It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Same for me, more or less. But I also dislike SF's first hour; only the PTS is great
I’m a big fan of Skyfall (ranked 3 for me), while Spectre is at 10.
July 2021: Love Skyfall, like Spectre
What changed your mind?
Skyfall is one of my favourites of the series and Spectre is probably not far off my top 10
I think the pushback in some fan communities towards SF has to do with how massively popular it is among general audiences that there's a desire to take it down a peg, which is not at all dissimilar with GF and how fans and audiences treat that differently.
Then there's the opposite with OHMSS, considered the crown jewel of the franchise among fans but pretty much 99.9% dismissed by general audiences just because it doesn't feature a beloved Bond actor.
Anyway, as far as I feel, I adore SF and consider it top three material. SP is very middle of the road. I like parts of it a lot, but not as a whole.
Good question. I'm not sure, but the more I saw SP the more I found things to appreciate in it. I am still not a fan of the foster-brother angle, and the third act is a mess. But still, there is much to like here: the PTS, the Sciarra funeral scene, the clinic scenes (especially the "barteneder"), the entire Tangiers sequence, and the train fight. Newman takes a lot of flak on here, and though I think his SP score is not nearly as good as SF, there are some beautiful tracks in SP. The "Madeleine" theme is particularly haunting and beautiful, top notch.
It should also be noted that our viewing of films does not occur in a vacuum. When I first saw SP, I was going through tough times. Two aunts and a best friend died in the weeks leading up to the premiere. I don't think that that had much to do with my disappointment in the SP, but years later, as I have looked back on that time and have now understood it as an important period of growth, SP factors in a little differently and more positively.
Sprectre... I really do like it, but I think it’s hard for me to look at objectively. There’s this general air of wasted potential that hangs over the film and is difficult to shake. If it were in a vacuum I’d probably view it much more favourably, but from the general outline, cast, crew, etc. it has all the opportunities to be as good as Skyfall but it completely misses.
Skyfall sits at number two behind OHMSS.
Mendes was a one off director. He never should have been back
I'm only going off what he stated how he exhausted all of his Bond creativity with SF and had nothing left for Spectre
And Mendes knew it. He wanted to delay filming but EON wanted to push forward. The film wasn't ready yet.
Given that there is absolutely nothing Campbell can do that Mendes can't, thats sort of true! He's not in the same class as Mendes at all. I'll never understand where the idea of Martin Campbell, Master Director comes from.
I think Spectre did have a fresh concept: make a Bond movie. Since Dalton retired, we'd had Bond apologize for itself in Goldeneye, 90s action star Bond with machine guns in the later Brosnans, generic cop who doesn't play by the rules in Casino Royale... Spectre just goes for it: M's classic office, proper SPECTRE meeting and everything. Eye scar, crater base, it finally stopped being afraid of Austin Powers, to put it mildly!
It's one of the reasons I was delighted that Danny Boyle stepped down from B25: I had zero interest in finding out what his novel "brilliant idea" was. Let's just make some Bond movies.
SP is certainly the most traditional Bond film of Craig’s run and I think that was the conceit that Mendes wanted run on so that it would be different from his first gig. For SF he was aiming to do something special with Bond for the 50th anniversary, whereas for SP he was indulging in the Bond tropes that tickled his inner childhood, albeit in a manner that was still consistent with Craig’s run.
"Fortunate" would be a great name for his memoir! :))
Apart from the courage Spectre shows in proudly owning some dusty Bond tropes, it also marked a step away from some of the emotionally overwrought content of all the other post-LTK films. I'm almost certainly Spectre's biggest fan around here, but I admit to seeing the missed opportunities and occasional lack of engagement in terms of plot. MI6 being dismantled is a pretty big deal, but the movie doesn't really sell it as strongly as it could have. But for me, even these "missed opportunities" are something of a plus. It's nice not seeing Bond on the verge of some psychic apocalypse in this movie. He's not sniffing women's corpses or losing his mind and risking his job. I suspect Mendes, like most directors, would have loved to have the time to add two more scoops of gravitas, and I'm glad he didn't get it!
Then again, I'm also of the belief that writer's strikes have generally been a blessing to the series, so I'm probably just weird.
I like this take. I've said for a while why can't we just go back to what attracted us to James Bond movies begin with and I've gotten responses bordering on the suck it up, it's the way movies are now variety as far as exploring the character's personal side.
That said, SP doesn't exactly match or improve on any of the past tropes, at least as far as I'm concerned. There can be a blend of the serious and the traditional that makes it unique. Hoping NTTD reaches that.
Why they chose WOTW over that is beyond me.
Their “Spectre” was kind of dull and plodding, not unlike what we got.
I'll have to look up Man of War. I thought they were the same song....
To make this not too long, I still think the main deficit is in this stupid foster brother tale pretending to bring the tribulations of the previous fims together. It just doesn't make any sense. They should have forgotten about Bloberhauser and find a different narative instead.
Other than that, I was surprised (on the third try) that this is a solid and enjoyable action movie.
I'd therefore say that while I hugely likr SKYFALL, which is in my top four and right behind FRWL, SP isn't as bad as I remember it, and would probably be ready to admit that I like that movie...albeit not near as much as the,b brilliant SKYFALL.