Review Detail

Spectre. This is a lesser Craig Bond movie along with Quantum of Solace, but I still find it better than most Bond movies and I’m generally a fan of the Craig era. That said, almost all of the issues I’ve had with this set of Bond films stems from the decision to treat them as a series or continuous story as opposed to the more one-off nature of the rest of the Bond filmography. Giving Bond more depth with more of a backstory is an admirable goal, but it fails for me most of the time and often the connections become silly, even for Bond. At the heart of that is the backstory that comprises the central issue for this movie. Without spoiling it, it wasn’t necessary, it isn’t needed, and it makes the entire thing feel smaller and sillier. Sadly, adding to this is the usually great Christoph Waltz who fails to sell the super villain as believable at all. The Craig era Bond films have relied more on plausible real world storylines and, as such, this entire movie feels like everyone including Bond must be so woefully incompetent to allow any of this to happen. It’s trying to throwback to the Bond franchise’s more fanciful days, but it ends up undermining itself—and the previous movies—at every turn as a result. Craig is fine as the stoic Bond and Lea Seydoux is fine as the “Bond girl,” but they have a more uncle/niece relationship until they don’t; their relationship is never really sold. It may sound as though I didn’t enjoy this movie, but I did. I think there’s a lot to like and, if taken at face value for a typical Bond entry, it’s better than most.

Spoilers from here on out.

For the fan edit, I think Last Survivor did a good job getting rid of the problematic relationship backstory between Bond and Blofeld and as such I think it improves the overall experience immeasurably. Though the result is at least one spot where I found the editing noticeably choppy. Once again LS has altered the theme song. And while I’m glad the theatrical theme is gone, I would’ve much preferred Radiohead. The only other quibble I have is with the ending. It was very abrupt. I hadn’t seen this movie in years so I had to check to see how the theatrical ended. I much prefer the theatrical ending, even if it’s a bit too neat. It is James Bond after all. Otherwise the editing is great and there was nothing that jumped out at me. I’d definitely recommend this edit if you’re like me and find it to be a good Bond outing diminished by the unnecessary backstory.