The Most Ridiculous Moment in SPECTRE

Fuck, I still can't believe the buttplugs made Blofeld into Bond's adoptive brother. May the ghosts of Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory sodomise them for the rest of their days.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

The film is clearly trying to set Blofeld up as an evil criminal mastermind whose judgement is compromised by his irrational hatred of Bond. Where others who represent a clear threat to Spectre are eliminated relatively quickly, effectively and efficiently, Blofeld is driven to distraction by the need to prolong Bond's suffering. I think that it's a really interesting take on the character, and one of the strongest points of the film.

You're giving it too much thought and too much credit.

This new, ridiculous interpretation of Blofeld was the result of a sloppy, unfinished script. EON and Sony attempted to polish a turd and sell it off as a diamond.

Right. Blofeld never show much interest in Bond until the last 30 mins when Bond hits his organization hard, blowing up that base, from then on it really did become personal for Blofeld. The whole foster brother angle is so minimized it might as well be cut out entirely and you wouldn't lose a thing. Even when Blofeld explains his background about Bond being a foster brother for two years, Waltz plays it like an anecdote, and he didn't even kill his father until a decade after Bond left Austria.

CJB wrote:

Fuck, I still can't believe the buttplugs made Blofeld into Bond's adoptive brother. May the ghosts of Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory sodomise them for the rest of their days.

Yep. Good to see someone else acknowledge this on here.

Control wrote:

This new, ridiculous interpretation of Blofeld was the result of a sloppy, unfinished script. EON and Sony attempted to polish a turd and sell it off as a diamond.

I'm not so sure about that. The film goes a long way towards addressing the biggest problem that SPECTRE would face in the 21st Century - that the world's intelligence agencies would pick up on them the moment they tried to move out into the open. Unless they have an edge, which is what Nine Eyes gives them: an inside source that would alert them to attempts at stifling their operations with enough time to counteract it, thus protecting themselves. Given the care that it takes in addressing that, I have a hard time believing that the script was unfinished. Lacking polish, maybe, but not unfinished the way QOS was.

I suspect that the film will be judged on the next run of films, because large parts of it feel like the pieces are being moved around on the board. I expect BOND 25 will see some kind of insurrection, with a challenger to Blofeld trying to wrest control of the organisation away ftom him in light of the Nine Eyes disaster. BOND 26 could see some kind variation on OHMSS (with Blofeld developing antibiotic-resistant bacteria instead of agroterrorism), and BOND 27 would be Bond hunting Blofeld down, YOLT-style.

I suspect exactly none of those predictions will come true.

The more likely outcome is that, having produced a film with a Rotten Tomatoes rating even lower than Quantum's, they'll do what they did with Skyfall and make a standalone film that ignores the previous one.

Taken at face value, sure - but look at where those numbers are coming from. The film was very positively received in the UK, but negatively received in the US. I can't think of a single film (though admittedly I am not trying too hard) that has been so polarising across markets.

In the grand scheme of things, the film's shortcomings are probably more in line with MI2 than QOS, with things being cut that had a tangible impact on the final film. I seem to remember reading something about Blofeld being the adopted son of Romanian diplomats who were imprisoned, tortured and murdered under the Ceaucescu regime, and also something about Andrew Bond and Hannes Oberhauser being friends - thus explaining how Hannes came to be James' guardian - with the young Blofeld looking up to Andrew Bond as a man of integrity while detesting Hannes as a sycophant, and thus feeling the loss of Andrew Bond’s death. None of that made it into the final cut of the film, and so Blofeld's primary motivation was reduced to "daddy didn't love me enough", which is disappointing because its presence would be consistent with the idea of Blofeld being a criminal mastermind whose judgement is compromised by his irrational hatred of Bond.

CJB wrote:

Fuck, I still can't believe the buttplugs made Blofeld into Bond's adoptive brother. May the ghosts of Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory sodomise them for the rest of their days.

Pretty much what I thought when I left the theatre.

Prior to seeing this, if I had heard of a storyline involving Bond and Blofeld being long-lost bros I would've assumed it had come from the mind of a completely inept, but harmless pre-pubescent fanfic writer. Not even CASINOROYALE could've dreamt up such an amateurish "twist."

It was never something I considered or dared to. CASINOROYALE will have the last laugh. This world has a habit of elevating the stupid.

CJB wrote:

Prior to seeing this, if I had heard of a storyline involving Bond and Blofeld being long-lost bros I would've assumed it had come from the mind of a completely inept, but harmless pre-pubescent fanfic writer. Not even CASINOROYALE could've dreamt up such an amateurish "twist."

But Mike Myers did, in Goldmember...

"Austin prepares to shoot Dr. Evil, when Nigel Powers appears and reveals Dr. Evil and Austin are brothers"

You know a film series has taken a moronic turn when it starts borrowing from its spoofs.

The only part that I felt was moronic was Bond shooting Blofeld's helicopter down with a handgun at long range at night while travelling at speed on the choppy river.

Eh I could buy into that… Still not the best endings in a Bond film.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

The only part that I felt was moronic was Bond shooting Blofeld's helicopter down with a handgun at long range at night while travelling at speed on the choppy river.

I was able to roll with that just because he took a bunch of shots to no effect before actually hitting the engine. It would have been even more absurd if he did that with just one shot or two.

^ Yep, my line of thinking as well…

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

The only part that I felt was moronic was Bond shooting Blofeld's helicopter down with a handgun at long range at night while travelling at speed on the choppy river.

Much more ridiculous than the purveyor of all the world's evil being motivated by his dad's love for Little James Bond.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

The only part that I felt was moronic was Bond shooting Blofeld's helicopter down with a handgun at long range at night while travelling at speed on the choppy river.

I was able to roll with that just because he took a bunch of shots to no effect before actually hitting the engine. It would have been even more absurd if he did that with just one shot or two.

True, but it still feels like the writers had an entire sequence in mind and then realised that the film was already two and a half hours long, and so had to wrap it up quickly.

It's a shame, because there was some really great imagery on the scene, like the war-weary fortress of Vauxhall Cross and the steel-and-glass monolith of soulless and callous anonymity of the CNS building staring one another down. And the basement of Vauxhall Cross being a proper re-do of Scaramanga's funhouse (one of my least favourite scenes in the film).

Bond and Madeleine Swann being lectured about a meteorite by Blofeld... and Max Denbigh's death, this character had a lot of potential, such a waste...

Where does SP sit in your ranking, GK?