Project Bond: Spectre

Daniel Craig claims he would rather slash his wrists than play Bond again, and Roger Moore will not tolerate the idea of Idris Elba playing the role. We now find ourselves locked in a stalemate until someone suggests a white actor with the same amount of public support as Elba, during which we will have little choice but to watch Spectre over and over again. I can think of worse ways to spend our time.

In perhaps the worst kept secret in cinema history, the ever-fabulous Christoph Waltz plays an unusually handsome Ernst Stavro Blofeld, making his first appearance in the rebooted Bond timeline, and his first proper appearance in an Eon-produced Bond film since 1971. (The copyright reasons behind his and SPECTRE’s absence from the series are quite interesting if you like that sort of thing, but you might not, so I haven’t included them here.) We meet Blofeld briefly quite early on in the film, although in the opening half-hour, Bond has already managed to kill multiple foreigners, hijack a helicopter, land himself in hot water with Voldemort, land Voldemort in hotter water with C, corrupt Q, uncover Tanner’s uselessness, corrupt Moneypenny, uncover a video of Judi Dench telling him to kill a fella, steal a car, flee to Italy, attend the funeral of the fella Judi Dench told him to kill, bang his widow, and pass as a beloved cartoon icon in order to gain access to a top-secret meeting. Blofeld susses him out, though, and the jig is up. Bond bravely runs away to his stolen car, which he crashes into a river for some reason after phoning Moneypenny and getting her to Google some stuff for him.

Bond then goes after Mr. White, who you may or may not remember from Casino Royale and/or Quantum of Solace. He finds him in Austria, which we know because Q is tracking him through SmartBlood, which is a thing, but he doesn’t tell Voldemort because he would get real mad. Mr. White tells Bond to go and find his daughter, Madeleine Swann, before saying something about a kite and blowing his brains out. Madeleine, who has perhaps the tamest Bond girl name of all time, gets real mad at Bond and tells him to leave. Fortunately, Q inexplicably turns up, and Bond gives him the fella’s ring to analyse. Meanwhile, Madeleine has been kidnapped and Bond has to rescue her. Q tells Bond he was right all along, and he and Madeleine go off to find Mr. White’s old love nest for some reason, while Q goes home for a cup of Earl Grey. Then there’s a bit on a train that doesn’t make a lot of sense, and Bond and Madeleine go to visit Blofeld at his secret super-villain lair, which makes even less sense.

Meanwhile, C is trying to shut down the 00 division, and M is getting real mad about it. Moneypenny makes her feelings clear by glaring at C, who doesn’t seem to care much, for some reason. Tanner is in a world of his own.

Back at Blofeld’s bit, Blofeld is walking about with Bond and Madeleine, and he and Bond exchange casual death threats. Then he tells Bond that C is ripping MI6 to bits on his orders, and that he was responsible for everything in the previous three films, but they couldn’t show you that because of copyright restrictions. Then he shows Madeleine a video of her dad shooting himself through the face. Then he clobbers Bond on the head and when he wakes up he’s rigged up to some mad torture machine that Blofeld can use to read his thoughts and mess up his brain or something. Then Blofeld tells Madeleine a story about how he and Bond used to be brothers until he faked his own death a while back, and never explains why he now wants to kill Bond, but it doesn’t matter because Christoph Waltz’s combination of cheery demeanour and villainous voice allow him to glide gracefully over the plotholes. Despite being tied to a chair, Bond slips Madeleine a watch that is also a bomb, and she uses it to blow up the base, while she and Bond bust their way to freedom. The base explodes a couple more times so you know Blofeld is definitely dead, and they have it away on their toes.

Back in London, Bond teams up with M, Q, Moneypenney and Tanner to stop C from spying on everyone in the world, while Madeleine wanders off on her own to get kidnapped. Then, in a shocking twist, it turns out Blofeld isn’t dead, and he leaves Bond in the old MI6 building, which is going to explode in three minutes.

Oh, and Madeleine’s in there somewhere, so he can either go looking for her or escape. In the end, Bond decides to do both, and they bust their way to freedom so they can shoot down Blofeld’s helicopter. Bond then has the opportunity to shoot him dead, but throws away all his bullets instead, so he can be with Madeleine. Voldemort then detains Blofeld under the terms of the We Pure Hate Terrorism Act 2001, which isn’t quite as catchy as “bang,” but all’s well that ends well.

All in all, I thought this was a pretty good Bond film, better than Quantum of Solace but not quite as good as Skyfall or Casino Royale. There were a few things that didn’t quite make sense, and a lot of it was a bit mad, but you have to suspend your disbelief with these things (watching 25 Bond films in a row didn’t teach me much, but it has taught me that). At two and a half hours, it’s on the longer side, but there weren’t any parts that felt too long or unnecessary to me. The performances from the main actors were all very good, and there was enough going on to keep me entertained throughout. A bit like Quantum of Solace, Spectre feels a bit like a set-up for things to come. With the casting of a big name as Blofeld, I would expect they’ll have some sort of commitment from Christoph Waltz to appear in one or two more films (unless they’re planning to have an endless cavalcade of actors playing him after various bouts of plastic surgery, which would be either wonderful or a disaster). There’s also a lot of speculation about Daniel Craig’s future, and if the current discussions are anything to go by, whoever replaces him is going to be hugely controversial. What next for brothers Bond and Blofeld? Well, we just don’t know.