A Bloody Mess
Spectre is not a good movie. In fact it is a bad movie. In fact it may be one of the worst 007 movies. Yes worse than Moonraker and Die Another Day, And Quantum of Solace. At least those movies were goofy enough where the bad at least had breaks of pure unintentional hilarity. This movie doesn't even have that. This movie doesn't have much of anything beside a bloated run time (2.5 damn hours) and a "twist" that will piss you off because the pure level of asinine writing it took to write it.
Story
I guess this is what we get. We as an audience let our guard down because Daniel Craig is a good actor, and Casino Royale was good enough. Powers that be in the 007 franchise effectively backed Bond into a corner narrative wise over the course of the Craig films. The story here, if you can call it that, is Bond is going rouge to find out about Spectre, after a now dead M ( Judi Dentch) gives a REALLLY vague message about the organization. Seriously, her message is kill this one guy, and go to his funeral. At the same time the 007 program is being threatened by a young upstart , C played by Andrew Scott, who wants to take away the foot soldiers in espionage and move toward invasive surveillance. Bond also has a figure from his past reappear and he starts to connect the dots from the previous 3 movies. If you're asking "what dots and what figure from the past?" believe me, so was I and I assume everyone else. Spectre attempts to connect some over arching story between the 4 movies and it is as bad as it sounds. Why? BECAUSE NONE OF THIS WAS SET UP IN THE OTHER MOVIES. Frankly there is 0 reason for this overarching back story BS. It is James Bond's JOB to be a spy and stop bad guys. There's no need for there to be some 4 movie conspiracy, there's no need for the villain to be some figure from Bond's past, and there's especially no reason to do so when it appears that there was no intention to do so in the previous 3 movies. Also he spends an hour and a half babysitting THE MOST USELESS BOND GIRL EVER.
Cast
The cast of this movie was utterly wasted on this movie. Yes, all the actors did their jobs fine. The returning cast was good ENOUGH, but goddamn if the people introduced in this movie aren't underdeveloped. Leá Seydoux is utterly wasted as a Bond girl. She literally only there for Bond to drag around. Batista is wasted as a Henchman. I'm still kinda confused at what his role as Mr. Hinx was. He's introduced by killing another member of Spectre for some reason. I don't know if we just got excited after his performance in Guardians, but his range of acting in this movie was basically squinting, and looking mildly amused. Oh, and for some reason his one time talking, HE HAS A FUCKING RUSSIAN ACCENT. WHAT? BATISTA IS A HISPANIC MAN. HOW SWAY?!?! Know how everyone got excited about Monica Belluci as an older Bond girl? Yeah, she was in the movie all of 5 minutes and her literal purpose was, and i shit you not, sexpostition. She explained details the audience already knew while being sexed up by James. Jeez, Cristoph Waltz has 2 oscars and even he wasn't interesting. The screenplay gave him nothing, no (smart) motivation, no interesting details. And the asinine twist that they throw in will make you resent him for taking this roll.
Action
You must be thinking "at least the action is good yeah?" Fucking wrong. The action beats here are boring an uninspired, and kinda don't make sense either. The only action scene of not for being DECENT os the opening action scene which is a fight in a helicopter. But even the it's kinda ruined by the strangely out of place single take shot that precedes it, and the logical inconsistencies of the scene. Bond literally blows up a hotel, so you have to assume he killed some civilians. Also after he blows up a hotel, why are the Day of the Dead festivities STILL going on like he didn't jus blow up a freakin' hotel? None of the action scenes even come close to touching the Train scene, the skyscraper fight, the casino fight, and the final showdown of Skyfall. Speaking of final showdowns, the 3rd act of this movie DRAAAAGS.
Spoiler*
It's Bond running around the old MI6 building looking for Blofeld (yes Waltz is Blofeld, the iconic Bond baddie and yes its shoehorned in) and THEN running around looking for his girlfriend. Then they shoot down Blofeld's chopper with a pistol from a boat. Movie ends with dumb callback to classic bond. It is boring, it is long, and it is STUPID.
Conclusion
This movie is a culmination of a long time coming. The Daniel Craig bond movies obsession with doing whatever is popular in genre movies at the time is it's unfortunate downfall as a whole. All i can hope is that the reception of this movie prompts a HARD reboot, but seeing as this movie is still going to make like SO MUCH MONEY, i doubt that will be the case.
