So, Spectre...
I feel there is this bizarre reaction to Bond films post-Casino Royale. There was this overwhelming support for the film - stripped back, raw, character-driven, and yet, after all was said and done it felt like the feeling moving forward was "Okay so now that we're done with all that, now that Bond is Bond, can we get back to the more traditional adventure stories of old?" To me, a crazy response, but despite some push back over the past two years, we've finally reached what I think is a pretty bland, regular Bond film that really doesn't do anything of note and is far more interested with checking boxes, 'feeling like Bond' - whatever that means these days, and being a fun ol' time rather than trying to tell some kind of cohesive story.
Even QOS, which is muddled by a rushed script and poor editing, will always stand head and shoulders above most of the other non-Craig films because it's actually attempting to be more than "stunts + gadgets + girls + one liners." It's about stripping back Bond and informing us of who he is, regardless of how successful it was in doing so. We had a brief moment where a Bond film wasn't relying on one liners "Shaken, not stirred" and "Bond. James Bond" -of course that was met with derision.
Here is the first time a Daniel Craig film has mostly felt like any of the others, could easily slip into the crowd of those films, and will most likely be remembered as such. It's the first time where I've ever watched a Daniel Craig scene and could just as easily picture Brosnan in his place. A Bond who never really breaks a sweat, never really panics, always has a solution and can always do it with a wink to the audience. He's superhuman without a worry in the world and so the audience doesn't have a worry in the world. It's that same kind of numbing feeling you get while watching the paint-drying-caliber The World is Not Enough - a constant string of action and chaos and movement, but it's all just so un-engaging.
There were a few moments that were halfway similar to scenes from Casino Royale where that stark contrast was most noticeable - the train fight springs to mind most immediately. Compare it to the stairway fight in CR - a relentless, grueling close quarters battle where the girl is physically involved too in some way. The scenes play out quite similarly where Bond is in the thick of it, the girl ends up helping physically in some way (getting their hands 'dirty'), and the bad guy is defeated. In Casino Royale, the scene propels the characters into some pretty interesting places - Bond remains tough and in charge, telling Vesper to go call for help to dispose of the bodies, but he's pretty shaken and strips himself down and takes a few drinks to calm himself. Vesper is in a complete state of shock though - results in that brilliant shower scene where she just sits there, still visibly shaken, soaking away, washed clean but still feels dirty. Bond sits down next to her, says nothing, just turns the tap off and comforts her. It's the first time Vesper's ever seen Bond act like anything other than a pompous know-it-all. Hell, this is one of the first times we the audience have ever seen a Bond treat a woman with any kind of respect. The relationship has now been strengthened considerably, and we now know more about the characters. This is a beautifully natural lead into the couple's ultimate romance. These are real people acting like human beings.
In Spectre, the payoff of the scene is the punchline "So what now?" cut to them fucking. The end. The major turn of turn of their relationship was done through a joke. These are cardboard cutouts - vessels to carry us from one 'Bondian' moment to the next. And you thought we'd care about the romance? This happens time and time again - multiple opportunities for characters to develop. Relationships to be strengthened and instead it's just Bond making a fucking stupid face and quipping his ass off. Bond the superhuman just shaking off any kind of physical or emotional issues he has. And it's not as though he's putting up armour to cover his emotional flaws as he so often does in CR, QOS and Skyfall. Craig's eyes don't reveal a hurt, lonely man anymore. He's actually just being a fucking bland asshole.
Bond being tortured by the primary antagonist is a fool's errand when Casino Royale's chair scene exists - I don't know why you'd even want to bother yourself with the comparisons, especially when that is the output. The two scenes are strangely representative of their larger pictures. CR's is completely stripped back (literally) to the simplistic point of just a dude being whipped in the balls with some rope, but in doing so, opens up the doors for some immense human drama. Spectre's is some bloated, overly complicated shit - something about losing memory of people's faces or something, while twists and reveals are being laid on us hard and fast and it's all just so convoluted and removed from any human drama. That it's capped off with a Brosnan-type gadget escape is just... lazy, especially considering it's the same exact gadget trick they were having a laugh at in Skyfall (the pen bomb in Goldeneye).
Even compared to Skyfall, Bond isn't anywhere close to being this unfazed. Remember how Bond is battling with his inner demons, and the way they dramatize that is through that shoulder wound that fucks with his accuracy and everyone wonders, including himself if he's actually up for the challenge anymore? That's a human struggle. In Spectre, he's the best fucking shot in the world, levelling helicopters from a mile away with a fucking pistol. A small comparison point, but it speaks to the larger issues.
What's with the numerous scenes here that are bizarrely similar to scenes from previous Craig entries, but aren't actually call-backs at all, rather they feel like the filmmakers just forgot they'd already done that (and generally better too)?
- Being injected with a GPS tracker and Bond whining in pain has already been done in CR - almost the exact same joke. Craig's reaction was better there and it also highlighted how overly complicated the tracker explanation was here. Something about his blood or nanocells or something? I dunno, why not just stick a little machine in his arm and don't say another single fucking word?
- The idea of 'not killing' being a character moment for Bond. Sparing Blofeld's life was supposed to be a change in Bond, ringing M's words about "Having a License to Kill also means having a License to not Kill yada yada." Bond already did this in QOS - he was a loose, rabid dog out for blood, biting chunks out of everyone who got in his way. Post-introspection, his final act in the film is sparing the one life that by all accounts deserves to be killed the most.
- M confronting C in a dark office, C goes to shoot M, M reveals that he's already got his gun checked and taken the bullets out. This is beat for beat the same as the first fucking scene in CR with Bond. It wasn't a call-back. It was just... the same scene, done already. And now is a good time to bring up the "Now we know what the C stands for............... careless." What the fuck? This is the equivalent of "Well, you needn't worry. The second is --" *gunshot* Bond: "Easier? Yes. Yes I know." The joke is that no one says anything and as soon as you say it, it's not a joke anymore. You know it's tone deaf when you can hear the audience crack up into laughter before anything's said, then 'careless' comes along and the laughing just immediately ceased, like "Wait what?"
I could go on for paragraphs more about the missteps this film has made and how disappointing it is in the wake of Craig's previous films, but this is what most have wanted since CR - a bog-standard adventure film where Bond is a static vehicle, taking us on a tour of boring Bond shit we've all seen a billion times before. The only difference is this time it's lathered in a layer of Modern Blockbuster™ so it's covered in lore-shit, retcons, twists and fan-service. This is the natural evolution to the rejection of Bond as a real character in 2015.
