On the whole, it’s hard to go wrong with James Bond. Disregarding a few stumbles, and maybe one or two major slip ups (“Quantum of Solace”), James Bond movies are usually at least “pretty good”. The traditional formula is simple — suave guy, girls with exotic names, cool gadgets and spy action. Throw in some sort of plot about political intrigue or something and you probably have yourself a solid Bond movie. Well, that’s a severe oversimplification of it — the movie needs to be competently made as well including good actors, good direction and effects, effective writing and a moving soundtrack. For the most part, Bond movies have been lucky enough to have these, and coupled with some creative people filling in the Bond gimmicks without being too repetitious, you end up with solid, albeit unambitious movies. The Daniel Craig era has deviated from that — with classic Bond gimmicks feeling more like nods towards fans, and the films themselves feeling more modern and self serious — they have an edge to them. Of course, that means these movies can’t simply fall back on being James Bond; the gimmicks aren’t really there anymore. The new Bond movies still need to succeed as movies; “Spectre” does not succeed as a movie.
“Spectre” really wants to feel important; it wants to be about something. The plot revolves around a secret organization called “Spectre” backing a multi-government surveillance organization for “national safety”. This general premise has been around for years now, and ever since NSA surveillance became a huge talking point, multiple films have worked government surveillance into their plots. At this point it just feels stale, especially since “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” managed to do it pretty well. Compared to that, this movie is laughable; the idea is put there for no reason other than that it seems important. The movie fails to make any sort of point about it, and the ending just boils down to an underwhelming ‘surveillance is bad and James Bond is good so he’s gonna kill it.’ That’s not to say I think surveillance is in any way good, just that it’s a multifaceted issue that does require some sort of argument to debase it. It’s like just making your villains communists and calling it a day; historically communism has been bad– it’s never worked as intended and always led to poor treatment of a nation’s citizens, but it’s not that simple. Both issues are too complex just to treat as ‘bad guys’ and be done with it. If you want this issue to be covered in your film, you have to put some work in. That’s the root of the problem; “Spectre” doesn’t want to put in the work.
The whole movie feels like a mish-mash of currently popular action movie clichés with no original thought put in at all. The action scenes are competently choreographed and generally fun to watch, but they lacked an edge. There’s a fist fight in a helicopter, James Bond riding down a snowy mountain in an airplane, a gun fight in a train, and a battle in some secret desert facility; they all sound cool on paper, but it all felt so sterile. Like, “These are the kind of action scenes people like in movies, therefore our movie needs them too.” I tend to enjoy movies where you can see the creatives behind them baring their hearts. Whether or not the product is good, I enjoy a movie where I can tell that the people behind it really wanted to make it. This is the opposite of that; it’s the scentless runoff from better recent movies, bottled up and labeled “James Bond”. Bond movies aren’t usually massively ambitious or original, but they always have effort put into them. They don’t just try to cash in on recent trends; they want to uphold the good name of the franchise. They want to be good movies. This is a movie that just doesn’t care; it’s a mindless action movie from all angles. I won’t say that it’s impossible to enjoy, and if you want to turn your brain off and enjoy a semi-decent action movie, by all means, go see it if you’d like. Otherwise, if you want a movie with some originality and substance to it, stay far away from this one.