SPECTRE

If the four movies starring Daniel Craig as James Bond were to be ranked, Spectre, should sit at number three, just above Quantum Solace and below Casino Royale and Skyfall, the best of all. This sounds dire, but it’s not; not really anyway. Craig, especially after joining forces with director Sam Mendes, revitalized the franchise in the way it had been crying to be for decades. He brought it up to date with the realer, uglier, and scarier threats of the modern world without ever losing sight of the charms and appeal of James Bond, in this way bring to shame the embarrassingly misguided attempt of Rob Cohen’s XXX to do the same in 2002 as Pierce Brosnan was wrapping up his tenure as 007. There is, in fact, a getaway scene in Spectre after Bond has been identified at a villain conference that puts a similar motorcycle chase out of a castle in XXX to shame, both ending with a vehicle engulfing into flames. Not surprisingly, Craig’s cynical, grittier interpretation made for the best Bond since Sean Connery. Practically on his work alone, the last four Bond films transcend their genre.

Craig brought the edge, but it was Sam Mendes who brought a thematic core. Though a humanist director, Mendes would likely balk at the thought of a 007 movie being anything other than thinking man’s adrenaline rush. As producer Barbara Broccoli said of the director, “I think that's where Sam Mendes has really excelled. He's a great director of drama and actors and suspenseful storytelling. But also, he's a 12-year-old Bond fan in the middle of all that. He's a 12-year-old boy at times in terms of wanting to bring the kind of action and excitement that he enjoyed when he first saw these movies -- and he has a young son. So I think he gets the balance right, because he does the drama and the action. Like Skyfall, I think he's got it right with this one.”

Ultimately, it’s the exhilaration that makes a Bond film.In this respect, Spectre succeeds as well as any in the series. There is a car chase destined to be the best remembered piece in the movie, skillfully blending laughs and thrills, most of the gags being self-referential to the franchise. None of the action sequences are really subpar but there is little invention to them. Bond’s climactic race against time in an industrial building rigged with explosive to rescue the trapped Bond girl (Léa Seydoux) or save his own skin is more than just a subtle tribute to The Dark Knight (which also challenged the hero’s conscience). It’s a well-built essay on claustrophobic tension, but the ensuing helicopter hayride that concludes with a crash on Westminster Bridge is such a factory-made lollapalooza it plays like a collage of action clips assembled from any number of hair-brained blockbusters.

Two other pieces are ruined by plot holes so glaring they are impossible to watch without imagining the lazy editing and writing involved. The first is an intense struggle in a helicopter soaring over Mexico City while crowds celebrate the Day of the Dead below. Staking out terrorists (who will later be revealed to be a part of a larger ring) on a rooftop, Bond overhears them in the neighboring building plotting their attack. The bad guys realize they are being watched and an exchange of gunfire erupts, culminating in the toppling of the two buildings. Bond survives this in a way that only a Hollywood hero can, but his escape is edited with such fluidity it earns its applause and its laughs for the punctuating gag (think of it as a clever Simpsons couch gag).

Heather Callaw, the unit publicist, described the opening with great gusto, “It starts with Bond and Estrella, who are walking down this Day of the Dead parade. Estrella is played by Stephanie Sigman, who is a Mexican actress. They’re kind of weaving their way through this Day of the Dead parade, they make their way into a hotel—we’ve also shot here once before in The Living Daylights.

They’re going up to Estrella’s room, Estrella thinks she might be bringing Bond to bed but instead he’s looking out the view of her window. He sees two baddies across the way having a conversation, and he stops something really bad from happening, kills one of the guys, the other guy goes running, Bond jumps out of the window and there’s a bit of a chase, he causes a building to explode and they both end up—boom—on the ground, and the foot chase starts.

The baddie’s character is called Skiara, who’s played by Alessandro Cremona, he’s an Italian actor. What we’ve been shooting over the past couple of days is Bond chasing Skiara slowly making their way through the Day of the Dead parade. As the running Skiara is on his mobile phone he’s calling for backup, cue the helicopter coming down the street. Helicopter lands, it’s full of a couple of other baddies. Skiara jumps on, Bond follows, pulls off one of the baddies, Bond jumps on the helicopter, helicopter goes up, and they start to have this fight in the helicopter.

The helicopter is piloted by a guy called Chuck Aaron, who is a stunt pilot. He’s the only person who’s insured to do 360 flips in this helicopter in the world, so we’re doing a bit of the stunts here but kind of the bigger helicopter stuff is happening 10 hours outside the city at a lower altitude.

We’ve got 1,500 extras here today. They all kind of file in at 4:30 in the morning to this big convention center. They have their hair and makeup done which takes anywhere from one and a half hours to two and a half hours.”

Even Christoph Waltz, who does not appear until later in the film (even then with his face initially obscured in darkness) was delighted with the opening. “The action sequences in Mexico are extravagant to say the least,” he said. “The scenes in Austria are traditional Bond action in the snow. These films with Daniel Craig have shifted the tone. They don't depend on a set formula that forces actors simply to go through the motions.”

Things soon go south, though. A chase ensues between Bond and the surviving villain which brings them both to the getaway helicopter (Bond leaping on just as it takes off the ground). Bond, his quarry, and the pilot get into a tussle, sending the flying machine into a dangerously turbulent ride above the festive crowds below. But wait? Why are there still crowds celebrating in the streets? Are they not aware that two buildings just came tumbling down? It’s a hard booboo to overlook, harder still to understand how it made the cut considering the expert editing the surrounds it.

Indeed, up until this bizarre oversight the scene is handled commendably, relying on audience recognition of hero and villain based on cues. We see the villain first, but he is wearing a skeletal mask, hiding all of his lifelike features so that all we see is a soulless fiend. But there is another figure following the demon. His face is also disguised but he is with a girl and moves elegantly, leaving us with no doubt that we are looking at our hero chasing a villain who, for all we can see, is nothing but a monster.

Less clever is the knockabout in the train pitting Bond against a hulking brute working for the criminal enterprise (Dave Bautista). Kinetically, it’s a sound sequence and even worthy of laughs, though the brawl goes unnoticed even by porters as the two crash their way through various carts is left unanswered.

Elsewhere, the narrative construction is the chief driving force of Spectre, build-ups and all. The screenplay by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Jez Butterworth is original, though the titular criminal gang and its leader Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz) began life in the writings of Ian Fleming, where Oberhauser went by the name of Hannes. Origin points can be found in the novels Thunderball (and its film adaptation), as well as the story “Octopussy” and the 1971 film Diamonds are Forever.

The roots of Spectre can be traced back to a long standing legal dispute between Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory dating back to 1959 before James Bond came to the movies. McClory (a fan of Felming’s Bond books) had the idea of making a Bond film set in the Bahamas, a suggestion that ultimately developed into both the novel and movie Thunderball, co-scripted by Jack Whittingham. In between, McClory sued, claiming Fleming had taken elements from another script of his and incorporated them into Thunderball. The fallout was likely caused by a sudden lack of faith on Fleming’s part, especially when McClory’s productin (which McClory also directed) The Boy and The Bridge tanked at the box-office and consequently failed to generate enough income to finance the film production of Thunderball.  Fleming now found himself with the pressures of working alone with a series he was running out of ideas for. He did what came easiest and basically touched up the old script written in collaboration with McClory and Whittingham, now in the novel form given the title Thunderball, and took sole credit.  The two settled the case out of court in 1963, MClory walking away with the film rights to the eventual Thunderball movie, which he produced, and its later incarnation, 1983’s Never Say Never Again (the black sheep of the series). As late as the 1990s, McClory was still trying to rework the story with a script titled Warhead 2000 A.D.  (when Timothy Dalton was still Bond) but the project never came to fruition. McClory died in 2006 and in 2013 his estate granted M.G.M full rights to the plot elements first found in Thunderball.

These old elements were taken and made into a story for the age of drones and terrorism, but the true evil is the abuse of power in the name of security.

Broccoli described the approach as, “It's always a challenge. We try to get the right blend of classic Bond and a contemporary twist, and come up with new storylines. I think we've really done a good job on this one.”

Spectre manufactures weapons for defense and then sells them to governments. Nations that a little persuasion soon find themselves victims of terrorism. Conspiracy theorists like to let their imaginations run free after tragedies, but don’t the coincidences in Spectre (Johannesburg is bombed after South Africa is one of the few nations to reject a proposal to implement Spectre’s security system) give anyone pause?

Well, M (Ralph Fiennes) does and finds himself torn between his appreciation for his maverick agent and the imposing pull of C (Andrew Scott), who is Spectre’s biggest shill in the British government. Bond, of course, takes matters into his own hands in a hunt that leads him from Rome to Austria to Tangier and finally back to London for a showdown.

Michael G. Wilson, the other producer, promised surprises, “Bond has such a long history and the novels, and it's fun to play around with those ideas. But we always try to make the pictures surprising -- surprise the audience but also, there have to be elements in it that are Bond-ian in the sense that the people won't be disappointed in the picture when they go see it. So that's the fine line we've got to tread.”

Indeed, there are quite a few surprises along the way, particularly about Bond’s past but the best one of all is how Spectre lays itself into the Bond timeline. The events beginning with Casino Royale to Spectre are revealed to be connected in one swooping story arc, orchestrated by Oberhauser who has a secret connection to Bond. With this sweep, the four Bond movies starring Craig exist in a confined sphere from the others in the franchise, but they are not exactly a reboot either. Skyfall strongly implied Agent 007 was a single person and Bond was his family, instead of code, name, contradicting Lee Tamahori’s take on the character in Die Another Day as well as the obvious passage of decades since Dr. No and the physical and personal differences in all the James Bonds. However, this movie reconsiders slightly and closes Craig’s turn as the agent in such a way it acknowledges the coming of a new Bond (as there certainly will be).

Much like Christopher Nolan did when his take on Batman came to a close, Mendes bowed out with Spectre, leaving Bond to a new filmmaker. Explaining his graceful exit he said, “The reasons I’m doing the second Bond movie are the reasons I would do any movie, really, which is all to do with the story. And in this movie, Spectre, what you have is a movie entirely driven by Bond. He is on a mission from the very beginning,” he says. “It’s about whether or not to pursue the life he’s always pursued, whether he matters and is he going to continue or not.”

The story arc comes to a conclusion here and so Mendes sees himself ready to let go, if only temporarily. “I feel very honored to have been part of the Bond family, and very much hope I have a chance to work with them again,” he said. “Directing Skyfall was one of the best experiences of my professional life. I felt like everything I wanted to do with a Bond movie, I put into this film.”

Where Spectre lacks is in a sense of locale. Far too much of it is shot in dark cabins, crumbling houses, and stark industrial buildings. We may be spoiled, but by now we’ve come to expect the exotic from a Bond film.

It may have been a case of good ambitions steering into overkill. As production designer Dennis Gassner recalls, “When Sam and I talked about filming, a year ago in January, I asked him what he wanted. He said, ‘Can you find me something hot and cold?’ I went, ‘This is a great start!’ I said, ‘Okay, let’s go to Morocco and let’s go to Switzerland! …I want to make something better than ever. It has to be better than Skyfall. I did Skyfall, too, so I’m pressuring myself. I want to top myself and so does Sam and Daniel and Barbara and Michael. There’s such a great family that’s bringing this to you and giving you the best experience when you sit in a movie theater.”

This is compensated for, however, from some interesting performances. Fiennes plays against type for a characteristically stiff but complicated M. Christoph Waltz is always at his best as someone who could be a golden boy were he not a monster, capable of unspeakable evil and yet never stops fascinating us with erudition, class, and manner. His screen time in Spectre is less than expected, but he is used to the best advantage every moment he is on screen. He makes Oberhauser the only criminal we still can’t take our eyes off of even as he straps Bond to a chair while preparing to drill through his face.

“In Spectre, the two women who Bond hooks up with, both have great mystery, they both have depths and for that you need fantastic actresses,” Mendes said. Léa Seydoux’s Dr. Swann is connected to the criminal ring in an intricate way, but she is the girl who ultimately grounds 007. It’s not hard to understand why. She resists him and so becomes his biggest challenge yet. Monica Bellucci teases with her presence early on, hinting to be the latest squeeze, but is forgotten as soon as Bond as chased out of Rome.

Mendes was well satisfied with both female leads. “I just thought well Monica Bellucci makes sense for the story, the age of the character we're dealing, and she has an incredibly seductive presence in life and in the movie. I'm thrilled she's in it,” he said. “Madeleine needed to be soulful, feisty and complicated. She couldn't have been a total newcomer. We needed someone with a certain amount of life experience and maturity. And Léa has the whole package.”

Spectre is neither the best nor the worst Bond movie, but it does a lot of fascinating things with the franchise canon. Fans will like it and should see it if only for the talking points it raises. For the most part, it’s also a good time and boasts at least two moments of pure cinematic energy of the sort only 007 can deliver.