After my disappointment with Skyfall, my expectations were not particularly high going into Spectre. During my first viewing, however, I felt my hope for the franchise returning…for the first hour. Then, there were a few minor issues I had with things characters said or did—especially Bond—but I was willing to look past them because the action was well shot and the movie had a nice look to it. I also enjoyed the pacing and how the villain was being built up.

Then, the movie started to connect some dots that didn’t need connecting. Then, it committed several narrative crimes in its last act that just pissed me off and transformed all the minor gripes I had during the first half into glaring issues with how much the filmmakers royally screwed up. I couldn’t believe it. It’s as though we were all driving along a nice straight road, with a few bumps and potholes, and the driver suddenly jerked the wheel sideways, sending us off a cliff as he screamed “What a twist!”

As was the case with my Skyfall review, spoilers and events that take place after the halfway mark will need to be discussed. Also like my opinions of Skyfall, some of the negatives of this movie would be less of an issue if I was not meant to take the movie seriously. Unlike other Bond films, the Daniel Craig movies are meant to be grounded in reality to some degree and all have very serious tones. It isn’t like You Only Live Twice or Die Another Day where there are wild and crazy things going on that don’t really make logical sense, but you can still laugh at it and have fun. Spectre is a serious movie that intentionally brings up serious topics like the idea of a global surveillance state—something that everyone making this movie was probably against until a majority lost their minds after 2016 and 2020 for very particular reasons.

Having watched Spectre again recently for only the second time, I felt very similar to the way I did in my initial viewing. I was enjoying the movie, despite some minor gripes. Then we were introduced to the villain and everything fell apart. This movie breaks with the format of most Bond movies, so I’ll break from the review format in kind. I have a lot to say about this one so, let’s do a Fair or Foul review to see if this movie is worth anything.

Plot Synopsis

James Bond (Daniel Craig) has tracked an individual to Mexico City and, after a few explosions and a fight in a helicopter, succeeds in eliminating his target and getting a ring off of him that has the symbol of an octopus engraved on it. Unfortunately for Bond, he did this on his own and without approval from M (Ralph Fiennes) or MI6. He’s ‘grounded’ and forced to have a tracking device implanted in his arm by Q (Ben Whishaw) to make sure he doesn’t do anything without M knowing again. Meanwhile, MI6 is facing a corporate takeover. The company executive Max aka C (Andrew Scott) is pushing for a corporate conglomerate to handle surveillance and security around the world rather than branches of government. This is a relatively minor portion of the plot, despite having catastrophic implications.

Obviously, Bond is not going to stay compliant with M’s request for long. After showing Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) a video from the deceased M (Judy Dench) telling Bond to assassinate the man in Mexico City and to attend his funeral, Bond steals some equipment and cuts out of town to follow the trail. Q does him a favor and covers his tracks for 48 hours, but it doesn’t take long before Bond starts causing trouble. The evil organization that was rumored in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace is revealed to be S.P.E.C.T.R.E., a re-imagined version of the same infamous organization from the Sean Connery Bond movies.

After following the trail to Rome, crashing a secret S.P.E.C.T.R.E. meeting, and seeing the face of its leader (Christoph Waltz)—whom Bond recognizes—he sets out to find Mr. White (Jesper Christensen). White is the member of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. who was featured briefly in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace and has been deemed unnecessary by the organization. Bond hopes to find out what White knows before he’s killed by the towering assassin Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista). This puts him in touch with White’s daughter and on the run from Hinx in a race to find out more about S.P.E.C.T.R.E.’s agenda and its leader, whom Bond suspects is someone from his past.

That’s it for the spoiler-free overview. Below, I will not dance around the subject.

Foul: Editing & Flubs

Bad editing can make the movie experience slightly frustrating, but, usually, there are other things that you notice well before the editing. Some good movies can have bad editing and still make it out okay, like Batman from 1989 where every scene just ends and it feels like there are barely any connective tissues between scenes. Spectre has a ton of other problems, so let’s start with something minor. I’ll give you a few small examples of when an editing choice distracted me in the following scenes: the interrogation of Mr. White and the fight with Hinx on the train.

During the interrogation scene, Bond finds White in his basement and summons him upstairs. When he does this, he turns his back on White and walks out the door. It immediately cuts to the two of them sitting down at the table. White is already seated and Bond has his gun drawn and slowly sits down as though he’s worried he cannot take his eyes off him. This shows an inconsistency in Bond’s behavior from the previous shot, obviously. It would have been better to either not show Bond turning his back in one shot, or to use a shot where the two were already seated at the table rather than create a character inconsistency.

As for the fight scene on the train, there were a couple of issues I had. One was the fact that Bond and Madeleine clearly ordered dirty martinis and, not only did they get ‘clean’ martinis without the olive brine, but they got it faster than a person could make two martinis. You can’t help but say, “That was fast,” with how quickly they came back to the table—there was a similar time issue with Bond’s exploding watch in the drill-torture scene in which he said “One minute,” and it was more like 20 seconds, but we have a lot to get through, so I’ll stick to the train for this example.

Before the two heroes can enjoy their martinis, Hinx attacks and the fight ensues. It’s a good fight and it is shot well. It feels gritty and dramatic because there is no music behind most of the fight, which is why I didn’t care for the editing choice to bring music into it towards the end. You could call this ‘flaw’ a preference, but I think it was a choice that was distracting and detracted from the seriousness of the scene. When you suddenly bring orchestral music into the middle of an action sequence that has been musically silent, regardless of the music’s tone, it stands out more and removes some of the tension in that moment in an attempt to inject emotion. I’m not sure what the filmmakers were going for, but I felt it was a mistake to close out the silent fight with music before its abrupt end.

Fair: Action Scenes

When I think about the positives of Spectre, the first thing that comes to mind is the action. It’s not as constant as previous Bond films, in which there are multiple chase scenes back to back, or multiple crazy gunfights while storming an enemy stronghold. However, the action in Spectre is shot well and spread out enough to make it enjoyable. The opening scene in Mexico with buildings collapsing and a helicopter twirling all over the place over a terrified crowd is an exciting highlight. The car chase in Rome is relatively tame by Bond standards, but still fun to watch with how he is trying to communicate with Moneypenny as he’s speeding away in an Aston Martin. The scene in which Bond is chasing some cars in a plane is also an awesome spectacle, particularly because of the use of practical effects and destruction. The final confrontation with Hinx on the train is, as I have mentioned, mostly satisfying. If all you saw were the action scenes of Spectre, you probably wouldn’t think it was so disappointing of a movie.

Foul: Bond’s Decisions

As I mentioned in my Casino Royale review, people were hungry for a James Bond who was not invincible to the point that it was considered a positive that he made mistakes in that movie. Since the movie was meant to be something of a restart to the franchise, grounding the movies in a realm of seriousness, Casino Royale was to be his first mission as a double-o agent. He was meant to be relatively inexperienced, which justified why he would make some mistakes or let his ego get in the way of the mission. However, Spectre is the fourth film in this new era, and it takes place after Skyfall—a movie that focused a lot on his age and suggested that he was an old, seasoned, hardened, and outdated agent by that point. This is why some of the decisions Bond makes in Spectre are so frustrating to me. He does not have an excuse to make dumb mistakes other than the writers wanting something to happen and not knowing how to set it up.

My first example has to do with how Hinx finds Bond and Madeleine after being tasked with killing Mr. White (aka The Pale King). Bond had traced Mr. White’s whereabouts to a secluded cabin in Austria. When he gets there, he sees there is a camera system on—a very obvious camera, I might add—and finds a secret room in the cabin’s basement with White inside. After they come up for a conversation and disclose that Bond needs to find White’s daughter Madeleine (Lea Seydoux) and L’Americaine, White kills himself, and Bond leaves. When Hinx arrives, he sees White has been dead long enough for crows to start pecking at his eyes and that the obvious camera system is still on. The crows also suggest that Bond did not have a real reason to hurry out of there because Hinx was not necessarily hot on his trail.

Now with those details out of the way, I have some questions about this scene that I think I can also answer on behalf of the writers.

Why would Bond leave the camera system on during his conversation with White?
Why would he not wipe the camera footage before leaving?
Why would White use such an old and obviously visible camera in the main room when he’s hiding in a room downstairs?

The answers are mostly because the writers want Hinx to be able to follow Bond based on what is discussed in the footage, and so they can have Madeline make Bond feel bad about leading Hinx to her. The footage is recorded and not deleted because the writers want to use the footage for a dramatic moment later in the movie. The camera is obviously visible because the writers want everyone who comes into the room to see the camera and only have Hinx think there might be something useful on there, as well as justify the use of the footage later without letting the audience know there’s a camera in the room.

Not to belabor this Foul much longer, but there are also a few instances in which Bond has all the time and opportunity in the world to just shoot an important enemy in the head and be rid of their trouble. He has the chance to just double-tap an unconscious Hinx after the plane crashes into his car and knocks him out. Instead, Bond just argues with Madeleine, she points out his stupidity and they leave, allowing Hinx to wake up and find them later. If you wanted to ensure their next encounter happened, there could have been other methods of getting Hinx out of that scene without compromising Bond’s intelligence and making him as dumb as all the villains in previous movies that let Bond live when they had the opportunity to kill him.

In the last scene of the movie, Bond also has the chance to kill Blofeld and even has the gun pointed directly at his head. Yet, for some reason, the writers think James Bond wouldn’t shoot him right then and there. Maybe the writers didn’t watch the previous films in which Bond would eliminate people with prejudice and in terrible ways—like the giant drill bit in Tomorrow Never Dies or locking a dwarf in a suitcase and throwing him into the ocean in The Man with the Golden Gun—but here’s the simplest way to break it down: JAMES BOND IS AN ASSASSIN! He has a license to kill! There is no reason he would opt for the “good-guy” act of mercy with the man who claims to be responsible for all the terrible things that have happened to Bond and MI6 in the past few films, and who is apparently a criminal genius likely capable of causing destruction should he ever escape custody. If there’s one instance Bond would not show mercy, it’s this.

Fair: Occasionally Good Lines or Moments

They are fleeting in Spectre, but there are moments that stand out in my mind as being relatively decent because the film is willing to use some subtlety or stops before becoming too explicit. When Bond wants Q to help him evade surveillance for a certain amount of time, Q says that the little tracking device that was just injected into Bond’s arm will not be fully functional for the first 24 hours. Bond shoots him a quiet look that isn’t really obvious, but Q gets the message and corrects his statement to 48 hours. It’s an exchange that, even though I still don’t like the casting of Q as a young, millennial super-genius, makes me like the actor and interpretation of the character.

I also enjoy the scene in which Bond is trying to teach Madeleine how to use a gun and she demonstrates that she already knows, despite saying that she dislikes guns. When she explains her resentment towards guns, she only mentions that a hitman came to her home to assassinate her father, but he was unaware that she was playing in another room. It would have been better if we had an idea of her age, but those two lines she says tell us enough to know that she was young, had a traumatic event, and likely killed a person with a gun. It’s not necessarily subtle, but it’s also not explicit and allows the audience to fill in the rest of the story.

Foul: More Illogical Moments in the Script

Spectre makes a big deal about the secret organization of the same acronym that James Bond is investigating. It’s an organization that has been involved in countless crimes and terrible events, including those in previous films. It’s so secret that the organization hides behind smoke and mirrors with most people using fake names and anonymity. This is why the scene in which Bond infiltrates their meeting is so weird. The only person whose name is an alias that is mentioned during this scene is The Pale King (Mr. White). Many characters speak and seem to know each other a little too well. At least in the old Bond movies with Connery, the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. members referred to each other with numbers to put up some sort of suggestion of anonymity. In addition, the meeting he crashes is a rare one that wouldn’t normally happen but occurs because they need to sort out responsibilities among them after the death of the man in Mexico.

There’s no real reason given as to why this meeting couldn’t have been done through a Skype call other than a character stating the reason I just gave in the previous sentence. It’s an even stranger circumstance when you consider that the same organization met anonymously in Quantum of Solace at an opera. That movie made it a point that an agent who is assigned to a specific member of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. should not see the faces of other members to retain their anonymity. If this organization wanted to remain secret, hidden, and powerful, having all of its high-ranking members assemble in a public building at the same time in person seems like a bad idea. A single grenade thrown in the room would completely cripple S.P.E.C.T.R.E. almost immediately and not have any civilian casualties.

It’s also a bit weird how Hinx is introduced. The council decrees that Mr. White be killed, and they select their assassin to do it at the end of the table. When they ask if anyone else thinks they’d be better suited for the job, Hinx walks out into the room and gouges out the guy’s eyes as a method of saying “I do.” Seems a bit excessive. You’re going to run out of assassins if your method of choosing one for a job is to have one kill the other. I understand it’s supposed to be a scene that makes Hinx intimidating, but there are other ways it could have been done that made more sense. Or, you could have suggested the guy deserved to die because he betrayed them, or something.

Jumping ahead, I don’t quite understand the plot around the hotel called L’Americaine. Mr. White tells Bond that he needs Madeline to find it, but nothing in the movie suggests that Bond couldn’t have found that information on his own or through a few more details from Mr. White. I understand White is trying to give Bond a reason to protect his daughter, but Bond already gives him his word by the time L’Americaine is brought up. In fact, he makes a big deal about giving his word several times. All that Madeleine does to reveal anything is that it’s a place in Morocco, a hotel in fact. It’s not a hotel that changed its name either. So, why would he need her to find it and not a Google search? I don’t think it would have been difficult to have Q search for it, get some blueprints of the location or satellite footage, and figure out which suite has a hidden room, especially considering how Bond finds the room on his own and how Q can hack everything. It’s just a bad part of the plot that doesn’t work. If the place had at least a different name or didn’t have a giant poster that wasn’t emblazoned with “L’Americaine” in its lobby, I might be willing to ignore it.

I don’t mind Madeleine as a character, she just isn’t made important enough to the plot or mission to justify her being there. She really is just there to be a love interest for Bond, which ends up being a little weird to me. He’s a protector in kind of a fatherly way, and he’s doing this because he gave his word to her dad, which is a big sticking point for him, as I mentioned. Strange that he would be so concerned about keeping his promise to Mr. White even though White happened to be partially responsible for Vesper’s death in Casino Royale as well as other MI6 agents’ deaths over the years.

Also, the drill torture scene doesn’t make sense to me because, well, it doesn’t freakin’ work and James Bond walks out of the room just fine without any of the impairments he was promised by Blofeld. But I digress.

Fair: Style and Pacing

One of Spectre’s strongest moments is during its opening scene in Mexico City on Dia De Los Muertos. In chatting with people who don’t remember much of this film, I found they all remember this scene, and for good reason. It has several very long shots to pull you into the setting with the crazy parades and the people dressed in skeleton suits and masks. There are lots of colors—though muted by a yellowish filter—and the sounds of the parade help make everything exciting and engaging. Then, there are some explosions, a foot chase, and a dramatic fight aboard a helicopter. The opening credits sequence also has some cool effects with a mediocre song.

The other locales that Bond visits are just as beautiful, like the streets of Rome at night and the snowy mountains of Austria. He globe-trots at a steady pace. The investigation he’s doing pulls the plot along and eventually gets more of the MI6 veterans involved. Even when he hits a few speed bumps in his mission, it feels like everything is still progressing. When he discovers the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. meeting and Blofeld is introduced, it’s a menacing scene and sets an even darker tone for the movie than it had already. Too bad it sets everything up for disappointment.

Foul: The Villain and All the Plot Contrivances

At last, we come to my main problems with Spectre. I like Christoph Waltz in most of the movies I have seen him, especially Inglorious Basterds, which is probably the movie that got him the role of Ernst Stavro Blofeld here. Waltz’s Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds was a sinister and menacing presence that just sucked all the air out of the room and filled it with tension because he was such a cunning and ruthless villain. I think they wanted the same effect with Blofeld in Spectre as James Bond’s most notorious rival, but it just does not work for me. The scene during the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. meeting makes him intimidating and mysterious because we don’t hear his voice or see his face for most of it. The more time we spend with Blofeld in Spectre, the less interesting he becomes. Part of this has to do with Waltz’s performance of trying to act like a sociopath who enjoys torturing people and playing with the world like a game. However, Javier Bardem already did this sort of character in Skyfall and he was better at it in that movie. If he had been Blofeld, I might have been more on board with the reintroduction of the iconic villain.

Waltz isn’t all to blame for my issue with the villain, however. My biggest problem with him is the writing and the arbitrary conveniences tied to the character. Some dingus writer decided that it wasn’t enough to make Blofeld an evil villain, he had to be THE evil villain responsible for the events of the past three films and that it was all part of his master plan. Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace both mentioned a secret organization operating under the noses of MI6, so I’ll buy that S.P.E.C.T.R.E. had a hand in the events of those movies. But Blofeld takes credit for everything that happened in them, as though he had predicted and controlled everything, including Vesper’s death. He also takes credit for Skyfall, because Raoul Silva worked for S.P.E.C.T.R.E., apparently—I guess this explains how Silva was able to fund his activities. I don’t mind villains with egos, but to make it all like it’s just one big game of 4D chess that he’s been playing and he hasn’t made a single mistake just takes it too far for me to take him seriously. Blofeld in the previous movies admitted when Bond got the better of them, but that didn’t make his character any less menacing as a villain.

The most egregious of contrivances, however, is the backstory to Blofeld and why James recognizes him. Apparently, after James Bond’s parents died, he was adopted by Blofeld’s parents, making the two of them adoptive brothers. This is pretty damn stupid already, but it gets worse. Not only are they brothers, but the whole reason why the past three movies played out the way they did was because he wanted to hurt Bond, personally. Why did he do this? He did this because his dad was paying more attention to James Bond than him when they were teenagers, so he killed his dad in a mountain climbing accident and faked his death to go off and do illegal spy stuff with S.P.E.C.T.R.E.

What the hell is this nonsense? Whose dumb idea was it to make them related in some way? Blofeld was just the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E., the organization that was always doing nefarious things that James Bond managed to thwart. That was it. The rivalry between them didn’t need to be any more personal than it already was. Making Blofeld have this petty agenda be the reason why any of the previous movies happened is not only stupid, but it diminishes the plots of the other three movies and diminishes his character. I don’t mind if you make Blofeld a petty egotist with a vendetta against Bond but don’t pretend like he’s such a super genius that it was all according to his plan, and definitely don’t make the reason for his pettiness that his daddy wasn’t spending enough time with him.

Not only that, but Blofeld doesn’t even escape. He’s defeated and humiliated in his first appearance by Bond. This is not how you build up a villain to make them interesting. Good grief. What a terrible villain and what a terrible twist.

Verdict: Foul

Any goodwill that Spectre manages to build up in its first half is diminished and annihilated by the time the movie is over. The villain is a joke. The characters behave inconsistently. Portions of the plot don’t work or make sense. And the big return of Bond’s most notoriously antagonistic foes, Blofeld and S.P.E.C.T.R.E., is wasted in a disappointing movie that only succeeds in having some good action scenes and decent pacing. What a waste.

Hair of the Dog Drinking Game Rule

Since Spectre is about the evil organization that James Bond has unknowingly been hunting for the past few movies, a fair amount of attention is paid to its mascot: the octopus. An octopus used to represent evil secret organizations apparently dates back to the 19th century, according to Google. Its most famous renditions in modern culture is with S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and Marvel Comics’ Hydra. The first time we see the logo in Spectre is on the ring that James Bond acquired in Mexico City. I may have already had a drinking game rule about celebrating the appearance of the eight-armed aquatic beast in Octopussy, but I’m not above repeating myself here. The ring and its symbol appear a few more times throughout the film, so you might as well drink whenever you see it.