James Bond: 007 - Spectre - - Part 11

Status
Not open for further replies.
it tried too hard with an after thought, wasn't organic at all.
 
So a tiny pattern has surfaced that Craig seems to do well with each odd numbered movie.

Maybe his 5th movie will be amazing lol
 
I'd rather not risk it, honestly. To go back to the CR tone, will be too much of a shift.

Casino Royal was not your standard bond movie, it was a great film, with Bond in it. If that makes sense. Rather than a Bond film, with Craig in it -it was a whole new beast. They were heading towards the classic bond movie, but when they got there, it seemed like they forgot the tone and spirit of the Craig movies and just made what they thought the fans wanted.

Spectre just didn't feel relevant, it didn't feel like 2015, it didn't feel like the world was at risk, Bond didn't even feel like he was at risk.

If anything, Spectre should have been a two parter when Bloefeld was introduced.

Start off with london and other cities being attacked, it shocks the world. But we see how this effects a city, what they do in retaliation, we see bond doing his homework, that there is this higher organization at work. It takes him all across europe, he finally gets a clue that takes him to a corporate event - there he learns powerful businessmen are fronting the attacks for their own personal gain, to spy on the governments. It's almost as if the terrorists are one step ahead and turns out a mole is in the ranks. Bond or any government worker tracking this is taken out, which leads to bond in hiding.

Bond misleads 3 key players, trapped in a safe house, to find the mole and it ends in a deadly shoot out.

Part 2.

MI6 reshuffled, M told to drop the search of the top dogs, obviously an insider or pay off, corrupt officials as per usual. Bond tracks down Blofeld to a secret base, army in tow. They storm it, get in, get information, destroy evidence and go back to london with information.

Bond wrestles with his conscious as it shows corruption throughout westminster.

On a break from his duties, bloefeld catches up with bond, hell bent on revenge. They have a personal duel where one is killed and disposed of, with no trace.

Life goes on.

Or something like that, ;)
 
Finally had a chance to see it a few nights ago. It's nowhere near Skyfall, but I thought it was fun overall. Also oddly enough, it feels like Skyfall in the way it's shot, despite the quality of the film itself.

I think the underwhelming aspect of Spectre itself boils down to two issues.

First, the combined forces of Waltz's talent and Tarantino's excellent writing gave us Hans Landa, one of the best film villains of all time, and that's hard to top. Because the bar was set so high, and because it's the role that introduced Waltz to the mainstream, you're almost always gonna feel underwhelmed whenever you see another writer try to have a go at a Waltz character being a scary master manipulator.

Second, the film suffers from "Court of Owls Syndrome". It tells us everything in the previous films was caused by a secret organization that's been pulling the strings all along, then it tries to end their story in a single piece. It creates a shallow form of suspense in the process - you're thinking the whole time "How the hell will Bond/Batman be able to stop this?" - and it never properly delivers on it as a result.
 
Yeah I'm confused. Why is Bond so confident that the threat of Spectre is neutralized to such a degree that he can just ride off into the sunset with Madeleine? Because Blofeld is in prison? First of all, he isn't dead and there's every possibility that he could escape (since Quantum/Spectre had multiple people inside the British government/intelligence services). And part of it is that they didn't really do a great job in defining what Spectre as an organization was/how it operated. Is Blofeld not being directly around enough to cause it to collapse? Because I kind of have a hard time buying that, given previous events. Yet another question that's not explained.

Also, apparently Bond was on a character arc, and I missed it. Why didn't he kill Blofeld again, especially since not ten minutes before he shot at Blofeld the first time that he saw him. I mean I know that M had that (dumb) line about "a license to kill is also a license not to kill." But Bond wasn't around to hear it and, sometimes, killing IS the best option. Blofeld has shown himself to be a serious threat to the entire world, so it would seem to me that killing him IS the best course of action. They didn't think that one through particularly well either it would seem.
 
Well Bond was there at he meeting, and during the scene at the lair where they all moved pretty much like they were Blofeld's army of drones and worker bees, clearly terrified of their leader and doing every single thing at his behest. Perhaps he assumed from what he had witnessed that it is Blofeld that holds them all together and without him they had cut the head off he snake. You also have to remember Blofeld was begging for death at that point, half blind and crippled. Bond was being cruel by sparing him.

As far as Blofeld being left alive, I imagine that Bond has enough faith in his government and in M's not unimpressive skill set to ensure that Blofeld gets thrown into the deepest hole imaginable. There's no way the man is going to face a public trial, not after he what he had done and his reached had been proven. They would have sent the guy straight to a Guantanamo Bay type place, or perhaps some absolute dead zone like the Falklands.


Plus, if Blofeld's death was such a vital necessity for the greater good of the free world, then Bond wouldn't have to worry too much. M was right there, he's a trained soldier who has killed me in the line of duty before. If Blofeld had to die, then M could have done it himself. Bond doesn't need to be the man to constantly pull the trigger and I think from that point of view it probably didn't matter to him if he didn't murder the man personally.
 
Last edited:
Well Bond was there at he meeting, and during the scene at the lair where they all moved pretty much like they were Blofeld's army of drones and worker bees, clearly terrified of their leader and doing every single thing at his behest. Perhaps he assumed from what he had witnessed that it is Blofeld that holds them all together and without him they had cut the head off he snake. You also have to remember Blofeld was begging for death at that point, half blind and crippled. Bond was being cruel by sparing him.

As far as Blofeld being left alive, I imagine that Bond has enough faith in his government and in M's not unimpressive skill set to ensure that Blofeld gets thrown into the deepest hole imaginable. There's no way the man is going to face a public trial, not after he what he had done and his reached had been proven. They would have sent the guy straight to a Guantanamo Bay type place, or perhaps some absolute dead zone like the Falklands.


Plus, if Blofeld's death was such a vital necessity for the greater good of the free world, then Bond wouldn't have to worry too much. M was right there, he's a trained soldier who has killed me in the line of duty before. If Blofeld had to die, then M could have done it himself. Bond doesn't need to be the man to constantly pull the trigger and I think from that point of view it probably didn't matter to him if he didn't murder the man personally.

Just because they're afraid of him doesn't mean that they cannot function if he's not in the same room with him (especially if they know that he's still alive). Heck they were operating just fine without him being directly around in CR and QOS. And as for Bond being confident about M, well he was confident about the previous M as well. And yet she didn't know that one of her own damn bodyguards was working for them until he pulled a gun on her. Leaving him alive just poses more risks than it's worth.

Again, not enough thought put into it by the writers.
 
That's the thing, we can't say that with Blofeld out of the picture (even temporarily) that someone else wouldn't try and usurp his role within the organization or that there wouldn't be in-fighting left in the power void. We don't know that they'd automatically rush to save Blofeld when it was just as likely that they'd take advantage of his current vulnerability. It's in keeping with the novels that they're willing to turn on each at the moment of weakness.

Also, it doesn't change the fact that Bond himself didn't need to pull the trigger. M has a gun and he was standing close by, Blofeld was in no position to defend himself or escape. Bond had effectively defeated him and brought him to the point where he was begging for death. Bond practically served him up on a platter to M, and if Mallory so wanted he could have easily walked up and unloaded his gun into Blofeld's skull. Bond's job had been effectively done, and anything else was M's call.
 
Last edited:
Does anyone know what the WW BO are for Spectre. Boxofficemojo stopped updating their list.
 
So did anyone else spot Daniel Craig in "The Force Awakens"?


Took me two seconds to recognize the voice. He was the guard watching Rey.
 
Yeah I'm confused. Why is Bond so confident that the threat of Spectre is neutralized to such a degree that he can just ride off into the sunset with Madeleine?

He doesn't. He just walks off the bridge with her. There's no certainty that he's "Riding off into the sunset", quitting his job or any of that.

Because Blofeld is in prison? First of all, he isn't dead and there's every possibility that he could escape (since Quantum/Spectre had multiple people inside the British government/intelligence services). And part of it is that they didn't really do a great job in defining what Spectre as an organization was/how it operated. Is Blofeld not being directly around enough to cause it to collapse? Because I kind of have a hard time buying that, given previous events. Yet another question that's not explained.

I would imagine the fate of SPECTRE is left open-ended for a reason.

Also, apparently Bond was on a character arc, and I missed it. Why didn't he kill Blofeld again, especially since not ten minutes before he shot at Blofeld the first time that he saw him. I mean I know that M had that (dumb) line about "a license to kill is also a license not to kill." But Bond wasn't around to hear it and, sometimes, killing IS the best option. Blofeld has shown himself to be a serious threat to the entire world, so it would seem to me that killing him IS the best course of action. They didn't think that one through particularly well either it would seem.

How is just killing Blofeld efficient?

He didn't kill Blofeld because the combined lessons of three previous films have taught him it's more useful to have an enemy alive for questioning and intelligence gathering purposes.

Blofeld himself isn't the only/real threat. The organization he created is. With Blofeld, they have a better chance at learning more about/infiltrating/defeating SPECTRE, at least that's the thinking from an intelligence standpoint.
 
In the novels Spectre dissolved after Blofeld's defeat, but that's because the novel version was a cult of personality created by him. The film never specifies if the same applies to its own respective version.
 
It is mentioned in Thunderball that Largo would take over control of SPECTRE if Blofeld died, but of course Largo ended up predeceasing him. In the novels it seemed like SPECTRE was crippled even before Blofeld was defeated.

The films too for that matter. It seems to be a far smaller organization in OHMSS and DAF than it was in FRWL, TB, and YOLT.
 
Last edited:
In the novels Spectre dissolved after Blofeld's defeat, but that's because the novel version was a cult of personality created by him. The film never specifies if the same applies to its own respective version.

Nasty
 
So did anyone else spot Daniel Craig in "The Force Awakens"?


Took me two seconds to recognize the voice. He was the guard watching Rey.

How could you not, his voice was recognizable af

I didn't catch him the first time, but I did think he sounded different to the other Stormies. The second time, when he says "tighten those restraints" it's like, ahh, there he is.
 
His credit on IMDB is amazing [BLACKOUT]Stormtrooper JB-007[/BLACKOUT]
 
Well holy ****. MUCH better than Smith's. This should have been the song. Of course Radiohead would deliver.
 
I'm a little late to the game, but after all the controversy and a lot of negative/regular feedback, I gotta say I was pleasantly surprised with SPECTRE. I really liked it. Mendes still can't create exciting, truly exciting action sequences, but for the most part everything works. This is classic Bond. I don't want Craig to stop. He has at least one more Bond film in him.
 
Would I be wrong to not particularly like either one?

'Writing on the Wall' seems to have a little more soul about it but the final composition is very slow and one pace for me.

The Radiohead one has great music and tempo but the song is a tad disappointing.
 
When in doubt, always go Radiohead... stupid EON.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top
monitoring_string = "afb8e5d7348ab9e99f73cba908f10802"