Long ago, a few months after this blog began, I reviewed Skyfall fairly positively. At that time, most of us were coming off “Batman fever”, so to speak, and the idea of an “anti-hero” still seemed novel back then. Daniel Craig’s James Bond films, however, always had this problem of balancing the light and dark elements of the Bond character into a film. Do you follow the more cynical, violent, psychopathic James Bond of Ian Fleming’s original novels and short stories, or do you turn Bond into a silly, campy cartoon character with witty one-liners who beds the ladies? Skyfall, I think, made a distinct pivot into the former, rather than the latter; it worked precisely due to its consistently, its clear villain motivations, and actual stakes (i.e., Judi Dench as M being the real Bond Girl). While I wouldn’t call it my favorite Bond film by any stretch of the imagination, it remained engaging throughout. I watched it again last year, and I have to say I liked it even more the second time; Mendes did a fine job balancing the two sides of Bond without feeling overbearing.
Spectre, unfortunately, does not try to retain the “Bond” character in any way. I’m guessing Sam Mendes and the writing team (most of which returned from Skyfall) wanted to create a dark, brooding vision of the original Bond terrorist organization, but corporate decisions reigned supreme. At the same time, they wanted to use the silly, and serious, Bond iconography as a callback. Next, they wanted to link the previous three Daniel Craig movies into a cohesive plot, with a minor retcon throwing the entire Craig series into a new light. Lastly, they wanted to create a contemplative, slow-paced family drama where people ruminate about the nature of spycraft. Does this sound ambitious? Quite! But a lot of it seems like they wanted to copy Skyfall, but without any of the heart and soul.
And that is precisely why Spectre fails so miserably at nearly every concept it handles. Someone at Eon Productions obviously told them “you need such and such many action scenes, and also copy most of Skyfall’s plot about the 007 program being obsolete so it needs to be eliminated”. I am NOT kidding you – they re-use the whole “secret agents are dinosaurs” angle of the last film for what seems like no reason at all. The framing does not work a second time, I assure you, and that constant structural borrowing leads to all sorts of pacing problems. What happens instead is that we get action scenes without stakes, tons of quiet moments where people silently talk in room to the point where you can hear a pin drop in the movie theater, and James Bond slowly walking through empty buildings as if he could be killed (seriously. Really.). I can barely remember half the actions sequences, other than to point out I had no investment in them. There’s just too much angst and exposition (also conveyed in action scenes, I kid you not) for much of anything to happen. They also bend over backwards to link this film to the previous three, which seems incredibly dumb and convoluted, and also points to the biggest problem with the film: boredom. It’s very boring, and exposition heavy, yet also contains tons of dead air that could clear up plot problems. It’s weird!
That goes especially for Christoph Waltz, a man so perfectly fitted for a Bond villain role. Why does the script waste him so, and why is he so boring in what could be such a juicy role? Like Skyfall, they introduce him far too late to establish a big presence; further, his motivations, unlike Silva, are so hilarious and psychologically pretentious that it totally destroyed my suspension of belief. The screenwriters utterly fail in their revisionism of a classic character, and it’s really a shame too. I honestly couldn’t figure out what Spectre planned to do, other than “watch things”, and almost all their “evil” actions take place OFF SCREEN. IN A MOVIE THAT IS TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG. To called this pacing languid is being generous; they have all this time, probably dictated by studio heads, and yet they fail to get anything off the ground at all.
Here’s the thing, though: I know a lot of people will probably like this film. Spectre will, at the very least, engage you from beginning to end, even though it lacks a lot of essential elements that would transform it from “average” to “good”. Daniel Craig’s Bond always highlights the possible intensity of the character, and that certainly lets you stay engaged on some level. Here, however, they try turning Bond into a cartoon character, which totally clashes with the self-important seriousness of the plot. Craig just does not do one-liners and quips very well; they seem forced, and if they ARE forced, why bother putting them into the movie at all? Daniel Craig is a fine actor, and he does serious acting rather well even in Spectre, so I’m curious why they added so many elements that screw him over?
The only great part of the film, and I say this without equivocation, is Léa Seydoux (the less said about Monica Belucci, who comes into the film frame for approximately 5 minutes). She plays a Bond girl, sure, but a Bond girl with depth and, gasp!, an actual character arc! It’s a simple one, given that we’re watching a James Bond movie, but there’s an actual progression to who she is, what she’s doing, and her relationship with Bond. I would hesitate to say she’s the most fully fleshed-out Bond woman since Eva Green in Casino Royale, which is saying a lot (at least in my opinion), and certainly an improvement over disposable women in Skyfall.
As you can see, a bunch of disparate elements, no matter how great, simply don’t coalesce in Spectre; they try to replicate Skyfall’s success without a holistic vision in mind, which spoils the film from a tone and structure perspective. Reviewing individual parts might reveal their quality in themselves, but together, on screen, it turns into this alternating soft/quiet/loud mess of poor pacing, bad characterization, boring action scenes, and wasted potential. It makes me unbearably sad to say this, but I simply cannot recommend Spectre except for the most hardcore of James Bond fans (like myself).
