It got a big laugh when the audience thought it meant something other than “careless.” Once M clarified it, the reaction was more like, “Oh. Yeah. Nevermind…”
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SPECTRE: the horror viewing
After the recent spate of Bond film rankings and people’s comments, I decided to watch some Bond films. What follows is mostly observational/impressionistic, and not as tightly woven as I sometimes get, since I tried to see the films with fresh eyes in light of posts from the rankings and Deathmatch threads.
I started out with CASINO ROYALE, but did not make it much beyond the credit sequence. When I stopped the film, I saw the other movie suggestions, and decided to give SPECTRE a go, and look for the horror elements as suggested by Stb.
As before, I was pulled in by the Mexico City sequence, and I realized that I enjoyed SPECTRE’s depiction of a Global South milieu, which was missing for me in CASINO ROYALE, where Uganda felt like a movie-ized Global South location (done to high-quality Bond film standards, but still generic, as if based on depictions from other movies, rather than an actual place).
Then the credits sequence and song (I like it, and am not freaked out by Smith’s falsetto), and I felt a small horror vibe with the octopus and its enveloping tentacles. So I kept on, and noticed how watchable the film is for me. The sequences last just the right amount of time, and there is a sweep from one scene to the next (reminiscent of Hamilton at his best).
I also realized that I enjoyed SPECTRE’s Bond as a protagonist. A good while back, Dustin penned a brilliant defense of the psychological depth of SKYFALL, and compared to that film, SPECTRE is weak tea in the psychological portrait department. But I like it. In fact, I do not think I want a psychological Bond character: in the service one moment, rogue the next, followed by a re-joining.
It may be that as a gay man, a protagonist going rogue does nothing for me. I went rogue in my late teens, and never looked back. There was never any homecoming, or announcement that I had never left. I did leave, and never went home again.
SPECTRE Bond I can relate to since he is driven, mission-focused, and masculine-oriented (if you are surprised at reading this, imagine how surprised I was at writing it). Usually, I am not one to identify with a screen character, but on this viewing, I realized I do with this iteration of Bond. I like the erotic energy he has with both Moneypenny and Q, and enjoy the questioning flickers that play across Craig’s face as Bond registers some new feeling/consciousness. I noticed for the first time that when Mr. White kills himself, Bond averts his gaze. The first crack in RobotBond? The first inkling of the price he pays to lead the life he was trained for?
There is also a MooreBond vibe that erupts at select moments. Not an MR-level vibe and not always present, but one that makes a nod toward the sheer pleasure so often found in the Moore films.
As for the plastic elements, the cinematography and editing are excellent, with Lee Smith doing an especially superb job. The score is good, and its delayed entrance in some action scenes reminded me of Barry’s music for DAF.
I also realized that the villains of my top three movies–DAF; SPECTRE; MR–are all business men villains. Nothing political or Cold War affiliated. Both Blofelds run criminal enterprises as if they were corporate conglomerates, and Drax is an empire unto himself (he even calls up the henchman agency personally to recruit Jaws for his team).
Yes: passengers and crew suddenly disappear on the train. A helicopter is brought downs with a pistol. The secret lair blows up in a spectacular fireball, yet Blofeld survives. The stepbrother-is-Blofeld-and-responsible-for-everything narrative strand is wackadoodle.
Still I say: and? I sincerely tried to be bother/annoyed/outraged by all of this as many viewers are, but failed to be. For me, the film is anti-realist (the MooreBond vibes help here) in the way a fable is. I enjoy the nods to the cultural threat of the increasing/metastasizing growth of the surveillance society, and C’s speech about people needing/wanting a strong leader hits home considering the electoral realities of 2024, but SPECTRE plays like a fable for me–a tale of awakening.
I got a horror vibe from Bond running through Vauxhall as it were James Whale’s Old Dark House, and Bond-as-Frankenstein’s-monster/creation popped up in my head several times, but I would greatly appreciate it if Stb could delineate what he sees as horror moments/elements (I know I have missed a lot).
I love the ending–the James Bond theme swelling, and Bond and Madeleine driving away in the DB5. Another first time observation: after Mendes racks Madeleine into focus in the car as she turns her head, he does not then re-rack to bring Bond back in focus. He makes a straight cut to the car driving off, so the last image of Bond is out of focus–as if he is eluding a viewer’s perception in a last act of escape.
After finishing this viewing, I was so inspired I started watching SKYFALL, but then my husband came home from his shift at the medical facility, so I turned the television over to him. But the minutes I did see have already started percolating in my brain.
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Very entertaining observations, @MrKiddWint, much appreciated.
I remember in the gap after SPECTRE, before it was announced Craig would return, we floated ideas for possible directors. A favourite of mine would have been Guillermo del Toro.
In fact I think many of SPECTRE’s shortcomings could have been avoided or improved if the direction had embraced the horror elements much more decisively. Bond films regularly leave the realm of the probable behind during scenes and set pieces - and rarely touch that of realism - why not have one that amplifies this particular quality and poaches in the horror genre for what it’s worth?
A film whose explicit motto is ‘The dead are alive’, whose villain was given to cannibalism at one time, whose ravens evoke notions of Huginn and Muninn and their master Odin, whose torture scene wishes it was MARATHON MAN, whose protagonists know things they cannot conceivably know and appear or disappear at random, would certainly not have been hurt by going all in on the surrealist angle.
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It would have been nice if they could have leaned completely into the horror elements in the film rather than, like everything else in Spectre, merely playing lip service to it.
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Which would result in an awesome film.
I think:
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three Bond films in a row had had strong realist elements–not Rossellini–but no invisible cars either. SPECTRE allowed for a small movement away from such elements, but EON will never give us “James Bond, Vampire Hunter.”
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EON is congenitally fearful of being extreme (though one of its most extreme-embracing productions–MR–is one of its greatest). This fear causes them to qualify their moments of “going-all-in,” so that even as they do so, they are pulling back.
Totally missed the ravens as a horror indicator (but then horror is my least favorite genre, bordering on active dislike).
It was torturous enough for me–but again–not something I enjoy watching on screen.
I noticed that as well, and tried to be upset, but could not get there. I figured in a film about surveillance, everybody is watching everybody else, so people appear where they are supposed to be when needed–like the dart gun on Bond’s wrist in MR, or the piton gun that reloads itself in DAF (see I can be critical even of my most beloved).
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They also could have done so much more with the surveillance angle. It’s really just a tacked on thing that is meant to make the film look hip and cool because they’re commenting on something that is “current”.
What Spectre is really about is Bond wandering around, trying to find his old childhood friend so he can kill him. Why? Who knows. I mean, he hasn’t found out that his “friend” is the “author of all his pain” at this point. His old childhood friend wants Bond to find him so that they can chat, play a nice, rousing game of Operation, and he can tell Bond about his brand new name that is supposed to mean something. But, while Bond is trying to reach his long lost “friend”, which is what this “friend” wants, said “friend” is also actively trying to kill Bond. The plot holes in this one are so wide you could fit entire continents through them quite comfortably.
One last thing that this film, nor NTTD, manage to touch on is just how Blofeld managed to succumb to Heracles at all. He proves in Spectre that he’s basically immortal. He survives being blown up twice in a span of less than 5 minutes (one such explosion being the Guiness record holder for largest explosion) and then survives his helicopter being shot out of the air by the mightiest pistol that there ever was and then survives the helicopter crashing into a bridge and then skidding across the entire length of the bridge.
How someone was able to look at this script and approve it is beyond comprehension. I seriously would have been less irritated by this film if they’d just canned this script, pulled the script for GoldenEye or Tomorrow Never Dies out of the bin and done a shot for shot remake.
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The moment SPECTRE touches the mirror and the lands beyond is actually well before the first frame when Dench-M, from the grave, sends Bond on a weird mission to find and kill Sciarra - who was just about to set some major terror attack in motion. Okay, M might have suspected something along the lines if she was familiar with Sciarra’s resumé - but how she possibly knew to send Bond to Sciarra’s funeral is beyond explanation if the script didn’t omit crucial information.
As is, Bond receives a mission from the grave sending him into the net of somebody who is dead to the world but apparently never was to Bond. Ample opportunity for nighttime scenes beside open tombs and skeletons inside cupboards. 
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True, but would it be a Bond movie then? I know SAF has lamented that not enough was done with Monica Bellucci’s character, but Bond films are designed to be (and work best when) allusive rather than in-depth. I am sure that a fine documentary on the surveillance society and its perils could (and should) be made, and look forward to seeing it on PBS next year.
Surveillance serves as a MacGuffin in SPECTRE, as uranium does in NOTORIOUS, and a roll of microfilm in NORTH BY NORTHWEST (soon to play in a restored 70-mm print at Lincoln Center. Hopefully, it will come to a theater near you).
I do not get a sense that Bond is wandering here. I remember one member (was it Orion? If not, my apologies) saying that SPECTRE featured one of the most directed/clued of Bond adventures. Dench-M winds Bond up, and off he goes. He shows scant autonomy until the finale.
True of all Bond films. They exist on the Isle of Misfit Plots.
On this screening, I wondered if Dench-M knew about Oberhauser/Blofeld, and withheld the information from Bond, comfortable with being ruthless, and using her agent/toys in whatever fashion needed. Does she instruct Bond to attend the funeral to enmesh him further in Spectre, with the high possibility of running into Oberhauser/Blofeld? She both thinks of everything, and of absolutely nobody.
Yes, but they would have needed del Toro for that (who is currently shooting FRANKENSTEIN).
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Entirely possible and fitting for Dench’s character such as we’ve seen her act in SKYFALL. But if so it would only make sense to show this in some way or form, her withholding some crucial piece (typical Gardner-M behaviour) - or contrarily show her goading Bond with information to do her bidding: ‘Here’s somebody who’s been dying to meet you, 007. Look to it it wasn’t in vain, will you?‘
Either way it’s lost if fans need to disinter the hints years after the film.
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First and foremost, would it still star a character named James Bond? Then it’s a Bond film.
On a more serious note, besides the fact that my tongue was firmly in cheek while typing most of that post, they could have done more interesting things with the surveillance angle. They could have made it feel as though Spectre was truly everywhere instead of just telling us this over and over again. Having “C” be a clear villain from the start was a major misstep. He could have been introduced as someone who wasn’t an antagonist of MI6 and the Double-0 Section and have been pushing the installation of the new Nine Eyes program from a place of apparent sincerity. They definitely should have actually shown a couple of the terrorist attacks that are alluded to on the TV screens that get other wavering members of the Nine Eyes to join up with the program. Having Bond on the ground in the middle of one of them and having his efforts fail but a key piece of intelligence coming from C’s surveillance system proving to be what saved the day and scores of lives could have been an interesting plot device, maybe making the audience question about Bond and MI6’s relevance in this new surveillance age, which is something that EON clearly wants us to do anyway since they’ve been questioning Bond’s relevance since 1995.
Have the film build up some goodwill towards C and his new program rather than casting him square away in the first post-title scene as one of the film’s villains. Makes for a potentially decent reveal of C as a villain later and helps lessen the blow of the Bloferhauser “reveal” that completely fell flat on its face.
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This was one of my many problems with Spectre - the threat just wasn’t big enough for a Bond movie.
They had Nine Eyes… well that actually exists. It’s called Five Eyes.
In a post Snowden world, having global surveillance and intelligence alliances is yesterday’s news, not tomorrow’s.
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It also felt a bit redundant since Quantum did the whole “we have people everywhere” bit, but they actually backed it up.
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Brilliant reading @MrKiddWint !
Couple of points from me, I agree this is CraigBond at his most Roger Moore. What would a modern reimagining of Moonraker be but Spectre. The parachute in Rome, actually the whole chase sequence is very Moore.
Horror :
Bond is the Spectre of the title, he is a ghost, professionally and figuratively he is the ghost of death, taking his orders from a ghost, the dead M. There is nothing of the living in his home in stark contrast to Moores and Connery’s homes.
The train is a haunted house full of the invisible being stalked by one who lives, Mr Hinx. He has no place on the train so is abruptly shot from it.
Madeline herself is in love with death and feels compelled to be around death.
There is obvious body horror mentioned more succinctly than I could. But decay and death permeate the film, the ghost of Empire, of Britain’s importance in world events the monster of big business, and the viciousness of siblings rivalry played out as the past comes back from the dead.
Rome Mexico , cities of dead beauty. Of decaying grandeur.
Bellucis scene is played as horror, in an action film Bond we would have seen Bond dispatch the assasins in combat instead it’s shot from her point of view of fear.
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Madeleine can see dead people - they just don’t know they are dead yet.
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For me, SPECTRE has many intriguing elements of the horror genre, even the showdown in that dark, abandoned Mi6 ruin is hauntingly unique, with the jump into the net (suspension of disbelief visualized). But it makes one work so hard to disregard the many things that do not work, and that’s where the entertainment is fading.
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I’m looking through my main posts on this thread and to my great surprise they’re from 2019/2020. I thought they were more recent than that, but hey…tempus fugit.
Same feelings for me. I don’t see how these aspects make SPECTRE more ripe for smashing than any other Bond film. Overall it gave me things I wanted to see. A snow top facility. The return of the white tuxedo. Bond staying at the villain’s lair and engaging in a polite conversational charade. A brawl inside a train, etc. All the things I listed as positives four plus years ago still remain on my list too.
I rate it the fourth best film in the Craig era and for me NTTD made it better by default given the connective tissue.
It’s a classy sequence. I also really like the funeral in Rome and the atmosphere that has, playing up Oberhauser and Bond’s past links and all. Newman using the Skyfall theme there worked a treat. Very ghostly and ominous, especially with Oberhauser’s back turned.
Craig’s “life insurance” quip is also exactly how I like Bond to be. Using humour in a detached, ruthless way. He’s her protector but also coming off as a cold bastard.
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Great review!
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I disagree. Whatever the timeframe of disinterment, the hint has to be there if it is to be disinterred, and some hints may take longer to be seen, often depending on the viewer and their level of engagement/interest.
That is one way to do it, but not the only way.
I know that you, @dalton, and @secretagentfan have alternative plots, where more is made of elements you experience as underdeveloped (and they could make fine films). Our disagreement emerges from my believing that the film’s plot elements are developed enough for the narrative being told. Just as NOTORIOUS’s narrative is about Alicia and Devlin falling in love, and its plot involves uranium and Nazis in South America, so SPECTRE’s narrative is about the awakening of Bond–his coming back from the dead world of being a programmed government assassin–and its plot involves government surveillance and shadowy criminal enterprises trying to become aligned with governmental power.
SPECTRE’s plot is leaned into (to used dalton’s phrase) just enough to move things along, but without obscuring/drowning the film’s narrative. Having finished my SKYFALL re-watch (more on that later–is there a SF thread?), I see that its narrative concerns Bond’s resurrection, and the plot is about Silva’s grievances and his plan for revenge. Resurrection narratives are not my favorites, but I saw how Mendes worked with the two of them with success.
I think @sharpshooter puts it well when he says that the movie “gave me things I wanted to see.” The callbacks to earlier (dead) Bond films are there, but the touch is light–the ghost of MooreBond–in keeping with the film’s handling of plot.
This approach will not be to all viewers taste, and probably a good film could be made if surveillance was not plot, but narrative instead. But taken on the terms on which it was made, I would argue that SPECTRE succeeds.
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As I see it, NOTORIOUS’ narrative is the Devlin/Alicia love story, that much would seem undoubted.
But is SPECTRE about
a)Bond’s awakening
b)Bond getting rid of childhood trauma
c)Bond making peace with his past or
d)Bond making peace with his future (or a number of possible other options)?
The moment you cannot clearly settle on one of these options to me suggests the film is undecided about its own narrative and nature. This mirrors a plot that seems disjointed and at times at odds with any of the above as well as what went on before and after any specific point in the runtime.
A production that doesn’t bother itself with theme or narrative beyond “Drax fights Bond/Bond fights Drax” profits from the sweep of scenes and events in MOONRAKER. But SPECTRE clearly wants to have a narrative - it’s just not sure which one that should be.
As fans - or as cinephiles/analysts - we comb through the material and arrange the breadcrumbs we find along the lines of our reading. Or decide our reading according to our findings. But the harder the breadcrumbs are found the greater the risk a film fails to convey its narrative.
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Great analysis Dustin.
I see the narrative as Option A, with Options B, C, and D as sub-routines within that narrative.
Bond’s awakening from his programming encompasses/indicates 1) unattachment from trauma (since attaching to trauma facilitated the programming in the first place); 2) making peace with his past, in that he understands he has autonomy, and the past is no longer determinative; and 3) realization that he can choose a future other than the one he was programmed for, and then doing so.
The final shot is a visual correlative of this awakening. Bond drives away in the DB5–the (ghost) car of a past (cinematically dead) Bond. But this Bond is literally and visually in the driver’s seat–he puts himself in that position, not Q Branch. In fact, this is a viewer’s last image of Bond. He will determine the direction–he is in control of both the car and his past.
Q’s last line is: “I’d thought you’d gone”–Bond had ghosted–left the building. In SF, Bond literally/visually drops out of–the sky/sight/MI6/assassin work–only to be resurrected back into his programmed life, and in the last shot he reaffirms his commitment to/agreement with his programming.
In SP, he awakens, and rejects the work. He is out of bullets because he chooses to eject them from his gun, not because he ran out of them while in a gunfight.
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