Spectre review

[JasonEvans]

Awful... just plain terrible. Absolute nonsense. That is how I felt about the plot. The rest of the movie is good, but the story is just a mess!

Spectre is a series of fun James Bond set pieces -- featuring helicopters, planes, cars, trains, and just about anything else that moves and is dangerous to fight around -- strung together by an utterly incomprehensible script. I enjoyed the action, but I was so lost about what was going on with the story that I could not enjoy the film. There are some critics who are hailing the film as a return to the classic Bond pictures with James sexing up lots of ladies and diabolical bad guys who devise crazy ways to kill him rather than just putting a bullet in his head, but what folks may forget is that many of those "classic James Bond" films are pretty bad. And Spectre goes right alongside flicks like A View to a Kill, OctoI'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this., The World is Not Enough, and Die Another Day as some of the worst films in the Bond series.

There are four different credited screenwriters on Spectre and I think they alternated words in the script. The film just seems to aimlessly follow James from location to location with no sense of why he is going to these places. Once he gets to a new location, he gets some random piece of information that makes no sense and then he has a big action sequence and then he moves on to the next location. It is tiresome, obvious, and there is little suspense (mostly because I had no idea what was happening for it to feel suspenseful). The story makes many references to previous characters and moments from the other Daniel Craig Bond films but never really ties it all together or makes sense out of some larger plot. Oh, and there is truly never any sense of what the bad guys are up to or why it matters. In the end, it appears to be about tapping into surveillance info but the movie never really explains why any of this matters.



The movie contains some meaningless stunt casting that is just distracting and bothersome. Monica Bellucci appears at the start of the movie for 2 brief scenes - including a laughably awkward love scene with James -- and then never plays a role in the story again. Christoph Walz, who is fabulous in everything, feels like he is sleepwalking through his role as the leader of Spectre. He appears for 1 scene at the beginning of the movie and then disappears for the next hour and a half. By the time he comes back, we are so baffled by what is going on and what his motivations are that I found him to be more silly than menacing. At one point he is torturing Bond with some kind of drill and it just looks silly. I much preferred Le Chiffre quite literally busting Bond's balls in Casino Royale (which probably remains the best of the Craig Bond films). Oh, and the new Oddjob is Guardians of the Galaxy's Dave Bautista who plays a tough assassin who utters one word in the entire film (a curse word).

And then there is the love story between Bond and Medeleine Swann. I think we are supposed to believe this is the love of Bond's life or something like that. I never felt it. At one point, she and he profess their undying love to each other and then... literally 2 minutes later... she tells him she cannot lead the life of an assassin's woman so she walks away. He lets her walk. Whaaaat!?!?! And don't even get me started on the fact that she is traveling with a small suitcase but somehow manages to wear stunning, expensive cocktail dresses to every meal!



I could go on and on... the movie was almost unbearable. I say "almost" because the action scenes were fabulous and a ton of fun. But every scene other than the ones where Bond is engaged in hand to hand combat with someone was awful.

Somehow, this film was in the mid-70% range on Rotten Tomatoes a week ago, just after it opened in the UK. British reviewers, who take nationalistic pride in James Bond, refuse to say too many bad things about his films, I guess. Well, now that US critics are weighing in, and it is down to 67%. I expect it will continue to drop over the next few days.

I clearly disliked it more than many other folks do. My critic friends said it was bad but, "it was better than Quantum of Solace." I disagree but I wanted to note that my feeling about the film may be more extreme than some others. I imagine many of you who are die hard Bond fans, may look past the randomness of the plot and enjoy it. As I said, the set pieces are very well done, but if you are someone on the fence about James Bond DO NOT SEE THIS FILM! You will hate it.

-Jason "sigh... I had such high hopes... oh well" Evans

[cato]

. . .




. . .

I'm sorry, Jason. What were you saying? I got distracted by something.

[brevity]

OctoI'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.

You had to know that was going to happen. And it's even worse in a British thread.

[bjornolf]

You had to know that was going to happen. And it's even worse in a British thread.

Isn't wanker a curse word?

[BD80]

... don't even get me started on the fact that she is traveling with a small suitcase but somehow manages to wear stunning, expensive cocktail dresses to every meal!



... -Jason "sigh... I had such high hopes... oh well" Evans

Lordy Jason, sometimes you just have to accept some popcorn logic for the greater good. This good is certainly greater than most.

[ncexnyc]

Awful... just plain terrible. Absolute nonsense. That is how I felt about the plot. The rest of the movie is good, but the story is just a mess!

Spectre is a series of fun James Bond set pieces -- featuring helicopters, planes, cars, trains, and just about anything else that moves and is dangerous to fight around -- strung together by an utterly incomprehensible script. I enjoyed the action, but I was so lost about what was going on with the story that I could not enjoy the film. There are some critics who are hailing the film as a return to the classic Bond pictures with James sexing up lots of ladies and diabolical bad guys who devise crazy ways to kill him rather than just putting a bullet in his head, but what folks may forget is that many of those "classic James Bond" films are pretty bad. And Spectre goes right alongside flicks like A View to a Kill, OctoI'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this., The World is Not Enough, and Die Another Day as some of the worst films in the Bond series.

There are four different credited screenwriters on Spectre and I think they alternated words in the script. The film just seems to aimlessly follow James from location to location with no sense of why he is going to these places. Once he gets to a new location, he gets some random piece of information that makes no sense and then he has a big action sequence and then he moves on to the next location. It is tiresome, obvious, and there is little suspense (mostly because I had no idea what was happening for it to feel suspenseful). The story makes many references to previous characters and moments from the other Daniel Craig Bond films but never really ties it all together or makes sense out of some larger plot. Oh, and there is truly never any sense of what the bad guys are up to or why it matters. In the end, it appears to be about tapping into surveillance info but the movie never really explains why any of this matters.



The movie contains some meaningless stunt casting that is just distracting and bothersome. Monica Bellucci appears at the start of the movie for 2 brief scenes - including a laughably awkward love scene with James -- and then never plays a role in the story again. Christoph Walz, who is fabulous in everything, feels like he is sleepwalking through his role as the leader of Spectre. He appears for 1 scene at the beginning of the movie and then disappears for the next hour and a half. By the time he comes back, we are so baffled by what is going on and what his motivations are that I found him to be more silly than menacing. At one point he is torturing Bond with some kind of drill and it just looks silly. I much preferred Le Chiffre quite literally busting Bond's balls in Casino Royale (which probably remains the best of the Craig Bond films). Oh, and the new Oddjob is Guardians of the Galaxy's Dave Bautista who plays a tough assassin who utters one word in the entire film (a curse word).

And then there is the love story between Bond and Medeleine Swann. I think we are supposed to believe this is the love of Bond's life or something like that. I never felt it. At one point, she and he profess their undying love to each other and then... literally 2 minutes later... she tells him she cannot lead the life of an assassin's woman so she walks away. He lets her walk. Whaaaat!?!?! And don't even get me started on the fact that she is traveling with a small suitcase but somehow manages to wear stunning, expensive cocktail dresses to every meal!



I could go on and on... the movie was almost unbearable. I say "almost" because the action scenes were fabulous and a ton of fun. But every scene other than the ones where Bond is engaged in hand to hand combat with someone was awful.

Somehow, this film was in the mid-70% range on Rotten Tomatoes a week ago, just after it opened in the UK. British reviewers, who take nationalistic pride in James Bond, refuse to say too many bad things about his films, I guess. Well, now that US critics are weighing in, and it is down to 67%. I expect it will continue to drop over the next few days.

I clearly disliked it more than many other folks do. My critic friends said it was bad but, "it was better than Quantum of Solace." I disagree but I wanted to note that my feeling about the film may be more extreme than some others. I imagine many of you who are die hard Bond fans, may look past the randomness of the plot and enjoy it. As I said, the set pieces are very well done, but if you are someone on the fence about James Bond DO NOT SEE THIS FILM! You will hate it.

-Jason "sigh... I had such high hopes... oh well" Evans

No plot you say, but somehow that didn't bother you when it came to reviewing Mad Max.

Was it because you expected more from this movie?

[JasonEvans]

So, here is something interesting, as I mentioned, Spectre's Rotten Tomatoes score has been steadily declining in recent days. Critics in London were allowed to post reviews last week but the US embargo wasn't lifted until last night. So, I looked at just the critics who had posted reviews yesterday or today. Thus far there have been 16 negative reviews and 10 positive ones in the past 24 hours. So, rather than a Rotten tomatoes score in the 60s (skewed by all the Brits who love/defend anything Bond) you have a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 38% from critics who were bound by the US embargo. That's a big difference.

And I seriously have to wonder if there was some attempt by Sony to stack the Rotten Tomatoes deck. I don't really know how they did it, but somehow all the early reviews on Spectre are good reviews. It is like they started out by only showing the film to critics they suspected they could control before unleashing it on the masses. 17 of the first 18 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are positive. That's a RT score of 94.4%, the kind of number many Best Picture Oscar winners would love to get. The score starts to drop at that point. It gets to 29 positive reviews out of 34 critics (85.3%) before it starts to fall off a cliff. As I said, 16 of the past 26 reviews have been bad.

Its almost unfathomable that 18 out of 19 could like the film and then 16 out of 26 could dislike it. How could that happen?

What's more, here is what some critics are saying about the film:

"A merely good-enough, but not great addition to the Bond canon." - Access Hollywood
"At heart it's another dopey Roger Moore outing, minus the dick jokes." - Metro
"Spectre is a film of sequences rather than sustained adventure." - The National
"wayward plotting and off-the-peg elements" - Sight and Sound
"At times clunky" - CinemaBlend.com
"Overlong and bloated" - We've Got This Covered
"Criminally overlong" - Irish Times
"For all its flaws, overreaching ambition and excessive running time..." - Radio Times
"The film lacks true substance" - IGN Movies
"It's easy to enjoy but hard to care about." - The List
"Let down by a weird mix of tone, a lack of plot and poorly defined characters." - WOW247

What do all these reviews have in common? They are all from critics who gave the film a positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This is what people who like the film are saying about it!

-Jason "this is all very strange... but I feel kinda vindicated in hating it seeing how the RT score is skewed" Evans

[cato]

No plot you say, but somehow that didn't bother you when it came to reviewing Mad Max.

Was it because you expected more from this movie?

Mad Max was almost all plot -- and a darned good one in my opinion.

[ncexnyc]

Mad Max was almost all plot -- and a darned good one in my opinion.

We must have been watching two different movies, as Fury Road was one long chase and nothing more.

[cspan37421]

There are four different credited screenwriters on Spectre and I think they alternated words in the script.

Perhaps it's just confirmation bias, but multiple screenwriters always seems to be the kiss of death. Have there been good movies with 4 screenwriters?

Thanks for throwing yourself on the grenade and going to see this movie.

I am not a fan of action movies, but Bond films are my Achilles' Heel / guilty pleasure. And you know what else? Austin Powers isn't far behind in terms of guilty pleasures. Spoofed to perfection.

"Do you expect me to talk?"
"No Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!"

[YmoBeThere]

the kiss of death

from Mr. Goldfinger - Shirley Bassey

[JNort]

Mad Max was almost all plot -- and a darned good one in my opinion.

You have got to be kidding... the whole movie made no sense and you never felt anything for any character throughout. The action was fun but everything else was just so awful

[Reisen]

If we're talking Fury Road in the Bond thread (hey, I enjoy a decent tangent as much as the next guy), I finally watched it last weekend on a flight back from Hong Kong. I had absolutely no desire to see it, and only resorted to it because I've spent so much time in the air lately I had gone through pretty much all the other new releases I was interested in.

From everything I read about it here, and from seeing the trailers, I had zero interest. Over the top violence for no purpose, no coherent story, lots of gore, etc.

I'll be honest. It was decent. I didn't find the story nearly as bad or hard to follow as many claimed (I'm not saying it was anything special), and it was a decent way to spend 2 hours on a 15 hour flight. There was a lot of creativity evident, including in the action scenes.

In terms of Bond, Jason's review actually drastically raises my anticipation for the movie (I'm seeing it Saturday). Generally, the movies he LOVES I think are just decent (Looper, Inception, Dark Knight, a couple others I can't remember), and the movies I love (Interstellar, Red) he thinks are just decent.

There's a best / worst Bond movies thread here from many years ago (man, we're old!), and suffice it to say, I think Evans' list of worst Bond movies has some films that shouldn't be on there, and some notable omissions. Octo..., View to a Kill, The World is Not Enough, and Die Another Day? I can get with you on The World is Not Enough, and maybe even View to a Kill (but how can you hate Walken as a bad guy? And Grace Jones was pretty bada-- for that time), but can't agree with Octo... and Die Another Day. Octo... is a good Bond film. Maybe not the best, but probably in the upper half. Die Another Day had great women in it (Halle Berry, Rosamund Pike), great stunts, great cars... It was pretty regularly listed as a top 5 Bond movie in the other thread.

I recognize I'm in the minority for hating Skyfall. It's easily bottom 3 for me. You want to talk suspension of disbelief? How about the incredibly unbelievable escape sequence in that film? Skyfall was missing everything that makes a good Bond movie a good Bond movie (women, cars, locales, decent action scenes), Bond was a pathetic weakling in it, the bad guy was pathetic... If plot counts in a Bond movie (and I'm not saying it does), Skyfall's was unusually bad.

But beyond that, License to Kill is pretty universally hated, and I certainly agree with that assessment. Diamonds are Forever came up as a popular choice in the "Worst Bond" thread, and I agree with that assessment. Those are both huge omissions.

How about Lazenby's generally poorly regarded performance in "On her Majesty's Secret Service"?

Really, for me, with how bad Skyfall was, almost any of the past Bond movies would have been a big upgrade (even QoS, which is bottom 10). Sam Mendes owes us big time, and he better deliver on this one.

[Edouble]

There's a best / worst Bond movies thread here from many years ago (man, we're old!), and suffice it to say, I think Evans' list of worst Bond movies has some films that shouldn't be on there, and some notable omissions. Octo..., View to a Kill, The World is Not Enough, and Die Another Day? I can get with you on The World is Not Enough, and maybe even View to a Kill (but how can you hate Walken as a bad guy? And Grace Jones was pretty bada-- for that time), but can't agree with Octo... and Die Another Day. Octo... is a good Bond film. Maybe not the best, but probably in the upper half. Die Another Day had great women in it (Halle Berry, Rosamund Pike), great stunts, great cars... It was pretty regularly listed as a top 5 Bond movie in the other thread.

I recognize I'm in the minority for hating Skyfall. It's easily bottom 3 for me. You want to talk suspension of disbelief? How about the incredibly unbelievable escape sequence in that film? Skyfall was missing everything that makes a good Bond movie a good Bond movie (women, cars, locales, decent action scenes), Bond was a pathetic weakling in it, the bad guy was pathetic... If plot counts in a Bond movie (and I'm not saying it does), Skyfall's was unusually bad.

But beyond that, License to Kill is pretty universally hated, and I certainly agree with that assessment. Diamonds are Forever came up as a popular choice in the "Worst Bond" thread, and I agree with that assessment. Those are both huge omissions.

How about Lazenby's generally poorly regarded performance in "On her Majesty's Secret Service"?

Really, for me, with how bad Skyfall was, almost any of the past Bond movies would have been a big upgrade (even QoS, which is bottom 10). Sam Mendes owes us big time, and he better deliver on this one.

I agree with a lot of this.

I always thought Octocat was Roger Moore's best Bond film. I like A View To A Kill too. A lot of the early Roger Moore Bond movies are stinkers... Live and Let Die is particularly bad. I thought his later stuff was his strongest. I always liked For Your Eyes Only too.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds are Forever are pretty terrible. as is Never Say Never Again, if that even counts.

[Edouble]

That's a RT score of 94.4%, the kind of number many Best Picture Oscar winners would love to get.

Do films that win the Best Picture Oscar care what their Rotten Tomatoes score is?

[JasonEvans]

No plot you say, but somehow that didn't bother you when it came to reviewing Mad Max.

Was it because you expected more from this movie?

Whoa! There is a difference in a simple (Mad Max) plot and one that is confusing and makes no sense (Spectre). Max did not need to explain a lot of motivations or what was going on for it to work. In Spectre, we kinda need to know why Bond is going from place to place, what piece of info he hopes to get, and then how that info will take him closer to solving the mystery of the movie and defeating the bad guys...

...Or, maybe we don't need to know that stuff and are merely watching the film to see Bond have sex with beautiful women while blowing stuff up. Perhaps I am overrating the importance of story in a Bond film. All I know is that I generally really like Bond films and I really disliked this one.

I will freely admit that my reaction to it is far more extreme than most people. It will do big business and I imagine many of you will want to come here and take issue with my review -- probably not because you loved it but because you at least liked it a little bit. I don't know why, but I was really turned off by this film and am likely out of the mainstream on it. Ahh well.

You have got to be kidding... the whole movie made no sense and you never felt anything for any character throughout. The action was fun but everything else was just so awful

While I do not expect Fury Road to get any Oscar nominations for the acting, you should know that your view of it is pretty far from the general consensus. There is a lot of talk that it will get a Best Picture nomination. It is widely considered one of the best action films of the past several years.

-Jason "we have officially sidetracked this thread... and I don't mind it one bit!" Evans

[NashvilleDevil]

Bad reviews by darned, does the movie make our top 6?

[JasonEvans]

Do films that win the Best Picture Oscar care what their Rotten Tomatoes score is?

Well, Oscar contenders generally want universal, wide critical acclaim because that is one of the ways a picture becomes a leading Oscar contender. But, I wasn't literally saying the films cared about their score, just making the point that 94% is the kind of number one would see from an Oscar contender. Here are the RT scores of last year's Best Picture contenders.

Selma - 99%
Boyhood - 98%
Whiplash - 94%
Birdman - 92%
Grand Budapest - 92%
Imitation Game - 90%
Theory of Everything - 80%
American Sniper - 72%

So, as you can see, from the initial 94% for Spectre, one would have expected it to be some kind of cinematic masterpiece. As I said, I disliked it more than others but I doubt there is anyone (not being paid by Sony) who would call this one of the finest films of the year.

Bad reviews by darned, does the movie make our top 6?

With ease. It is going to do over $80 mil this weekend, I expect. Even with bad reviews, it should make over $200 mil total.

-Jason "I am interested in hearing from many of you about how much you liked/disliked it... as I said, I appear to be a bit of an extreme" Evans

[snowdenscold]

Perhaps it's just confirmation bias, but multiple screenwriters always seems to be the kiss of death. Have there been good movies with 4 screenwriters?

I can only think of one off the top of my head - Toy Story

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114709/..._ov_wr#writers

Though when Joss Whedon is one of your 4+, you're probably in pretty good shape.

[OldPhiKap]

The Longest Day had four directors IIRC -- not sure how many screenwriters.