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
It’s in my top 10.
Agree with all those. Especially the London ending; I usually stop the film once the Morocco base blows up.
The only other slight change I would make would be in the Spectre board meeting scene. I would make it closer to the sixties originals, by having someone looking nervous that they’re going to get killed, only for the person sitting next to them get killed instead. Old school I know, but it would have been great.
Off of this, does anyone have it as their number one favorite of the series?
that's like asking if someone has DAD as their number 1 favourite.... ;)
On November 24, 2002 it was. 😁
Hey, I've seen at least two users over the years who had it as their number one! You never know.
I remember seeing SP #1 only one time in the Bond movie rankings thread.
Also, it's nice to see this thread actually getting some traction. Please do post here if you happen to watch it any time soon. Try to watch it and give it the benefit of the doubt. In what ways does the film work? Is there any world in which the Madeleine + Bond relationship thrives and works successfully?
If it made my Top 20, that would be a gigantic win for me.
The good:
The cinematography
The scene with mr white
The scene when they’re waiting for the rolls Royce
The bad:
- The piss yellow grade
- Uninspired action
- The fact the whole film looks like it was shot in the height of lockdown. The car chase is awful. The fight on the train is empty. The finale with C is an empty office. The finale scene where they drive off is empty. It’s soulless.
- Exposition upon exposition. The scene on the Thames with tanner is just terrible
- A non existent chemistry between the main bond girl. What is madeleines character again? Miserable? Soulless. She had little in the way of personality.
- A finale that’s about as tense as waiting for a Kettle to boil. Literally no stakes whatsoever that we care about, and isn’t tied to the main plot
- Scooby doo gang solving the main and weak threat.
- Logic. Are we supposed to believe the new sureveillance building and organisation closes at 6pm.
- the brother twist.
Not sure about everyone else, but I like every Bond film. From dead last in rankings to top place.
This is absolutely spot on, @Matt007.
On one hand, there is the attempt to revert to Moore-style humor and broadness, the qualities once stereotypical of Bond films. On the other, there is a surveillance plotline that is meant to be ultra-topical and relevant. Then we have yet another "this time it's personal" plotline involving Bond's past--a shameless attempt at milking a cow Skyfall wrung dry. Finally comes a half-assed attempt to connect all the previous Craig films together into one big super-story (shades of Marvel!).
These four goals cancel each other out. I would have kept only one.
The "Brofeld" plotline has no purpose beyond trend-humping. Blofeld gains nothing from having a childhood connection to Bond--a personal motivation actually reduces him. The world of Bond itself excludes childhood and deals with adult fantasies. Bond rarely reflects on his childhood or the people from it. Skyfall got away with peeking at Bond's childhood because this gave us a fitting locale for the finale, and the film never pretended that Bond had a great personal investment in the old house (which he actually hated).
Blofeld's effectiveness as a villain has always been in his status as a mastermind able to impersonally bedevil Bond across multiple films through the reach of Spectre. Each near-encounter, over the course of the films, builds up anticipation to the moment when Blofeld finally steps out to engage Bond in open combat. The early Bond films recognized this and did a superb job of building up Blofeld (who begins as a fragmented image of a hand petting a cat) and Spectre across FRWL, TB, and YOLT.
But what happens in Spectre? Bond meets Blofeld for the first time and defeats him right off the bat. The film is ludicrously eager to strip Blofeld of his mystique and mysterious. It even tells us how he got his scar! Perhaps No Time To Die will divulge how Blofeld adopted his cat.
For me the most successful element in Spectre remains the Nine Eyes plot, which really is relevant and topical. In today's world of digital surveillance Bond is an anachronism, a single man in a world of systems, networks, AI, and algorithms. Having him triumph against this world is a fantasy appropriate for our time. I recall that earlier drafts by Purvis and Wade had "Heinrich Stockmann" as Denbigh's master instead of Blofeld (though in some drafts the characters were the same). Had I been a Sony exec, I would have dropped all the foster-brother nonsense and made Stockmann a Spectre agent. Blofeld himself would be indirectly referred to throughout the film but only revealed (face unseen) toward the end. I would have dropped Mr. White, Madeline, and the more strenuous attempts to link all the Craig films together, aside from stating that Spectre operated under various aliases, including Ellipsis and Quantum, or had subcontracted services with those groups. All of this would have required a massive rewrite.
Spectre never decided what sort of movie it was going to be; hence the symptomatic malaise in Mendes's direction. The filmmakers also did not know if this would be Craig's last hurrah, which contributed to the film's fatal indecisiveness. It introduces Spectre and Blofeld only to wrap them up by the end of the film, and this feels like a hurried botch. The attempt to give Bond a send-off also feels schematic and unearned, since Madeline is a plot concept rather than a character with an affinity to Bond.
Give us more of Bond recovering from the torture and wandering around Blofeld's base a la YOLT.
If they *had* to give Fiennes a bigger storyline, they could have intercut between M/C in London and Bond/Blofeld in the base in Morocco. They still could have had the moment where Blofeld replays the tape of White to Madeleine, because it works. Show us how conflicted Madeleine is--maybe she even goes over to Blofeld's side for a while.
And they probably should have made Tanner the traitor, as intended. We're so far from the novel Tanner at this point that it wouldn't have mattered. And after all, QoS killed off Mathis not long ago, which to my recollection never happened in the novels.
First, the script/story: Spectre makes so many dumb and barely coherent choices: there is no reason whatsoever for Bond and Blofeld to be connected, and it shows the desperate attempt by EON to ape the Marvel cinematic universe and have every film have connective tissue. It's just lazy, uninspired by this point. "It was me, James. I'm the author of all your pain". I groaned out loud and sunk into my seat in the theatre when the "twist" was revealed, and I remember some murmurs from the audience lending itself to audible confusion. I can't wait for standalone, self-contained films after the Craig era.
Second, I never bought Madeleine and Bond falling in love. At all. It would've made more sense to have her just be Mr. White's daughter who needs protection as she has knowledge on Blofeld/SPECTRE; there was no need to shoehorn a romantic subplot that was underdeveloped in the first place. Lea Seydoux does a great job at playing a woman with a haunted past, and I enjoyed some of the playful banter between her character and Bond, especially in the Tangier scenes.
Next, I'd say Thomas Newman dropped the ball with the score for this film by rehashing almost the same score from Skyfall, it's unforgivable. Apart from a coupe of tracks - the Day of the Dead sequence in Mexico City and the Silver Wraith drive - the soundtrack is virtually lifeless. I can forgive a bad film if the score can give it some flair, and John Barry definitely proved this. But here? Severely disappointing.
Last, Daniel Craig's performance as the man himself is....well, it's kind of a mixed bag in a way. I get that maybe they were opting for a lightheartedness of the Moore era, mixed with some of Connery's cool and collected version of Bond. But my favorite Craig performance to this day is from Quantum of Solace : cool, ruthless, rugged, and sharp like a tiger. Here, in this film, it's just all static, meandering, and very dry - take a look at the scenes at the clinic, versus the scene in the train with Vesper during Casino Royale. Same man, but it's virtually night and day. Some people say he was more confident here, but I felt something was tonally off with Craig's Bond portrayal throughout Spectre that I wish the actor would've made a choice in any direction. Craig does best when he's doing his own thing as the character.
I will give it some credit, though: from a purely technical standpoint, the cinematography is beautiful and commands attention: Austria and Morocco really standout visually, and the look of the film, overall, lends itself to an almost dreamlike and "spectral" atmosphere in certain scenes, evidenced in the L'Americain and torture scenes. Hoyte von Hoytema's cinematography mixed with Sam Mendes' direction makes the film move with a flowing elegance. With all that aside, the rest of Spectre really just doesn't measure up once you start chipping away at the narrative and plot threads.
Whilst I agree with you in the main, I can't believe you've written that from seeing the film once, five years ago. ;)
It's my number one, yeah. Wasn't at first, but after a couple years I was surprised to find its my favorite Bond film...
I agree with the vast majority of this statement. The Nine Eyes plot, that arrived very late in the creative process, should have been the heart of the story that Mendes wanted to tell. What a pity that this idea only came after the rejection of Logan's story, and therefore the overall elaboration of the narrative structure. It is interesting to note that Tabitha Shick, a MGM executive, at point suggested "to reveal that C has been Blofeld in disguise". I don't know if it got as far as a complete draft, but that would have certainly been the best way to go. Maybe not to the point of making Denbigh an alias for Blofeld, but at least giving him the role of the plot's main antagonist.
Another interesting idea from Shick was to reinvent SPECTRE as "a secret agency comprised of the world's most reprehensible terrorists", with the controlling heads of every foreign territory being these terrorists in disguise. Again, I think it goes too far but the principle is interesting, and the same thing seen on a smaller scale could see high-ranking members of several international agencies revealed as SPECTRE moles, ready to take control of their respective services. Shick notes: "To complete Blofeld's plan to control the world's security, perhaps the UK is the final seat and Blofeld intends to fill it with C." This whole approach, ultimately turned down, would have seemed more satisfying to me than the underdeveloped Nine Eyes subplot eventually chosen.
If I recall correctly TheWizardOfIce once mentioned that he liked 80% of Spectre. If they killed off Kinnear's Tanner that number would have gone up to 95% for him.
The final act needed to follow TSWLM.
1. Bond must save London from catastrophe.*
2. The femme fatale is kidnapped and Bond must save her.
3. The henchman is still alive and Bond must defeat him.
4. Bond kills the villain and saves the girl.
The end.
Right?
*My thoughts: Spectre has rigged the demolition of the MI6 building to create an even bigger explosion that could kill/injure thousands. (This was what C was up to; not Nine Eyes). As crowds and media outlets gather to watch the implosion, Bond and the demolition team realize that they are not in control of the detonation. Bond races into the old building to save the day, finding and dismantling the devices, just avoiding a catastrophe.
Yeah, something. But given that Blofeld used MI6, it stood to reason that keeping that aspect of the plot is easy.
This also means that any future Bond films shot near Vauxhall will need to digitally remove the still-standing and completely undestroyed MI6 building.
It was also a Fleming trope for the girl to rescue Bond (in MR, DAF, AVTAK, TB, OHMSS, & YOLT).
Makeover the PTS. Sounds like I'm probably alone on this one, but apart from that cool opening tracking shot, it's a pretty underwhelming PTS. The series had an incredible streak of thrilling PTSes from TLD-SF. A heavily greenscreened grapple aboard a helicopter is not my idea of getting pumped for what's ahead.
Start out with a proper scene between Bond and M. No cheeky attitude. No weird Tanner stoogery. No Bond hiding what he's doing from M and kind of going rogue with the help of Q and Moneypenny. Just a proper mission and Bond getting down to business.
No C. Weird and unnecessary character and a pretty cringey performance from Scott. In fact, all the Nine Eyes business can go in favor of a grander, more exciting, and more old-school plot. There's nothing remotely exciting about a countdown to a computer system going online unless it's Skynet. Because there's no immediate threat once the countdown finishes. Nothing that can't be undone in a couple days or even weeks, anyway. What tension should the countdown hold for the audience then? So make it a warhead or a rocket launch. Haven't had one of those in awhile and they seriously never go out of fashion.
A small gripe, but if you're going to mention Felix, just put him in the movie.
The midsection of the film is weighed down by two pretty dang underwhelming action sequences. So set the Rome chase during the day when you can really see the city packed with people and in its full, detailed glory, and make it about as thrilling as the footchase through London was in M:I-6.
Then go with the original plan of "ski parkour" instead of Bond crashing a biplane into the ground like he has no idea how to pilot an aircraft. Film the whole thing with stunt doubles and CGI Craig's face in like in SF if you have to. Just do something big and bold and memorable with these middle-act action sequences.
The train fight can stay, but Hinx needs a personality and some unique characteristic. Bautista can act (as evidenced by Guardians of the Galaxy), so give the guy something to work with. You can probably come up with a more original setting than the series' seventh bout aboard a train, but the intensity and choreography were good.
Scrap the foster brother nonsense. In fact, don't cast Waltz as Blofeld at all. Make Mr. White Blofeld with "White" having been a rather unimaginative code name. If you want to tie it all together, White was the obvious mastermind reaching back to the first post-titles scene of CR. You can even keep Madeleine as Blofeld's daughter and still have her be the love of Bond's life. That would actually be far more original and more interesting than Bond and Blofeld as pseudo-brothers. Cast Waltz as an Austrian ally. A descendent of Hannes Oberhauser even.
The fourth act in London has to go for all the obvious reasons, of which there are legion. Instead, have a great big old-fashioned showdown at the lair in Morocco or wherever else you please. The torture scene can stay, but Bond has to escape before actually getting drilled in the head. Or have him get drilled somewhere that's painful but not supposedly completely debilitating.
Finally, we need to see Bond and Madeleine fall in love if they're meant to really be in love. I would have bought Bond giving up the service for Camille in QoS despite their relationship having never even been consummated. It's all in the dialogue, the performances, the direction, the music, the structuring of scenes—and it just wasn't there between Bond and Madeleine in this one.
Also:
Put Deakins back on cinematography. Entice him with an irrefusably good script. Everybody wins on that one.
Put Arnold back on scoring duties.
Have somebody else sing "The Writing's On the Wall." (Good song, rough vocals.)
Call the movie something more original than Spectre. Any old Fleming chapter title will do. Except maybe "Irma La Not So Douce." Well... Depends where you go with the new script.
So yes, there are alternate reality versions of B24 I'd prefer to see to the one we got.
Titles are hard, though. They were Fleming's greatest gift.
It remains #24 on my list - I‘d prefer the complete over-the-top comical Moonraker over this messy film any time.
Spectre is so sad to watch because it had it all: Huge budget, top-notch actors, Blofeld ... but boy did they mess up the script. No way I will ever warm to this film besides some really good, selected scenes. Let alone the mess of a title track and cringeworthy titles in general. Always have to skip these, too. Shiver me timbers ...