Spectre: Not the Ghost at the Feast

Watch the film before reading this if you care about spoilers.

So it turns out if you go to a premiere there are no adverts before the film. If you take nothing else away from this post at least you have that useful knowledge. Therefore, if you have serious disagreement with anything you read here it’s because I missed the first four minutes of the film which would have changed my opinion to align with yours if I’d seen them.

Let’s get it out of the way then; Spectre is a good film and, more importantly, it is a good Bond film. I feel this distinction needs to be made for a few franchises. For instance, Iron Man 2 is not a good film but it is a good Avengers film. Spectre lays to rest a question that has been hanging over the reboot; are they just rolling the dice and having on/off luck or does someone really know what they are doing behind it all? With Spectre in the mix we’re up to 75% good films.

Now admittedly, everyone has their own opinion of what makes a good Bond film and it boils down to what is the essence of Bond for them. In broad terms I find the division to be along the lines of:

Gadgets: Sci-fi and Deus ex Machina vs Minimal and practical

Cheesy one-liners: Prolific and not funny vs Occasional, mild and self-aware

Extravagant villain: Lives in a volcano/space or has a diamond face vs mildly psychotic with additional flair

(I fear my bias may have slipped in there)

Spectre for me plays the lines nicely. His watch is a gadget but it doesn’t have a laser or a grappling hook; it’s a bomb. The dialogue is genuinely funny (Bond interrogating the rat) and the plot is straightforward (depending on how deeply you look at the cuckoo thing). The villain is odd and pays tasteful homage to the canon (actually maybe the cat was too much). The pacing was also spot-on and does not make the film’s length felt. Although the action may not have been jaw-dropping or even scored by the classic Bond fanfare it felt grounded and real which added tension and grit. Perhaps the highlight of this is the henchman fight on the train. Mr Hinx dominates and throws 007 around with ease. His raw strength and power poses a genuine threat to an aging Bond and it is only with Madeline’s intervention that James escapes.

Of course I do have some minor observations. As I mentioned in my first post about Spectre (http://oldsirnorris.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/inspectre-gadget-lets-hope-not.html) any attempts to retro-actively crowbar in an overarching puppeteer organisation is going to go poorly. The three films are self-encompassing and standalone albeit with carry overs (e.g. Vespyr). There is no suggestion of an as-wide a picture as Spectre suggests in any of them which makes Blofeld’s revelation somewhat difficult to swallow. What’s more the only justification for this is a gallery of pictures of characters in the basement of MI6. It does not detract from the overall experience but in age where post-credit scene Marvel films are an accepted method for linking films together it seems just a bit more fore-planning and effort could have made the overall package that more rewarding.

Bond’s torture by Blofeld is sickeningly visceral. One poor lady left the auditorium in our viewing. If you felt uncomfortable watching Bond’s Double Ohs getting smashed at the end of Casino Royale then this will likely make you writhe in your seat like I did. However, I’m fairly sure Blofeld mentions the operation would affect James’ vision, hearing and balance and yet during the escape Bond displays superb marksmanship and coordination. Again, the second intrusion into Bond’s skull should have influenced his recognition skills as planned but it just… doesn’t… without any real explanation as to why. Well… they DO “explain” it which brings me to:

Piss-poor romance. Bond gets the girl. We all know that. It’s a staple of the franchise that 007 beds at least a handful of women per film. Must we suffer through a LOVE story though? She LOVES him. Really? I know the screen writers need to be mindful of an “out” for Craig’s Bond but the rapid change in Swan’s attachment to James is difficult to contend with.

Some other tertiary thoughts to wrap up on:

·         I loved seeing M doing spymastery spy things. It refreshes the character following Judy Dench's departure.

·         “It’s like poetry; they rhyme”: from hollowed crater vs hollowed volcano to M sitting in the dark office v 007 sitting in the dark office there is a lot of self-referencing in this film and if there’s one thing I love it’s a good reference.

·         We’ve “killed” the henchman (Quotation marks because he didn’t die ON SCREEN so…) “What should we do now?”… sex? My eyes almost rolled out of their sockets.

Thanks for reading.

-Norris