As a house we all took a trip to the cinema to check out Spectre, the latest installment in the Bond franchise. While we were all very hyped to see the film (we played Sam Smith's song 3 times while cooking dinner) we were insted left a little deflated about what we saw.
It was a big shame to see millions of dollars pumped into the production value, yet we are still stuck with dime-a-dozen villains. Christoph Waltz is woefully underused and an all round naff baddie. To make matters worse, there is a second 'surprise' bad guy who has some eye-rollingly bad dialogue, deep down I felt that this guy flat out stole potential screen time from Waltz which is a huge shame. Villain motives were also questionable and left me wondering why Bond was even after them in the first place, sure they want Bond dead, but they seemed evil for the sake of being evil.
Tone was also slightly inconsistent. These newer Bond films are clearly trying to flesh out the character and drip feed us backstory, at the same time though they have gone back to the series more tongue and cheek humour. The light comedy makes a welcome return, but it doesn't gel well with the overarching theme of the story.
That said, the opening and title sequence were spot on and really got you in the mood for a straight up action/spy film. It's just a pity that no point later on truly trumps the opening sequence in terms of action, class or style. What we are left with is a Bond film that offers no stand-out action scenes, no memorable villains or any meaningful developments to the Bond character. Spectre plays it disappointingly safe with a franchise that once defined the spy/action genre.
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