Spectre

Bond is back and so is Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  After a decades long absence, Blofeld is back as the head of Spectre though his backstory has dramatically changed.  The movie opens with Bond in Mexico City for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).  He's on a mission to kill a man.  The action that follows is ridiculous to the extreme and a return to the silliness that we saw in Quantum of Solace.  Also echoing Quantum of Solace, Blofeld's secret hideout is amazingly combustible.  Why do James Bond's villains use dynamite, hydrogen, and gasoline as construction materials?

 

Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista) is an excellent henchmen along the lines of Odd Job and Jaws.  He is pure aggression and his dialogue is next to nil.  Where Jaws had steel teeth, Hinx has sharpened steel thumbnails, the better to gouge eyeballs.  Unlike Odd Job and Jaws, Hinx is not some grim humorless thug.  No, he spends a lot of time smiling, especially after killing someone or shooting holes in your plane.  He is also surprisingly well-dressed.  I hope to see him again in the next film.

 

Blofeld has proved a more durable villain in the movies - 8 so far - than in the novels - only appeared in 3.  In the novels, Spectre and Blofeld were introduced in Thunderball (9th novel).  Bond killed Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (12th novel).  The movies opted to replace the Soviets with Spectre right from the start so that Blofeld and his fluffy white cat appear in almost every Sean Connery Bond film.  I did like how Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) is made the architect of the previous 3 movies.  The mysterious Quantum group was just a facet of Spectre and the chief villains in each of those films was just a minion of Blofeld.  Blofeld is mostly unemotional and unmoved by whatever is happening.  He is never angry and rarely shows anything beyond mild amusement.  He plays a good host but it is just an act.  Reminded me a bit of Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.

 

The Daniel Craig period as Bond has seen a lot of more depth to the character and very few of the post-kill witticisms.  In Casino Royale, we saw his first love - Vesper Lynd - and her death.  Quantum of Solace was basically a waste though it does fold into the storyline of Spectre.  In Skyfall, we see his childhood home and learn how he was an orphan.  Here in Spectre, we learn of Hans Obenhauser, a man who adopted him after his parents' death.  This was only ever mentioned in the short story Octopussy in the novels but is greatly expanded here.  Wow, I really didn't see that coming.

 

Another interesting development is that this Bond is part of a team.  M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Namoie Harris), Q (Ben Whishaw), and Bill Tanner (Roy Kinnear) have sizeable roles that span the movie, not just the opening office bit when 007 is dispatched on his mission.  Part of this has to do with how the modern world works.  As Bond can't be an awesome computer hacker - very important in modern intelligence - that facet goes to Q.  Also, the proliferation of cellphones means that the office is always available, thus contact to M or Moneypenny is as easy as pie.  This is a departure from the novels but I welcome it.

 

A rarity for Bond movies, none of the Bond girls died.  Daniel Craig has not shown himself to be the lady's man of previous Bonds.  Though he has a beauty with him at the start, he leaves her in the room before anything happens and never returns.  His only love interest here is Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), who appears not to be just another ship passing in the night.

 

All in all, a fun Bond flick with more weight to it than others in the franchise.  The series has moved into an overarching storyline, fitting it more to the mold of the Borne movies or Harry Potter.