SPECTRE Review Thread

[FilmKoala]

Originally Posted by Mandalorian

After hearing the song when it was first released, I thought it was okay, but nothing I cared about one way, or the other. Before seeing the film I heard about how atrocious the credits sequence was. So going in with all that in mind, I found myself liking the sequence and song together more than I expected to. I might've hummed it a few times since last Friday.

Who was saying that? The credit sequence was great, combining the octopus representing SPECTRE with silhouettes of naked women, which is a Bond credit staple. It's probably my favorite sequence among all of Craig's films.

[Astro Zombie]

The credits sequence was great, the song was forgettable.

[DanTheMan]

In terms of opening credits SEQUENCE in Craig's films:

SPECTRE
Skyfall
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace

[jayman3]

Originally Posted by dantheman89

In terms of opening credits SEQUENCE in Craig's films:

SPECTRE
Skyfall
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace

I would rank them in that order as well. My only gripe is Skyfall's credits seemed a bit...repetitive in imagery. But other than that, Spectre is the only one credit sequence that tells an actual story.

[Agent Bond]

OK haven't seen the film, but I don't get what's wrong with the song. Seems OK to me.

I'm going to pretend QUANTUM never happened. It was obvious since Casino Royale that they were building up one organization. With the legal ramblings, now we have two that the writers had to go back and retcon. Hell, QUANTUM was even ignored during Skyfall.

Dominic Greene: I answered your questions. I told you what you wanted to know about SPECTRE.

The series continuity works much better that way.

[StingingVelvet]

Saw it tonight. I kind of hated it. Like, I didn't just not like it, I kind of had a really negative emotional reaction. That's probably uncalled for and maybe I was just in a bad mood, but I do think it's a total failure of a movie.

First off, whoever edited this thing needs a swift kick in the bean-bag. It's at least 30 minutes too long for the story and had a ton of meaningless scenes. Also it didn't flow well at all, and felt stitched together. More on Mendes, but other than the opening (amazing) sequence, the rest of the action felt very poorly put together and uninteresting. People complain about Quantum's Borne style shaky-cam, and I agree it sucks, but at least that movie had interesting sequences.

The plot was terrible. They're stuck now in this place where they feel they have to match Casino Royale's tone, realism and personal stakes, but they also want to do a classic Bond movie and don't really have good personal stakes plots. It's a total mish-mash and doesn't work at all for me. Trying to be deep it feels cumbersome and contrived, trying to be serious it just feels joyless, trying to be dark and gritty it just feels repetitive to the three before it and every other modern action film. It's not Bond, and it's not Casino Royale's excellent spy movie either, it's just kind of there. Don;t even get me started on the terrible villain.

If the next Bond movie is another Craig one with the same kind of tone I think I'll wait for blu-ray. I'm just so f'ing bored of it at this point I can't stand it, and this time it wasn't a good movie either. A double-whammy of shit; not Bond enough AND not good. Same thing happened with Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Sedoux is damn pretty though, and that opening in Mexico was amazing. Wish it was in front of a better film. I even liked the song.

[lemonski]

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

Hinx wasn't hired, he himself is

[Show spoiler]a member of SPECTRE who just wants Bond out of the way for interfering too many times (and to settle unfinished business from Rome). I don't think Blofeld ever hired him or told him to go after Bond; that was just Hinx doing his own thing. And besides, I don't think Blofeld would have complained if Hinx had been successful and actually killed Bond before he ever reached Tangier.

Exactly - he'd

[Show spoiler]just joined (or promoted himself) within the organisation. Why would Blofeld even know him? And there was nothing in the film to suggest he had been instructed by Blofeld to kill Bond anyway.

Criticism of the "airtightness" of a script is silly if you have to start inventing things that never happened to support it.

[GC Riot]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Saw it tonight. I kind of hated it. Like, I didn't just not like it, I kind of had a really negative emotional reaction. That's probably uncalled for and maybe I was just in a bad mood, but I do think it's a total failure of a movie.

First off, whoever edited this thing needs a swift kick in the bean-bag. It's at least 30 minutes too long for the story and had a ton of meaningless scenes. Also it didn't flow well at all, and felt stitched together. More on Mendes, but other than the opening (amazing) sequence, the rest of the action felt very poorly put together and uninteresting. People complain about Quantum's Borne style shaky-cam, and I agree it sucks, but at least that movie had interesting sequences.

The plot was terrible. They're stuck now in this place where they feel they have to match Casino Royale's tone, realism and personal stakes, but they also want to do a classic Bond movie and don't really have good personal stakes plots. It's a total mish-mash and doesn't work at all for me. Trying to be deep it feels cumbersome and contrived, trying to be serious it just feels joyless, trying to be dark and gritty it just feels repetitive to the three before it and every other modern action film. It's not Bond, and it's not Casino Royale's excellent spy movie either, it's just kind of there. Don;t even get me started on the terrible villain.

If the next Bond movie is another Craig one with the same kind of tone I think I'll wait for blu-ray. I'm just so f'ing bored of it at this point I can't stand it, and this time it wasn't a good movie either. A double-whammy of shit; not Bond enough AND not good. Same thing happened with Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Sedoux is damn pretty though, and that opening in Mexico was amazing. Wish it was in front of a better film. I even liked the song.

While I didn't hate it, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. As I mentioned before, the whole sub-plot featuring Monica Bellucci should have just been left out altogether, and this whole going out of their way to show how EVERYTHING that has come before is connected just feels like the lazy, go to-solution these days.
That opening scene did set the bar high, similar to the opening of Skyfall, but unlike Skyfall, the rest just wasn't particularly memorable.
I'm one of the few who doesn't hate QoS. As a final act to Casino Royale I definitely think it works and it feels like an organic, natural extension to what came before, even though it's not as good as it's prequel. Spectre, as a sequel, feels artifical in what it's trying to do. It's trying to damn hard to be something it really should never have been.
I still like it and can appreciate that it's tying things together, but compared to Casino Royale and Skyfall, it is a bit of a disappointment.

[jayman3]

Originally Posted by Agent Bond

I'm going to pretend QUANTUM never happened. It was obvious since Casino Royale that they were building up one organization. With the legal ramblings, now we have two that the writers had to go back and retcon. Hell, QUANTUM was even ignored during Skyfall.

Dominic Greene: I answered your questions. I told you what you wanted to know about SPECTRE.

The series continuity works much better that way.

I wonder if they'll re-release Quantum of Solace and replace all mentions of QUANTUM with SPECTRE.

[levcore]

I loved Quantum of Solace, it's such a kick ass, relentless action movie that takes no prisoners. It's a real adrenaline jolt and is the polar opposite in terms of style to Casino Royale, it's a blast.

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by jayman3

I wonder if they'll re-release Quantum of Solace and replace all mentions of QUANTUM with SPECTRE.

They don't need to? Quantum is just

[Show spoiler]a part of SPECTRE

, no need to retcon anything.

[SethRex]

Originally Posted by jayman3

I wonder if they'll re-release Quantum of Solace and replace all mentions of QUANTUM with SPECTRE.

No because then they'd have to change the mention of Quantum in Spectre itself and ultimately it would have to lead to rewrites in which Bond already knows about Spectre then due to the fact that Greene told him about it.

[lemonski]

Originally Posted by Cliff

People desperate to like something are often desperate to defend it's flaws. Assuming you're right and Bond was

[Show spoiler]looking for a room (which he wasn't, but ok) the notion that a mouse running through a mouse hole indicates a secret room is on the other side is bizarre and defies any and all logic. If you saw a mouse run through a hole in your house, would you immediately smash through the wall expecting to find a secret room on the other side? It would have made a hell of a lot more sense (as in ANY sense) to have him notice either a small amount of light through the mouse hole or some sort of pattern made by the windows that indicated a clue to the room's existence or even noticed seams in the will where it had been covered over, I could have bought that premise.

Good grief, did you miss the part

[Show spoiler]where he pours the vodka on the floor? He knows there is something special about the room because White keeps coming back there after he splits up with his wife. It's perfectly reasonable to be a hidden room, it couldn't be anything in the open otherwise anyone staying there might have found it, and he needed somewhere to do his satellite image searching. You must have also missed the part where Bond tears apart the whole room and finds nothing and is sitting on the sofa, resigned to failure. It didn't necessarily have to be a hidden room to get him from point A to point B in the plot, but what they chose provides an obstacle that required some ingenuity on Bond's part. It's certainly not a stupid convenience.

[klauswhereareyou]

Good movie and good Bond film. Saw it yesterday and enjoyed it. As far as the big sequel movies go this year I thought it wasn't as good as MI: Rouge Nation, but better than Avengers Age of Ultron and Jurassic World. It was good to see a Daniel Craig Bond movie that didn't seem to shy away from the fact that it is a Bond film! The only negatives I have is that it was a little too long, and the opening credit singer's voice was way too silly when it went all castrati!

[dallywhitty]

I thought it was obvious that Bond expected there to be something significant hidden away. Why else would he and Madeleine be there? I don't know where this 'isn't it convenient that he discovers a secret room?' consensus is coming from.

[klauswhereareyou]

Also thought Thomas Newman's score was much improved over the one he did for Skyfall.

[jayman3]

I don't think it was ever explained, but why did Bond

[Show spoiler]pull the Spectre ring off Sciarra? If he didn't know about Spectre then, what's the significance of him stealing his ring?

[Nightrunner]

Originally Posted by jayman3

I don't think it was ever explained, but why did Bond

[Show spoiler]pull the Spectre ring off Sciarra? If he didn't know about Spectre then, what's the significance of him stealing his ring?

It was shiny? Or maybe he saw the symbol on the ring and thought it might provide a lead?

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by jayman3

I don't think it was ever explained, but why did Bond

[Show spoiler]pull the Spectre ring off Sciarra? If he didn't know about Spectre then, what's the significance of him stealing his ring?

[Show spoiler]James Bond wisely anticipated that he would need a visual to make his pre-credits action moment seamlessly segue into the opening credits theme song sequence, so the ring quickly became a necessity. Had Bond not taken that ring, Spectre would have lacked an opening credits theme song scene.

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by jayman3

I don't think it was ever explained, but why did Bond

[Show spoiler]pull the Spectre ring off Sciarra? If he didn't know about Spectre then, what's the significance of him stealing his ring?

I think

[Show spoiler]M

told him to

[Show spoiler]on the video

.