Spectre begins with the caption on the screen the dead are not dead and we go into a wonderfully shot sequence in Mexico City on the Day of the Dead. Arguably my favorite sequence in the whole movie, in part because my favorite bond villain of all time is Baron Samedi and well Bond dressed up as him.
Bond is hunting a guy who threatens to blow up a stadium, but thwarts him superman style with loads of collateral damage. Bond gets scolded by M and suspended yada yada yada. Here's where we start running into my biggest issue with the movie. We've seen it before. Everything in this movie feels like it's been cherry picked from other movies. Granted it hard not to when you have 23 other films but it just seems like they phoned it in on this one, trying to cash in on the fact that Blofeld is back. I would say spoiler alert but the title of the film gives it away since that's the name of Blofeld's organization. So anyone who's actually seen a bond movie before is going to know that going in.
In other predictable notes Andrew Scott shows up as a bad guy BIG SHOCK since he plays Jim Moriarty on Sherlock. Word from the wise, don't cast someone who the audience knows as villainous heel if you want us to be surprised he's a bad guy.
So Moriarty shows up as this guy leading the merger between MI5 & MI6 named "C" He sees the George Orwellian future of surveillance and drones doing the work, viewing the 00 group as obsolete. Bond goes rogue so to speak following the orders of The previous "M" who gave him one last mission after her death in Skyfall. Those orders lead him to the Spectre organization and I won't go into anymore detail here because it's really painting by the numbers at this point.
It's not that this is a bad movie, but I feel like I've seen it already and never have I felt more that they need to stop making bond movies than after this one. And I love Daniel Craig as Bond, I think he's the best one because his character is the closest to the one from the books. Nothing in the movie is really glaringly bad except for Sam Smith singing the opening number. Good God that was a bad song. I never want to hear him sing anything again.
The acting is solid and the movie is entertaining. Christoph Waltz knows how to play Blofeld and was probably the best choice they could have gotten. he plays the intelleticual villain well and could do it in his sleep. Dave Bautista plays the Manacing Mr. Hinx. You may know him better as Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy. Léa Seydoux is the primary bond girl and does a good job, but blondes aren't really my type and Monica Bellucci shows up so Bondcan bang someone older than him for a change
The story is fine, it's just that the series is tired and bringing back Blofeld is just another example of it. I know they wanted to bring back Blofeld long before this but due to complex legal issues that only recently settled they couldn't use Blofeld or the name Spectre. They made the first bond movie in 1962 and they've written movies off of every single book Ian Fleming ever wrote and then some. It's 2015 now and they had a great run. It's time for James to go into the sunset and get a well deserved applause.
Although it may seem that I am down on this movie, It's not bad by any stretch. believe me when I say this is far from the crappy entries like Octopussy, View to a kill, or any of the Pierce Brosnan flicks after Goldeneye. If this wasn't a "Bond" Flick I'd probably think much better of it. I give this 6.5 vodka Martinis out of 10.
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