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I was hoping that some parts - in particular the pre-titles and the Austria bits - would have been more.... colourful.... rather than the subdued colour effect type stuff they had going on. It looked forever hazy.
And I would have liked the lair to have been used more. It did seem to be over pretty quick that bit, which I much preferred to 'more-of-London'.
A puff piece with probably no basis, but perhaps a small insight into Mendes's thinking (or lack of). I assume he's never watched TWINE. Which is understandable of course.
http://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/sam-mendes-on-spectre-why-i-had-to-recall-bond-to-london-for-thrilling-finale-a3099171.html
There was a period where'd I'd pop in the Blu-ray of QoS just to watch the opening car chase. It's just an awesome set piece where everything comes together brilliantly and that includes Arnold's time to get out. The editing still irritates only because had it been edited better, it would have been for me a much better car chase but it's still an amazing sequence.
Also, like @Wizard said, the rope fight is one of the more original action set pieces not just in the series but in film generally. The dynamic of the action is just so creative and inventive that it captures one of those rare moments where Bond truly could be in serious peril plus it's just so interesting to watch.
Like others have said, I thought the boat and plane chases weren't that great and were horribly edited and that goes even more so for the horse race juxtaposed with Bond chasing Slate through the sewers. However, the film as a whole is filled with great moments and with the advent of SP and all that it brings with it, it helps illuminate QoS' strengths a lot more clearly and comfortably positions itself as Craig's 3rd best Bond movie.
But of course its not just the action that is great here. The scenes with Mathis are marvellous (and I loved Gemma, Mathis lady friend). The scenes with Camille were very good too. And Judi Dench has one of her more memorable moments in the series. Reprimanding Bond, while tersely removing her make up!
Oh, nearly forgot, the sublime Opera sequence. That moment Bond comes face to face with Greene and his thugs raises the hairs on my neck.Brilliant. I still rank it higher than SF. it is a far more enjoyable watch!
And that my friend is as it should be with any movie! :-bd
Yes I agree. I used to find it the most enjoyable Craig entry, but SP may have pipped it.
QOS (so close)
CR (so visceral)
SF (so... okay)
That's the Bond paradox the need to be different and yet be the same
The tightrope that all franchise movies have to walk I guess, but Bond has been doing it the longest
Impossible to satisfy everyone, sometimes they get closer than others
I think the negative feedback from many aspects of QOS led them to head back toward the centre, Quantum copped a lot of criticism as being grey men of finance and politics, so they have been swallowed up by the new SPECTRE
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I agree, I enjoyed the movie, but it would have been much better if Bond were back inside the tent again
Shift the focus of his character development elsewhere for a change
From the start I was in favor of resurrecting Blofeld, and while I overall enjoyed Spectre, I feel it bungled Blofeld's return.
First, Christoph Waltz was miscast. Fleming's no-nonsense original Blofeld had a malevolent charisma that could "almost suck the eyes out of your head." Waltz projects little beyond self-satisfied camp. A good villain must have a disturbing, enigmatic screen presence--audiences should feel uncomfortable around him--but Waltz is an epicene cartoon. And of course there's the catastrophically corny idea of making him Bond's stepbrother. Making the villain a close family/pseudo-family member has become one of the most irritating cliches of 21st century fiction (Mel Brooks satirized the concept early on in this priceless scene). Why must everything be "personal" in such a contrived way?
The proper motivation for the film's version of Blofeld was already in the novel of Thunderball:
"]Blofeld had come to an interesting conclusion about the future of the World. He had decided that fast and accurate communication lay, in a contracting world, at the very heart of power. Knowledge of the truth before the next man, in peace or war, lay, he thought, behind every correct decision in history and was the source of all great reputations."
Someone should have adapted those words and put them in movie-Blofeld's mouth. That's his proper motivation, not "my daddy loved James Bond more." And on top of the tacky motivation, the new Blofeld has been saddled with some of the campiest bits of the character's past. Why resurrect Dr. Evil silliness like the Nehru jacket, Blofeld's scar, and the Persian cat? They're props that add nothing to the character and threaten to drag him into the realm of Austin Powers silliness.
In the first Bond movies, Blofeld was introduced as a mysterious behind-the-scenes puppet-master, which built up his power and mystique over the course of several films, and then was finally pitted against Bond. The books also introduced Blofeld as a hidden-mastermind villain before making him clash with OO7. By contrast, Spectre is rushed and uses up Blofeld's potential too quickly. The film's insistence that he was behind all the events of the previous Craig movies is no more than a piece of "because I said so" dialogue that the plot never backs up. And having him go to prison in the end is deflating (Blofeld should be an elusive fugitive, only brought to justice by death) and means that if he returns we'll have to sit through a tortuous explanation of how he escaped from jail.
I can't help thinking that the film might have been richer if it followed a different path.
Perhaps Blofeld could have been a faceless puppet-master seen throughout Spectre, with Denbigh as the main villain who's supposedly "unmasked" as Blofeld toward the end, only for Bond to learn he was wrong at the last minute and realize Blofeld is still out there. But it feels like the filmmakers wanted to get Blofeld and Spectre over with in one film, since this might be Craig's swansong. Lousy decision, since Blofeld was designed as a recurring baddie.
As for Spectre the organization: its meeting in Rome is a retread of Thunderball and while it looks great and atmospheric, the 1965 version of the meeting is more evocative and relevant, because it presents Spectre as an evil Fortune 500 corporation, rather than a spooky Illuminati (Ken Adams understood that such an organization would meet in a futuristic corporate boardroom). Giant faceless corporations are among the great boogeymen of our age, and so are terrorists, so an corporation of terrorists should resonate with audiences and give them a bit of a chill. Spectre's Spectre doesn't do that, though tying the organization to the surveillance scandal is a good first step.
I find it difficult to argue with much of that. What was wrong with merely introducing Blofeld in this film? Why did they have to cram it all into one?
And of course the step brother idea was utter bollocks.
If C wasn't the main villain they could have just had Franz Oberhauser the disgruntled step brother working with him and then cut to shadowy Blofeld pulling all the strings at the end setting us up for a big showdown in B25.
Now they have painted themselves into a corner where one of the first scenes in B25 has to be Blofeld's convoluted escape from prison.
They could make a standalone film with no connections to previous films, the way it was done before 2006. Which I think is the best solution.
They can then go back to Blofeld at some later date and just forget the 'brother' angle entirely. He can just be the criminal mastermind he was before SP's personal detour.
The "cuckoo" dialogue is some of the best in the film, though. I like the idea of Oberhauser staying Oberhauser and being more or less the Largo of SP with the personal connection to Bond...with Blofeld in the shadows where he belongs...or a truly menacing onscreen Blofeld (Savalas came closest; the other three are just bollocks--Mendes/Waltz should have looked long and hard at Savalas' performance, not Pleasance's).
Basically, Pleasance was too short, Savalas was too Brooklyn, & Grey was too drag queen.
They have to continue and, IMO, finish what has been started. Do it well and let DC walk away. A random standalone would be an odd swan song.
In the LEAKS thread, we have posts from someone who claimed to have discussed with Mendes himself about the future of the series, and Mendes told him they made SPECTRE as the final Craig movie.
The poster went on with weird hypothesis about what it means and an arrogant attitude (he didn't read the leaked scripts but though he had the most complete scoops nevertheless !), but some other respected members here acknowledged he was the real deal thanks to some private messages.
Plus, he did indeed wrote some things that were scoops at that time, and that turned out to be true : namely that they had so much problem after Craig's knee injury that each time you need Bond to run, you see camera tricks to hide the fact he could not really run. And well, when one watch the movie, it seems indeed you don't have the usual shots you had in other movies of him running close to the camera after the injury happened in the shooting. At one time, they even had to use CG face replacement on a stuntman for a "simple" run... And there's this weird "chase at pace speed" in Mexico, and Bond pops out of the crowd to catch him finally.
So here now you have the same info as the readers of the LEAKS thread (although some still don't believe the original poster, I must add).
Although no one knows probably what will happen, I think Craig's knee problem (he still has to go under surgery) should not be forgotten. Even losing the fitness during the long hospital stay he talked about in some interview, and then having to find back the physical shape, is not a minor issue. Theatre play means less physical action...
If they ended it here that's all good. My comment was made with the assumption Craig would return. If he does you have to continue the story. If he doesn't it's a solid end and you install a new 007.