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Everyone is entitled to an opinion, including the critics. I'm sure your surveys of various sites reflect some views, but certainly not all views.
Ultimately no matter what you, I or anyone here may think of it, the overall narrative will be written collectively by others, as it always is with these sort of things. Those with the largest bullhorns get to set the agenda and shape the story. Whether that's right or not is a different matter. One's personal opinion is most important of course.
You'll get mine tomorrow.
It'd be a shame is this 'narrative' goes negatively the way you fear and reduces the bond stock as it where when EON now shop around.
If this film is more 'formulaic' (and I've heard views both to the contrary and views supporting this thesis here and elsewhere) then the rating is understandable. We cannot expect critics to give a pure 'Bond spectacle' like film a superior collective rating. I certainly wouldn't expect that from them, unless the narrative/story/script is tight.
When I started reading the UK reviews, I could see in the reviews itself that some things weren't adding up. I could see it in the spoiler free reviews here too.
The question is, in totality, given its script flaws, how does it stand up?.......how will it stand up in time?. That's the question. Will I personally see it overall positive or negative? That's what interests me the most.
PS: The best spy film I've seen this year (by far) is MI-RN. Cruise delivered and then some with that film, even with my high expectations. I am excited to see if SP can do the same.
No one who came out of SF in 2012 would have thought Spectre would've basically been a film that wouldn't have looked out of place in the 70s.
CR played with the formula and took risks. "Shaken or stirred""do I look like I give a Damn", and the Aston flip 20 seconds into the car chase.
Credit to the Sony execs. Having read a few articles on the email leaks basically everything wrong with spectre was identified 18 months ago. They clearly couldn't fix it though.
Or well, there will be no actual narrative anyone will agree upon, and some who will decide the narrative is a positive one will claim the most influent were the positive ones, and some others who will decide the narrative is negative will claim the most influent were the negative ones.
Already some here explain the "Top Critics Rotten Tomatoes" ratings is more influent that the default "Rotten Tomatoes" ratings, and that the US blogs from Compuserve are not part of the narrative anyway :)
Would that happen with something like Bond which is event cinema, that is old farts like me make the effort to endure the cinema to see it but wouldn't otherwise go even for a 5/5 film.
In a matter of days only word of mouth will now count in the US and how it has performed in the 2nd week here in the UK.
Yes, 2nd and especially 3rd (Thanksgiving) week in the US and how it drops off/or holds into weeks 2 and 3 in the UK. This is what I'm really interested in.
Word of mouth has to be infectious to get casual fans to see it. That's what happened with SF. If it's just "it's ok" that won't get the casual fan into the seat on the margin. It has to be contagious. Bond has the inbuilt fan base but it has to go beyond that to create the SF level success outside the UK (barring week 1 when a lot of people will go just because it is SF's sequel).
The last time I have seen so many excited and happy-go-lucky people in one space was on the opening night of Skyfall.
Spectre is showing on ALL screens it's insane. Movies like The Martian are banished from Switzerland for the next two days or are only shown once a day on smaller screens.
Needless to say, after the film ended everybody was like totally in awe and exhilarated at the same time. That was different with Skyfall I have to say.
The last time I have experienced that level of satisfaction of a large crowd at the cinema was with CR and GE.
I agree, its clear that Skyfall was the first Bond movie for a lot of people. That's why the Spectre teaser was smart, it clearly tied in to (and even name-checked) Skyfall. We're seeing ongoing sagas everywhere now, with Marvel, DC, Hunger Games, Hobbit etc etc. That's the big trend and EON have jumped on it, people like multi-film arcs that form a big picture with character journeys, callbacks and references.
If the audience drastically dips for Thanksgiving I imagine there is no coming back from that?
The one thing that goes against SP compared to SF is that it isn't a momentous Bond film. By that I mean some Bond films are seen as "the one where he marries", "the one where M dies" and
i'm confused
"i miss the wit, i miss the humour. theres not enough of it here"
i thought everyone is saying there is too much wit..too much humour..for a DC bond film
these reviews are all over the place. and this reviewer calls himself a Bond fan. He can't even pronounce SPECTRE correctly !
I'm convinced most of the critics that bash Spectre are young people under 30 that have no understanding of the franchise and have grown up to CR, QOS and SF and can't bare to have a Craig movie that resembles movies of the past eras of Brosnan and Moore.
Its gotten worse. 61%. Its 4% away from DAD. This is not possible. There is some hidden agenda with these negative US reviews.
All i can is that really, all this does is highlight that the rating system at RT, is well out of sync.
I've seen SP twice, and it is a far better film than QOS by a very long way, plus its much more enjoyable to watch, as the pace, and the editing of the film, allows the viewer to absorb the story, and to be able to see whats going on in the action scenes.
Forget the Tomato people in the US............remember SP has had truly excellent reviews in the other countries it has played in so far!
Thankfully known youtubers like Stuckmann and Jahns have given it positive reviews and it's still sitting in the green zone over on metacritics, so hopefully this wont hurt the overall success of the movie, but the reaction to Spectre really seems like a case of either "This is exactly what Bond is, GREAT MOVIE." or "This is exactly what Bond is, MOVIE SUCKS" type of opinions.
I don't see/hear as much hate here with SP. So yea I don't get the rating. It's not fair at all.
The fun and enjoyment factors have got to count for something.
Wow, another critic I can tell I have completely nothing in common with. Even ignoring the "HUGE BOND FAN WHO CAN'T EVEN PRONOUNCE SPECTRE" bit. Seriously, SPECTRE has been said out loud in countless Bond films that this guy claims to be a fan of. It's even said out loud numerous times in the film he's talking about. Ludicrous, and instant non-credibility as far as I'm concerned.
"Bond is influenced by its imitators like Mission Impossible". WHAAAAT? Rogue Nation (which I enjoyed FWIW) BLATANTLY stole from QOS and SF, had a storyline about an MI6 rogue agent seeing revenge, and had Cruise hanging out in London and running round in a tuxedo in many scenes. So now a movie about a spy in a tuxedo with scenes in London is "imitating" Rogue Nation :)) 8-|
Just out of curiosity I went and looked up his video review of Rogue Nation, and yep, no mention of it turning into an obvious Bond clone. Yet again we have a critic praising the imitators who steal from Bond and then thumbing down Bond for being Bond.
I wonder if any of these people who say they miss the wit, gadgets, or Connery etc can just admit that what they really miss is their youth.
There is such a wide divide from the enthusiastic 5-star reviews from London and the US critics (who sadly make up the bulk). This is really surprising and a little depressing, neither the film nor Mendes deserve this.
Is there anyway we can point out the more positive reviews RT are neglecting to mention? Can we bring these tot heir attention?
It's bizarre! OK check this out.
QOS percentage is 65. Spectre is 61. So according to RT, QOS is the "better" movie.
But then notice that QOS gets an overall 6.1/10 and Spectre gets 6.5. Wait, so Spectre IS better? Shouldn't that translate to 61% vs 65%?
Click on Top critics and you see QOS drops to 40% and Spectre rises to 71. So now Spectre is 31% better?!
Absurd.
I'm sure most of us are struggling to reconcile this with our own experiences of watching the film. It would suggest SP is likely to be the biggest Bond flop in the US since LTK?
Not necessarily. If this is a larger than life Bond film, then it is likely to be portrayed as a MR (rather than a TSWLM, which most of us would have liked - due to predecessor SF having taken all the accolades). These larger than life films still tend to make bucketloads of money in the US despite critical panning (err.....cough, cough......DAD).
LTK was more of a dark Bond film. Much higher risk of massive failure at the US box office with that approach. So QoS is the one that likely would have suffered the most at the box office as a result (similar to LTK as a dark Bond film in a way). In fact, it was (being DC's biggest failure in constant inflation adjusted $ in the US).
I recall people saying the only decent thing about LTK was the title song. Thank goodness the same wasn't said of WOTW and SP or we'd be well screwed!
Well that's going a bit far! There is zero indication that this will have any affect on box office. Example, 50 shades of grey had savage reviews and opened to $85 million. Fans are not influenced at all. But we'll have an early idea this time tomorrow.
It may not be a critical success (yet still has every 2 out of 3 critics giving it a passing grade), but financially, SP would have to make less than $72 million in the US to do worse than LTK.
A tad of an overreaction, I was saying the RT rating would suggest that. I absolutely don't think for one minute SP will bomb at the box office. I also said 'since' LTK not 'worse' than.
Anyway there's enough of my earlier posts in this thread tonight to which I've said as you've done that fans will attend regardless.
The real work will be how many of the fans can be impressed enough to persuade the casual cinema goers to see it.
If the direction of the previous three Craig films hadn't have happened one wonders if SP would have got such a drubbing.