and death.
Much like the "heaven&hell" concept which Mendes displays in Spectre his two films works as two sides of the same coin. Two films that can never be separated.
Right now I feel like Spectre is the better film, if only because it entertains me more, it goes by faster and it poses more interesting questions. It feels overall more like a prime production with a better sense of delicacy.
It does brilliantly cap of the strongest 4 film run in the franchise thus far, and with great sadness it may also be the end for Craig as James Bond. But if it is, he certainly goes out in pride.

I will end this piece by showing the following pictures:

http://screenmusings.org/movie/dvd/Casino-Royale/images/Casino-Royale-1202.jpg
You can have me anywhere

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By62fkUldN1MSTVSaWNxTmlHZGM
I recognize you anywhere

The way this particular setup is made in the latter film it feels like a tragic flashback for Bond, how he says those word to Vesper and to everything she represented to Madeleine. Which makes him realize that in that moment he had to get out, while he still has a soul left to salvage.
While Madeleine declare her love for the "blue eyed, vulnerable boy" which in that moment is not any longer an assassin. Bond sees a way out, a representation from someone who in visual terms is the opposite of Vesper. But as Blofeld says
The faces of your women was always interchangeable, wasn't they James?

Bond is getting out, but he is not gone.

The dead are alive

Is @MrBond around these days? Anyway, this is a perceptive review.

I've only seen Spectre once, just the day before seeing NTTD, but I liked it. The fact that it set up what seems now to be my favorite Bond movie counts in its favor.

The cinematography is good, but not quite as fine as what Roger Deakins did for Skyfall. Solid performances all around. Some nice action sequences, although sometimes things seemed a bit off in the pacing department.

I'm overall puzzled by the negative views that many here seem to have of Spectre. Seems like a solid middle-of-the-road Bond movie to me.