Spectre - members review thread

Salomé wrote:

Stamper wrote:

Vincent Cassel is not married to Monica anymore, she is I think now single.

I think they have been separated for a while now.

Blimey, I need to update my dossier.

bitchcraft wrote:

G section wrote:

The car chase promised a lot but resorted to Johnny English-style gags.

I'll be pissed if I have to continue watching Fast and Furious sequels and other franchises for car action...

Problem solved. I should add that this car chase is a lot better than the one in Spectre:

G section wrote:

The car chase promised a lot but resorted to Johnny English-style gags.

Oh dear...

I'll be seeing it next Wednesday (opens here 2 days ahead of US release)...

Hilly KCMG wrote:

Salomé wrote:

Stamper wrote:

Vincent Cassel is not married to Monica anymore, she is I think now single.

I think they have been separated for a while now.

Blimey, I need to update my dossier.

Supposedly they had an open relationship so it couldn't have ended due to his lack of opportunities to stray.

Ah, I see. Thought Cassel was a bit of a wild man or maybe I've seen too many of his movies.

I've just seen Spectre. I think Ambler's review is largely spot on, though I do applaud Spectre for the series' best use of hentai.

I was entirely unaffected by Spectre which is almost offensive considering this one was supposed to be more Traditional™. I liked Lea Seydoux. Bring her back. I liked the torture bit. I thought it looked ... fine. The score was great — resonated much more than Skyfall's. And I think I want Ray Fiennes around as M for a while. But it just doesn't feel right. I think it takes a kind of deftness to mix ejector seats and a half-baked commentary on drones that Mendes and his team of 37 writers couldn't possibly conjure.

Maybe it's time for Craig to move on after all. Not that I didn't like Spectre — it certainly is not the drudge that Quantum was, and I place Quantum somewhere in the middle of the pack — but it seemed like no one involved with the project was really that interested.

Not sure I buy the argument that Skyfall trumps Spectre because it's more adult, though. I think Skyfall is the better picture because it stands completely on its own. Spectre needs crutches.

Here's my full review for anyone who gives a shit.

Very much inclined to agree with your review, JW.

bitchcraft wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

bitchcraft wrote:

How would you rate the action sequences?

No point asking me.

Point noted. Anyone else?

There have been better… Certainly not as exciting as what should be in a Bond film.

Nice write up, JW…

But given the fact the whole film virtually hinges on Oberhauser, what are your thoughts on that?

2 stars (out of 5)

Don't have time to get into a lengthy list of what was right or wrong w/the film (will save that for later this weekend), suffice it to say that all the critiques in the leaked emails about the third act falling apart were, and are, correct. Changes made to the script may have made some improvements, but this is still a work-in-progress. No matter what the players involved may say, this was not ready to go, and some stuff just can't be fixed as you go along.

I'm assuming that the conceit of the film...the hook...the idea that Butterworth(?) used when pitching his story idea(s) to EON was that not only would Blowfelt be back, but that he'd be Bond's brother. From that idea alone springs forth every other bad idea & choice that the movie makes, because they are bound and determined to fit the rest of the story around the idea of Blofeld and Bond being related.

If that bit of ret-conning wasn't bad enough, they then insist  on trying to tie in all the events of the past 3 films into one larger story arc. It doesn't work.

No bad performances in the film, but Waltz's Blofeld is easily the least interesting of any of the Blofeld's ever put to screen, and that includes NSNA (and yes, even Charles Gray in DAF).

Seydoux gives it her best (and I think Craig tries as well), but the chemistry just isn't there. Why? Well, I think the biggest reason for that is  that it's difficult to establish why she hangs out with James after he initially rescues her. Clearly a better actress than Denise Richards, Lea's character still suffer's the same problem: she's just not well established into the narrative. She feels like a character  tagging along, looking for a reason to be in the picture. She's simply just not all that relevant.

At no time did I ever buy Blofeld's motivation for being...well, evil. To be fair to all involved, Mendes doesn't allow the film to veer into Austin Power's territory...I mean, it's not THAT BAD. But it's never particularly believable either. You never feel Blofeld's motivation drives him or the story. That the film needs to explain Blofeld's reason for being evil is simply time wasted.

The movie is too long. The action, other than the opening sequence (replete with dodgy cgi), is not particularly engaging. And there's not really all that much action either. The car chase feels too antiseptic. Too clean. Too neat.

Bond's escape from Blofeld's lair too easy and feels like a cheat.

It's hard to understand why Blofeld has been set-up for future use in new Bond films when the ending to this film almost feels like it's begging for a reboot. Bond throws his gun in the river and literally drives off into the sunset with Madeline in the old DB5. Fair enough. I'm almost tempted to believe Bond will be back in a YOLT remake, with Madeline being the stand in for Tracy, but does anyone really want to see yet another morbid, dark Bond film that centers on him looking for revenge or going rogue? Even Fleming didnt' have Bond pouting and sulking over Vesper for this long.

Where'd the $250-$300 million go? This isn't AVATAR. How'd that much money get spent and yet it not really feel like it's up on the screen? Mexico City came off looking rather well,  but could anybody tell we were in Austria? One mountain range looks like another and TLD did a better job putting the audience in Austria. Same with Tangiers.

On the plus side: Bellucci's all-too-brief appearance was good stuff...pity they never used her before....or for longer amounts of screen time.  Her initial interaction with Bond reminded me of the best parts of the Connery years: 'Can't you tell that I'm in mourning.?' Bond: 'No'. Only Craig and Connery could pull off having their Bond get in woman's face at a funeral and challenge her integrity, then turn around and seduce her an hour later. Good stuff.

And Whishaw brought some depth to Q.

But overall the highlights are far and few between. It's hard to tell where the series goes from here because SPECTRE feels like a movie that can't decide which way it wants to go. But if  I had to take a guess, I think Craig will be back for one more with a new director, a pay cut, a new line producer, new writers and a new studio.

Yeah you can tell they don't know where to go after this, but I'm sure it will be some kind of continuation… Madeleine will probably die, and bring Bond back to the service. Or if a new studio comes in, I wonder if they'd wanna get rid of Craig and start fresh. If Craig leaves, I just hope it's a good old fashioned espionage flick. No personal stakes, just a professional doing his job.

FieldsMan wrote:

Yeah you can tell they don't know where to go after this,

I'm not sure they knew where to go IN this, much less after.

Tonally, the film lacks consistency. Hinx spends all his time trying to kill Bond, only for Blofeld to personally send a chauffer to pick up Bond, offer him the requisite glass of champagne, and proceed to explain the entire villain's plot (whatever that consisted of). It's the sort of thing that would be parodied by THE SIMPSONS or AUSTIN POWERS, but not something you come to expect from Mendes.

Going back to Swann just a bit................she's not really a very sympathetic character. When first introduced to us, she gets my sympathy because she's starting to cry and Bond has touched a nerve. But later on you see that she hated her father (so if she hated him, why should we care?), she's got sort of a bad attitude herself, there's a suggestion she may be an alcoholic, and after a while her misery combined with Bond's misery just becomes too much to process. She's got daddy issues just like Bond had mommy issues, and in a nifty bit of creepiness, Bond is there to be the man for Madeline that her father never could, or would, be. This character feels all over the map and yet nowhere all at the same time.

I first sized her up to be a cross between Kara and Melina, but at least Melina was avenging honorable people. Not so with Mr. White. And as I said earlier, if she doesn't care about the man, why should we? And with White dead, why exactly was she of any interest to Blofeld? She just doesn't fit into the movie. I'm trying to find a compelling reason for her to be in the movie and I just can't come up with one.

There's not much originality to be had in this film either. Almost everything feels like something you've seen already in the series, if slightly different. Mendes gets away with it in SKYFALL, but it doesn't work here. Even NSNA seems to have been mined for material (the 00 section being shut down; Q/Algernon having to work in the basement; I even saw what looked like Bond's motorbike from NSNA in the background).. Examples: Bond's trip to Blofeld's lair feels like TMWTGG...pre-credits sequence a hybrid of TND and FYEO....chase between Hinx and Bond echos DAD, but more interesting in DAD....conversation on train echos CR...the list goes on.

On the plus side, Kleinmann's erotic credits (involving a shirtless Craig, nude women, and a writhing octopus with strategically placed tentacles and the slightest hint of bestiality) nicely distracts the audience from the torpid theme song.


And another thing............the film had to resort to the device of using other characters/things to come into the film out of nowhere and basically push the story along artificially. By that I mean: the whole business with the ring being decoded by Q. How convenient for all involved that Q could scan and decode the ring and get all that information to the audience...otherwise it would've taken another hour to shove all that backstory into the plot. Fortunately for us we have one neat, clean scene that just brings the whole thing up to speed.

And finally.....not one single person in the audience was surprised that Oberhauser was Blofeld. Is it not sort of implied that Blofeld is the villain when the name o f your movie is SPECTRE? Too much time spend being coy, all in aid of a revelation that surprised no one.

Initial reaction... I liked it. Maybe because the buzz has been so mixed that it sunk my expectations to an all time low that I was able to enjoy it, but I enjoyed it. This is no SKYFALL though. That's such a high bar that I'm not surprised that Mendes couldn't jump that high again, but he jumped high enough that I can imagine this one fitting somewhere in the middle of the series with all the other good but not great installments.

Given the way this film ends, I can see where they go from here and I really hope they pull that off better.

FieldsMan wrote:

Yeah you can tell they don't know where to go after this, but I'm sure it will be some kind of continuation… Madeleine will probably die, and bring Bond back to the service. Or if a new studio comes in, I wonder if they'd wanna get rid of Craig and start fresh. If Craig leaves, I just hope it's a good old fashioned espionage flick. No personal stakes, just a professional doing his job.

Surprisingly, Craig kinda does that. Despite potential personal stakes, it never really is for Bond aside from looking for Madeline in the rubble. Blofeld is the one who takes it personally while Bond, rightly, dismisses his hysterics.

Which makes it sillier considering that the entire angle doesn't add anything to the film at all. It's just there and fucked up the character in the same way Austin Powers did.

Where do you think they'll take Bond 25?

The way Blofeld looks at Bond and Swann walking away from the bridge, I can see this isn't over between the two. Bond is going to wish he didn't "run out of bullets" as it's going to bite him in the ass. They could go the route of OHMSS/YOLT with Swann getting killed and Bond discovering him with the alias Shatterhand. However, OHMSS has already been done and they just did that with Vesper, so I think EON will try avoiding that card again. My guess is Blofeld breaks out (cause you can NEVER keep him contained for long), attempts an attack on Bond and Madeline's life. They survive, but just barely. Bond goes off to settle it once and for all with MI6's help, but this drives Madeline away as she sees Bond can never truly settle in a normal life. Bond understands that.

Which would basically be what GHOST PROTOCOL did, though it may be more effective to see it happen with Bond and Madeline rather than be part of a monologue by Daniel Craig with an American accent. Sorry, I meant Jeremy Renner. I always confuse the two.

I don't get why Madeleine needs to come back though. Bond doesn't love her and she was ready to move on.

I see it as her loving Bond while Bond takes this as an opportunity to settle down, whether he loves her back or not. In the books Bond has always been more romantic that was tempted by the idea of sharing a life with a woman he gets smitten over, some being close calls like Tiffany Case, while others turn out tragic or simply split off without ever being heard of again.

They could easily take the Paris route, only we get to see him breaking it off this time in order to protect her from himself. There's plenty of routes to go, I just hope it's not territory that is still too familiar and fresh like "my girlfriend is dead, I must avenge her". I could roll with it, but don't think I would be satisfied revisiting that.

The Paris thing could be cool, but I just don't think Madeleine deserves to be in another Bond film. Keep her just in SP and that's it. I don't see her as any different to Kara, Natalya or Tanya, and the relationship that develops for those three Bond girls are much more convincing and natural.

It was a very promising first scene, then Bond's recklessness nearly kills her by ramming the plane into the back of the car she's in, and then they argue but it's more like a dad and his daughter. And then she gives them the name - SPECTRE - and takes Bond to L'Americain. Sure she saves Bond's life, but given the constant reminders of Vesper throughout, it's weird that Bond decides to let her get close. And he made a promise to her dad - the one responsible for Vesper's death, mind - to protect her, only for him to let her walk away (from a SAFE HOUSE!!).

Maybe they can mention in a line or two to say they've broken up/she's moved out in Bond 25… Along with somehow fixing the colossal fuck up that is Oberhauser is Blofeld.

It would be too awkward to just sweep her away like that. Funny though, I agree she's not among the better Bond girls like Kara, Natalya and Tanya. Somehow I'm okay with not hearing about them again than I am about that happening to Madeline.

Speaking of Kara, I always thought she should have been in the Paris role in TND. Of course, it would have been strange with Brosnan, so it would have only worked with Dalton. Either way, I still feel a returning Bond girl would have made that more compelling than the wooden Terri "I'm Only Doing This for My Husband" Hatcher.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Speaking of Kara, I always thought she should have been in the Paris role in TND. Of course, it would have been strange with Brosnan, so it would have only worked with Dalton. Either way, I still feel a returning Bond girl would have made that more compelling than the wooden Terri "I'm Only Doing This for My Husband" Hatcher.

Well I'm glad Bellucci didn't get cast as Paris because her performance wasn't that great in SP - plus she had a hell of a lot more to work with than what Hatcher did, and yet I still think Hatcher added enough layers to Paris to make her believable. But that's just me I imagine.

The three options I heard for TND was that either Sylvia, Pam or Natalya would return as Carver's wife, but I think the latter two would have felt to contrived, and I think Eunice Gayson made the role her own so I wouldn't have wanted a recast.

I've heard of Natalya being considered. I can't see her work in that role. Neither Pam, both seem too strong willed to get caught up in Carver's world. But I could totally see Kara, having paired with him when she was still naive but over the years matured enough to notice he's off.

FieldsMan wrote:

Nice write up, JW…

But given the fact the whole film virtually hinges on Oberhauser, what are your thoughts on that?

I think the problem with him is the same with a lot of supervillains: they're a lot scarier with no backstory.

What a mess of a film. It played like a rough cut and the story flowed like a shoddy rough draft. We bounced around from location to location without even really knowing why any of this was happening. It just was. They tried covering the sloppiness with nods to past films and humor, but it didn't work. The writers also seemed to concentrate more on connecting this film with CR, QOS and SF, rather than just coming up with an original and coherent story.

The Blofeld twist wasn't surprising, but the fact that he became an evil madman because his father loved James Bond more was downright idiotic. The Oberhauser/Bond backstory didn't even need to be a part of the film, actually. Did these writers even fucking try? There were four (credited) writers involved with this film and not one of them thought this was a ridiculous part of the story? Unreal.

After the demolition of the original Mi6 building at the end, I was wondering how absurd and out of control it was going to get. I was expecting Blofeld's chopper to crash into the London Eye or the new CNS building.

I'll have to see it again, but I don't know how it could get any better with a second viewing.

The biggest question, as Gravity asked: Where did the money go?

This movie looked like it was made for 20 million, with the most being spent on the big stunts and set pieces. I'm having a hard time seeing what the other $280m went into, aside from Craig's outrageous salary.

Control wrote:

What a mess of a film. It played like a rough cut and the story flowed like a shoddy rough draft. We bounced around from location to location without even really knowing why any of this was happening. It just was. They tried covering the sloppiness with nods to past films and humor, but it didn't work. The writers also seemed to concentrate more on connecting this film with CR, QOS and SF, rather than just coming up with an original and coherent story.

The Blofeld twist wasn't surprising, but the fact that he became an evil madman because his father loved James Bond more was downright idiotic. The Oberhauser/Bond backstory didn't even need to be a part of the film, actually. Did these writers even fucking try? There were four (credited) writers involved with this film and not one of them thought this was a ridiculous part of the story? Unreal.

As I said in the wikileaks thread, they were all over this… One person who was invited to give notes and who had read quite a few drafts (by the sounds of it) highlighted these issues, but they all made it to the final film!

Brown, did you, ah, go in with the old brandy there?