Spectre: Bland and Forgettable

2015's Spectre is a perfect example of what happens when you try to rush a miracle. Sam Mendes, the miracle worker who had delivered us the practically euphoric Skyfall just three years prior, discussed having ten months of downtime to refine the script for the latter, ten months he wasn't given for the former. MGM wanted lightning to strike twice, but they weren't patient enough to let the storm brew. The result is a movie so watered down and generic that it can't find the good story that's somewhere within it. It's well documented that MGM rushed the production of this movie, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves for valuing profits over Mendes's and screenwriter John Logan's storytelling skills. One can't help but wonder what this movie could have looked like if corporate greed hadn't cut its creative legs out from under it. 

Spectre was released into a landscape where the idea of a cinematic universe was still very much in vogue. It wants to be its own interconnected version of the MCU, and it doesn't care that the movies that came before it didn't feel the same way. I'll grant that the shadowy organization known as, surprise, Spectre has been around since 1961's Thunderball novel, and I can understand studio executives wanting to include such a fundamental element of 007's lore in Daniel Craig's run as the character. But the inescapable Achilles Heel of this movie is both its willingness to mess with the identities of earlier Bond movies and its failure to stake out one of its own. This movie wants to be big, and what never occurs to it is that Bond might get lost in the spectacle - and he does.

Having raved about much of this era of Bond in the not-so-distant past, my biggest issue with Spectre is how it retcons Craig's previous Bond movies to fit them all under the umbrella of a conspiracy known as... you know what, I'm tired of saying that word. This movie would have been far better off if it had just let the previous three be. I almost wish I could ignore this movie, not because it's necessarily an awful piece of filmmaking, but because it robs the actions of men like Le Chiffre and Silva of much of their emotional and personal weight. If both men were being influenced by a larger conspiracy, then the fear and trauma that we remember them acting out of are suddenly diminished. Many times while watching this movie, I found myself asking, just... why? I've no word more creative to describe that emotion. This movie is often 007's very own version of the infamous somehow, Palpatine returned.

James Bond himself gets overshadowed by the globetrotting, and I miss the intimacy that was afforded his character before, as well as the detail that went into capturing it. I get that this movie is different than Skyfall, but it's nearly impossible not to compare the two. Bond is used as a plot device here rather than as the plot itself, and I wish he had been treated with the same importance and even reverence as he was before. However, Madeleine Swann is a complex character who makes for a good counter to him. One of my favorite moments in an otherwise forgettable movie features her expertly handling Bond's pistol after saying that she hates guns. One can only wonder where the tension comes from, but it's there, and it's surprising. Madeleine and her surprises are the best thing about this movie. She's no Vesper Lynd, and maybe I'm a little jaded by my good memories of her in No Time to Die, but her presence is very welcome here, nonetheless.

The infamous Ernst Blofeld isn't as interesting or varied a villain as Silva, which feels almost wrong to say for the man who's supposed to be the franchise's most important villain, but he is nevertheless an intelligent mastermind cloaked in dark mystery. In one scene, Bond sneaks into a meeting of everyone's favorite shadowy organization, and everyone at the long table stands when Blofeld walks in. We immediately know that he's an important man. He's ruthless, too, the type to have a chairman in his own organization brutally killed for relative inefficiency without so much as batting an eyelash. However, the curtain is eventually pulled back on the mystery surrounding him, and once it is, we see that he's a little one-dimensional and underwhelming. I'm honestly surprised to say that about any character portrayed by Christoph Waltz. Once the mystery is gone, Blofeld turns from an enigma into a person who lacks the charisma or depth of someone like Silva. 

Bigger emotions like these should always be supported by how a movie looks, and let me be clear: Hoyte Van Hoytema is a very good cinematographer with an amazing portfolio under his belt. However, the visuals of this movie are a significant step down from Skyfall, whose visual style landed with an authenticity that still evoked real beauty – that’s only partially his fault. The color grading here is much more aggressively gray, like it's trying way too hard to look serious. The opening scene is set in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead, a day that should have been more colorful than nearly any other by any metric, but Hoytema's work here has a more clinical aesthetic than Deakins's, and while it works for some movies, it doesn't work for one that moves as quickly and dynamically as this one, though his long takes are undeniably impressive from a staging point of view. Again, Hoytema is also let down by bland color grading that works against its surroundings rather than with them, turning them into vague shades of yellow and gray rather than enhancing the colors that are already there.

On paper, this movie should have been a wild success. However, the vision isn’t there, and the hyper-familiar conspiracy formulas it leans on paste this on a flashing neon sign. There are some good things to say about it, and I think that makes it frustrating in a way that not even the horrible Quantum of Solace could be. There's a good movie in here somewhere, probably one that has something to do with James and Madeleine's relationship, but the script is too diluted and generic to find it. One wonders what it could have been like had it been afforded the same resources available to Skyfall, and to make the comparison to Quantum again, it is to Skyfall what Quantum was to Casino Royale, an underwhelming movie that thinks it can be buoyed by the great one that came before it. 

I will say, its action is far superior to Quantum of Solace, and it's supported and given personality by the soundtrack's continual interpolation of Writing's on the Wall, Sam Smith's otherwise mediocre theme song that can't compete with Adele or Billie Eilish's thrilling and chilling entries. One stunt featuring 007 flying a plane on the ground is particularly outstanding - trust me, it'll make sense once you watch it for yourself. Bond is also much more interesting and charismatic here than he was in Quantum, though he's not explored in the same way as he was in Skyfall, all the pieces of which fell into place to trap lightning in a bottle. This isn't a horrible spy thriller, but it's just so much more generic and forgettable than some of Craig's other movies, even if it is arguably passable in the grand scheme of things. 

When you try to rush a miracle to see if you've still "got it," everyone can see your desperation. Spectre isn't awful, but it's trying to outdo Skyfall through sheer scale, and doesn't realize that intimacy is a huge part of what made the previous Bond movie work so well. I think a big part of this is the strict release date that MGM set for the movie, and one wonders what would have happened if it had been given a four-year production window like some of Bond’s superior movies had been afforded. His best movies feel like an adventure. In so many ways, this one feels like an obligation. Even as a critic, I go to the movies to escape for two or three hours, not be greeted with a list of chores. Spectre is a broken master plan trying to make other Bond movies do things they were never created to do.

Spectre - 5/10

Deuteronomy 8:10-18