Spectre

I did something silly recently. Film Crit Hulk wrote a book on the James Bond movies, and I read it. That's not the silly thing; he's an incredible writer and I become a better human being every time I read his work. The silly thing is that I was so pumped on James Bond afterwards, the good and the bad, that I borrowed the boxset of all of them that I'd bought for my Dad one Christmas and spent the next couple of months watching all of them. My conclusion? Most of them are fine. Now, when I say fine, I'm neglecting all of the gender and racial issues deeply entrenched in their existence, partly because you can't judge a film's societal norms based on the societal norms of today, but mostly because that's too much of a topic for an analysis of just one. No, the films are fine, in that very few of them are what I would categorise as great, or even good. Most of them are just fine. They excel in practical stunt work, they mostly respect your intelligence, and even the really bad ones usually have a rad new song to boogie down to (I'm old, fuck you). That kind of changed in 2006 when Martin Campbell kind-of-but-not-really rebooted the franchise with Casino Royale (he kind-of-but-not-really rebooted the franchise with Goldeneye, too). Here was a film that was the antithesis of the few that came before it, especially Die Another Day. It opens with Daniel Craig as Bond beating the ever loving shit out of some poor fucker in a bathroom before drowning him in a sink, a far cry from the slick shots from afar Pierce Brosnan made look so easy. Here was a Bond who wasn't afraid to get angry, or laugh maniacally, or fucking cry when something bad happened to someone he cared about. It also sought to provide context for him being the "sexist, misogynist dinosaur...relic of the Cold War" that Judi Dench once so beautifully described. Its reason wasn't exactly the most sophisticated - Bond fell deeply in love with a woman who betrayed him, mostly for money, therefore he now hates women - but, y'know, baby steps. And you can't help but grimace, not grin in glee, when Bond quips to M at the end of the film that, "The job's done. The bitch is dead." This was a much-needed new step for the character that each subsequent film has attempted to dismantle or flat-out redefine all over again. Quantum of Solace was a series of setpieces that was a clunky attempt at climaxing Casino Royale's brilliant anti-climax and delivering to you the Bond of old. Skyfall was an utterly gorgeous film that concluded that a Bond that has feelings is for pussies, capitalising on this by having him quip that a woman who died holding a glass of scotch was a waste of the alcohol, having a woman who was his equal in combat at the beginning conclude that a secretary's life is more her thing after accidentally shooting Bond, and having Judi Dench bite the bullet to be replaced by cold, unfeeling Ralph Fiennes. Once again, it wanted to deliver to you the Bond of old, but this time, it wasn't a gradual shift towards it, but almost an apology for having the gall to think it could ever be different. Skyfall is the really ugly one, the one that capitalises all of the things that make James Bond hard to stomach. But they were fine. They had qualities that made them enjoyable, until now. Now, we have Spectre; a film that is not gorgeous, but bland and beige, all the better to crystalise and accentuate how monumentally it fucks everything good that came before it.

We're going to cover everything, but let's start with some specifics. One of the things that Casino Royale excelled at was subtle character beats that gave Bond and his counterparts layers of depth that didn't sacrifice or betray their legacy. When Bond finds Vesper shaking in the shower because the blood won't come off her hands, having just murdered someone trying to kill them, Bond sits down beside her and sucks on her fingers. It's a bit too sexual for the moment, but if you look past the literal, you see this sexist, misogynist dinosaur attempting to communicate to someone who he genuinely cares for that the death she caused was not her fault, but his. The blood is his to be responsible for. Fast-forward to the end of the film, where Vesper makes the decision to let herself drown in the elevator of a building crumbling into the waters of Venice to save Bond the pain of her living out the betrayal. As he tears at the iron bars of the elevator like a wild animal, she calms him by taking his hand and putting it against her mouth. Her blood is not on his hands. Not once are words used for these sequences, because they are not needed. An audience can rely on what they're seeing to infer what it means, so long as the camera is in the right place, of course. So, Spectre. There's a scene in Spectre so traditionally Bond-y. James is strapped into a chair, the Bond Villain (Christoph Waltz) sits across from him monologuing, and the Bond Girl (Lea Seydoux) sits off to the side, stripped of agency (truly stripped in this instance; she's a trained combatant who sits entirely unrestrained in an office chair within walking distance of both men, and won't get up and do anything because...woman?). The Bond Villain mentions a moment earlier in the film, where the Bond Henchman (Dave Bautista) used his steel thumbnails (you read that right) to gouge out the eyes of someone who was bad at their job. He says that in the moment between being eyeless and being dead, though the person was still alive, there was nobody inside their head. It's an interesting sentiment, and he asks if Bond noticed. Now, the way storytelling traditionally works, and certainly the case with James Bond being masculine power fantasies, James Bond is us. What he sees, we see. The camera does most of the heavy lifting for us here. What the camera sees, James Bond sees, and we see. Rewind to the scene in question. Did James Bond see this? No, he didn't. The camera wasn't interested in the man, but in the act, leaving focus not on the victim, but the perpetrator. There isn't even a moment devoted to Bond quietly reflecting on the act; he just casually continues looking stoic. What we have here is a collection of decent ideas with no clue towards how to execute them in meaningful ways. Just before this thoughtful rumination on existence and life, Bond and the Bond Girl receive their trademark moment of quiet/going along with the Bond Villain's power play as they are shown to their hotel rooms inside of the Bond Villain's lair. As Bond wanders the room carefully, he notices a framed picture on the mantlepiece of him and his adoptive father and brother. As the Bond Girl wanders her room carefully, she too notices a framed picture of her and her father. These are clearly tied to whatever power play the Bond Villain is engaging in, but never once are they ever brought up again. How displeased Chekov would be. But perhaps the worst of these moments, the one that really stings, comes when Bond is starting to cotton on to the idea that all of the past three film's events might be connected (yep). Tearing apart a secret hideout full of intelligence, he comes across a VHS tape labeled "Vesper - Interrogation", and he stops. Daniel Craig really solidly underplays this moment, as you watch the slightest hint of love, pain, and sorrow creep across his face (remember, Bond was never privy to this moment in Casino Royale, something he acknowledged tore him up inside), before the Bond Girl asks what he's found, he snaps out of it, replies, "Nothing", and tosses the tape violently onto the pile. The problem does not lie with the moment alone. The moment is fine - beautiful, even. The problem lies with the fact that the film sees no reason to make a thematic return to this ever again.

One of the main reasons why Spectre is so godawful at thematically concluding on the interesting things it raises is because it's so preoccupied with reminding you of what came before it. I can say this with some level of authority, given how recently I watched all of the previous films: this is far and away the most self-referential Bond film to date. Now, here's the dangerous game of being self-referential: it has to also have contextual relevance with the scene in question. Has to. If it does have contextual relevance, then one of two things happen:

1. The audience member doesn't know what you're talking about, but it's a subtle reference that doesn't affect their ability to enjoy the film.

2. The audience member does know what you're talking about, and it's a subtle reference that reminds them of why they love the franchise in a way that also complements this new experience.

Inversely, if it doesn't have contextual relevance, then one of two things happen:

1. The audience member doesn't know what you're talking about, and as a result, it's clumsiness affects their ability to enjoy the film.

2. The audience member does know what you're talking about, and as a result, it's clumsiness affects their ability to enjoy the film.
You can probably hazard a guess as to where Spectre falls on this spectrum, and I don't need to go into exhaustive detail on every ham-fisted hark back on a better film, especially when you can read it here, but also especially when there's one that trumps them all. Speculation went wild when the title of the film was announced, as SPECTRE is well-known as the shady organisation behind pretty much all of Bond's exploits in the early films, helmed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld. When Christoph Waltz was announced as the villain, yet again, speculation flew around the internet, because surely that means, given the fact that the Broccoli estate had regained the rights to the character and organisation, that he will be playing Bond's former nemesis. Suspiciously defensive in its rhetoric, the filmmakers were all too quick to remind you that his character's name was Franz Oberhauser, nothing more. Remember Star Trek Into Darkness? Remember everyone watching Benedict Cumberbatch's reveal in the trailer? Remember everyone collectively responding, "So...he's Khan, right?", only to be told, "Uh, no...he's clearly credited as John Harrison, doofus."? Remember watching Star Trek Into Darkness, spending 50% of the film wondering how long it's going to take for the reveal to come, into the point of exhaustion? Remember when Cumberbatch bellows, "I...am...KHAN!", and remember how you reacted? Returning to my above criteria, you may have reacted in one of these two ways:
1. You had no idea who Khan was beforehand, and therefore you don't understand why so much time and weight is being devoted to this character having another name, because as far as you can see (and you are right), it has nothing to do with the overall narrative.
2. You did have an idea of who Khan was beforehand, and therefore you knew that Benedict Cumberbatch was Khan, and you couldn't understand why the film would spend so much time trying to tell you otherwise, because as far as you can see (and you are right), it has nothing to do with the overall narrative.
Fan-service exists because fans do want to be serviced, but they want it in a way that doesn't distract or detract from the experience at hand. J.J. Abrams himself admitted that keeping Khan a mystery was a bad move. Why in the fuck then does Spectre walk down the exact same path? In a lot of ways, it winds up being a dumber delivery of the trope, because it takes two-thirds of the film for the reveal to come on the heels of an all-too-obviously signposted subplot that directly tells you without ever saying the words that Christoph Waltz's character is Bond's foster brother. So, given the fact that he's also obviously Blofeld, you spend two-thirds of the film waiting for it to catch up to you. Unless you don't know who Blofeld is, in which case the amount of time devoted to Christoph Waltz monologuing that he died in the avalanche that also killed Bond's foster father and has been reborn as Blofeld, coupled with Bond's response, "Catchy name", leaves you entirely in the dark, confused by the clumsiness.

How this feeds into the ugly cycle of attempting to set a new table by treading old ground is that the film spends so much time believing it's playing with your expectations on Blofeld that it has no time to actually establish him as Bond's arch-nemesis. That's not to say that the pieces aren't placed on the board, because they are, but they aren't moved at all. Let's go through them. Blofeld is Bond's foster brother, as mentioned. When Bond's parents died, he was sent to live with the Oberhausers, and because Papa Oberhauser spent a bit more time with the kid whose birth parents had just, y'know, fucking ceased to be, little Franz was overcome with jealousy at the analogous 'cuckoo' who had landed in their nest and was pushing the eggs out. Franz's response? To push the eggs out first. He caused the avalanche that killed his father, and 'killed' himself, because if he can't have his dad, then no-one can. Is the film then about Bond coming to terms with his troubled upbringing and seeming character trait to utterly annihilate the lives of anyone he comes in contact with, through the lens of this person who has devoted their lives to annihilating his right back? No, the two characters barely acknowledge their prior history. When Blofeld has an opportunity towards the film's end, believing his nemesis to be dead, he doesn't say something tonally resonant like, "Farewell, brother." He says, "Goodbye, James Bond," like he's nothing more than this week's secret agent trying to fuck up the fun. The film also doesn't have time to delve any deeper into their relationship, because it's too busy detailing how, after the avalanche, Blofeld presumably laid low for a solid decade or three waiting, building SPECTRE, biding his time helming a shadowy megacorp that has the money to literally steal bodies of water until he can comfortably shift that wealth towards ruining the life of the orphan who, it would seem, stole his. Yes, that's right, Blofeld and SPECTRE, have been behind it all. Everything that has happened from Casino Royale to now, has happened underneath the guidance and funding of Blofeld and his cronies. "You've come across me so many times, yet you never saw me," Blofeld muses at a point where the film still thinks it's playing coy with his identity. Yes, you're right, Blofeld, I never saw you, because what you're saying doesn't make a fucking lick of sense. Putting aside the fact that the central conflicts in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall are relatively unrelated and unique, there was some world-ending shit in them; some stuff that, should the villains have been successful, would have kind of put a pin in Blofeld's plan to be the one to put Bond in the ground. Did he know that Bond would prevail? Did he engineer the scenarios so that it would be impossible for Bond to lose? Who fucking cares? When Blofeld describes himself to Bond as "the author of all [his] pain", the only aspect that this provides emotional resonance for is the idea that Blofeld engineered the death of those that Bond cared for, and even then, that's a bold insult to everyone involved in those deaths, none so much as the victims. And the reason I'm sticking on this for so long is because the film does not. Like being Bond's brother, the film has no time to develop the idea that Blofeld was behind the previous films beyond having Christoph Waltz state that he was behind with as much gravitas as he can lend in the 90 seconds he has to devote to it. Towards the film's end, Bond marches through the ruins of MI6, set up as a budget Scaramanga-esque funhouse reminding him of all the deaths he was directly or indirectly responsible for, before coming across Blofeld behind a pane of glass. Sporting a fresh scar down his face (because he's Blofeld, see? Do we have your approval yet?), Bond taunts his new look. The two trade barbs for a short while before the film remembers that they have one of the greatest character actors working right now in their film and gives Christoph Waltz something to do. He stares into Bond's eyes, with a look of pure hatred, before breaking into a fit of giggles and exclaiming through the laughter, "Oh, I've really put you through it, haven't I?" No, not really, Blofeld. You've only said that you have. Because, you see, this isn't all that Spectre is trying to accomplish. It also wants to, as I mentioned at the start of this paragraph, put a cap in setting the table for the new Bond so that the adventures following have a well-established tone and identity. A noble mission, were it not for the fact that this had already been done. Casino Royale set a really nice table for a dinner party, before Quantum of Solace blew through wanting to chuck a few extra useless pieces of cutlery on everything, followed by Skyfall concluding that this table is far too touchy-feely and too damn respectful of women. Each concluded with the notion that this, now, finally, is the Bond that will carry us forward. Spectre seeks to do the exact same, staying the track of Skyfall not just in wanting to excise as much gravitas to the character, but also in walking the exact same narrative throughline. Let's do a thought experiment. I'm going to elevator pitch you a film, you tell me if it's for Skyfall or Spectre:
Right, so this new hotshot of the British government thinks that Bond is old news, trumped by the age of information. He's a figure of significant power, meaning Bond is going to have to come up with a way to contend with him that doesn't involve bullets. But, wait! On top of that, he also has to deal with the sins of the past, as a shadowy character holding a dark secret has emerged, threatening to destroy the life of Bond and everyone he holds dear. To confront this demon, Bond is going to have to go back to the one place he'd thought he'd left behind forever: home.
How did you go? Don't bother telling me your answer, because you're right. Broadly speaking, Skyfall and Spectre are the exact same film, seeking to serve the exact same purpose. You could put forth the argument that, in a way, all of the films prior to Casino Royale are technically the same, but at least they had the respect to be vague about whether or not they were occurring within any kind of canon. Spectre desperately wants to wow you with its notion that a single entity was behind the near 10 years that came before it, but can't be bothered respecting your intelligence enough to think it through.

None of this matters though if the action setpieces are super rad and it all looks great, though, right? Well, bad news there, champ. As I briefly alluded to earlier in this piece, the film is beige. I mean that literally; every modicum of colour has been drained out digitally, leaving you with a monochromatic mess of a movie. The film opens in Mexico during the Day of the Dead festival, one of the most colourful world events we've got. I challenge you to cite me one colour that popped during that segment. Even from a technical standpoint, this setpiece is underwhelming. In spite of it maybe seeming like the first few minutes, in which Bond and an unnamed woman wander through the streets, into a hotel, up an elevator shaft, into a hotel room, where Bond exits through the window onto a rooftop to gain a vantage point for his target, were achieved in a single take, to me the edits were all too obvious. Not that this would usually be a problem - if anything, this is CGI used the way it's supposed to be - but it serves to highlight just how ultimately uninteresting and disengaging this all is. The worst of it comes when Bond ends up chasing his target into a helicopter, which results in a wrestling match between him and the pilot above a gigantic crowd of innocent people. The helicopter swirls and backflips, maneuvers achieved practically, and you'd imagine that the camera would pull back as far as possible in these moments to offer a sense of scale and space in relation to what lies below, right? Nah, get as many close-ups of the chopper as you can, that's what the people want! Ugh. It boggles the mind that, following Roger Deakin's absolutely stellar work on Skyfall, that the response wasn't to at least stick a little to his blueprint of offering different colours and cinematography for each setpiece, but to bring in Hoyte Van Hoytema (whose work on Let the Right One In, her, and Interstellar is thoroughly interesting to look at) to do the exact opposite. It makes sense to want to do something different. It makes no sense to actively work to be uninteresting. In spite of the overt, unnecessary references to From Russia with Love, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Octopussy, the fight scene on the train winds up being the only setpiece in the film that is compelling, because it seeks to achieve something that is artistic. Prior to it, Bond and the Bond Girl are having a drink and flirting playfully. The music swells and soars with them, getting more emotionally drunk on them with every quip and retort. As it crescendos, Bond notices in the reflection of the cocktail shaker the Bond Henchman approaching, too fast for the music to adapt. So when he arrives at the table and kicks it up into Bond and Bond Girl's face, all the score can do is stop. It's a damn good dramatic beat, made all the more resonant as the sound effects of each punch, kick, swipe, stab, and crash is turned up louder than at any other point in the film. Here, unlike the rest of the film, in treading worn ground, it seeks to shake it up, to offer a different angle or interpretation of it. Putting aside the fact that it further reduces Bond Girl's agency by making her the character the Bond Henchman slaps around to emphasise his villainy in spite of her spoken ability to be able to handle herself in a fight, it's this one shining moment of brilliance that makes the rest of the film all the more disappointing. They understand their craft here, so why not everywhere else? Fuck, it features the biggest practical explosion in a film to date, and the scene is rendered hokey and unbelievable because its supreme lack of understanding of spatial awareness places Bond and the Bond Girl in front of the blast, the fucked up field of view obfuscating the carnage and rendering it fake.

In spite of how it may seem, I don't enjoy being this negative on a film. I especially don't enjoy being this negative on a film that belongs to a franchise that, in spite of its problems, I genuinely have an affection for. So, I feel compelled to conclude this piece by getting positive. Does this film do anything well? Yes, of course it does. A lot of people worked on it, and they did a good job, my pointless harping on theming and rhetoric be damned. Film criticism often attributes everything, good or bad, to a director, something I'm just as guilty of as anyone else, but sourcing behind the scenes footage of big productions like this demonstrate just how much hard, relatively thankless, work goes into it, and those people should be commended. Something else the film nails is the music. Thomas Newman delivers far and away the most interesting score for a Bond film yet, that ducks and weaves amongst familiar themes whilst carving interesting new ground, along with Sam Smith's utterly gorgeous and haunting theme song. As far as performances go, Daniel Craig continues to carve out a unique persona of the character, in spite of the numerous narrative beats that attempt to undermine that, Lea Seydoux brings a crazy good intensity to her character when she isn't a plot device to be thrown around or put under the spell of Bond's magic dick, Christoph Waltz puts his all into his role even if he's given nothing to do with it, and in spite of the fact that he could never replace Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes is an unbelievably good actor, and pretty much steals all of the film's laughs, of which, mercifully, there are quite a few. I think that summation of performance highlights Spectre's biggest problem, however, and that is that it is, like most that came before it, fine. It only seems worse because it's fresh, and because of the quality of its direct predecessors. These aren't new issues to the Bond series, however, and in a lot of ways, Spectre sits comfortably amongst the more reviled Roger Moore entries. But even those, as I've mentioned, aren't the worst that cinema has to offer. They do the job, they just don't transcend it. So why does Spectre hurt this much? Because, for a while, we'd moved past this. Casino Royale and, to a lesser degree, Skyfall, had proved that Bond films can have the depth and artistic sophistication of many of its contemporaries, without sacrificing the ingredients that make them what they are. They proved that nostalgia, when restrained, can contribute to something new, something positive. So it's a shame to see Spectre so assuredly jump three steps backwards into idiotic fan-service that nobody asked for and bullshit retconning that spits in the face of what came before it. If a 4,500 word essay isn't enough to communicate it, allow me to conclude with this: Spectre is a lot of things, but more than anything else, it is fine. And there's nothing sadder than that.