Kincade addresses her as Emma. Not M, not Mrs. Mawdley, not Barbara. In a later LOEG story, Emma Peel holds her office.
They missed a spot, not making Mallory a formr 00 agent himself.
Fiennes would have been a fantastic Bond.
It’s really hard to wrap my head around how terrible this film was. Easily the worst of the Craig features (and yes, that includes QUANTUM, which was mercifully 40 minutes shorter than this dreck).
Enough has been made about how the plot makes no sense (other than secret organization wants, uh, information and uh, power) or the far-fetched personal relationship between Bond & the main villain–the latter of which truly defies credulity.
But it’s still completely absurd that Bond can escape so easily not once but twice from deep inside the fortifications of this monolithically duplicitous cabal. Yes, this is a common 007 meme, but this isn’t some tin pot dictator or evil CEO. This is Spectre (booga booga booga), who apparently invests zero money into security.
Other random idiocies:
Bond has to take a ski lift up to the tippy top of a mountain (which we see on screen is close to nothing), but then manages to find an airstrip and buy/rent/steal a plane within minutes of the bad guys leaving by car. And the less said of the moronic “Fly-into-the-trees-and-lose-both-my-wings” pursuit strategy, the better.
Dr. Swann’s emotional trajectory is absurd, even for a Bond girl. Most women fall in lust with 007, but by the end, this is clearly meant to suggest Tru Wuv. Plus, anyone else notice that in Morocco, she falls asleep in a drunken stupor in her dress and wakes up in her slip? Bond has literally not moved from the chair, so either it’s a huge continuity blunder or 007 pulled a Cosby off-screen.
The train trip has Bond in a white tuxedo and her in an amazing evening gown. Why? Ordinarily, these absurd fashion choices are part of Double-O infrastructure or are provided by the bad guys. But why would they, a couple on the lam, pack such ridiculous clothes themselves if they’re traveling to Africa?
The final bomb countdown wasn’t 10 minutes, or 12 minutes. It was 3. 3 minutes for Bond to essentially transport from the bottom of the building to the top to find the secret kidnapping stash. Instead of creating a sense of urgency, it simply becomes ridiculous and, therefore, meaningless.
People say Monica Bellucci was wasted, but anyone who saw MI4 knows that Léa Seydoux is wasted in this movie, too. She had more to do there in a small supporting role (including her own fight scene) than she has to do here. And if Spectre is that prodigious in tracking their victims down, does anyone even doubt that Belucci’s character will never make it to Felix? That’s also SOP for Bond B-girls, but the film drops her like a bad habit.
M and Q are awesome, of course (even though a previous installment established Q refuses to fly). But the opening song may be the worst in the last 20 years. Plus, did Blofeld’s cat survive? I hope so, though even it was less a sinister affectation and more a simply housepet.
Terrible. All of it.
It’s not terrible! Pay no attention to those misguided types that say that. Same with The Living Daylights. From one viewing only, I’d put it in the top 10, but that may change with repeated viewings.
It’s not without its problems, though. Every Bond movie has at least one “worst. movie. evah.” level bit of stupidity. Notably, as mentioned, Spectre suffers from the Star Wars problem - every important person in the universe is related.
I wish they would have made C just a well-meaning dupe rather than a bad to the core villain.
A couple observations:
What do all those henchmen do out there in the middle of the desert in their off time? Do they have bunkhouses? Is there a bar on the property, maybe a disco? Are there female hench(wo)men? What made them take that job? “You get to work isolated in the desert, live on site, no women and nothing to do. You can never tell anyone what you do. There’s nothing around to spend your money on. Oh, and you can be killed for minor transgressions against The Organization. Welcome aboard!” At least they don’t have to worry about “what will I wear today?”
Pro tip: You shouldn’t set your supervillain lair in the middle of nowhere. Sure, random people won’t stumble across it, but if, say, MI-6 does find it, they’ll have no trouble watching who comes and goes. (and you should fireproof it!)
When Bloefeld was trying to impress upon Bond how he (Bloefeld) had taken away all the women in Bond’s life - Vesper, M, and, uh…others - was he intending to fool Bond, or the audience? Because Bloefeld had nothing to do with either woman’s deaths. Vesper killed herself, and M was killed because of stupidity. He’s even less of a master string-puller than Silva. Bloefeld seems like more of a BS artist - “you all are working for me, even if you don’t know it”. Sort of like the legend of Keyser Soze.
Also, I kept waiting, in the “Daddy always loved you best” story arc they seemed to be doing, that Bloefeld had also killed Bond’s parents. Seemed like the logical plot path.
I had forgotten about the Steve Jobs-attired henchpeople. What, were they working at a call center in the crater? (Now you know where your call goes when you complain to your cable company.) And that coordinated turn-off-your-monitor-and-stand-at-attention move might be the lamest thing ever to appear in a big-budget action movie. Do they rehearse that a couple times a week or what?
Speaking of the various stupidities of the film, I read an interview with one of the Broccoli family producers where they said, “Bond never endangers innocent bystanders.” Except for the whole opening scene of this movie where Bond decides to attack a helicopter pilot while inside the helicopter. While hovering over a crowded city square. Smart! This causes the helicopter to spin for about 20 or 30 minutes, after which Bond attacks the pilot some more. Another 5 minutes of spinning. As much as I liked the first part of the opening sequence, the egregious use of green screen helicopter fighting, the stupidity of attacking a helicopter pilot hovering over 10,000 people, and the interminable fight sequence really ruined it for me. And that was the best part of the movie!
I don’t think he started fighting the pilot until the pilot tried to shoot him during his brawl with Señor Whatshisface.
Yeah, I was left wanting at the end of that scene. Ok, he wins and is calmly flying the copter - I was expecting him to land on the roof of the hotel where he, minutes prior, left the Mexican babe he was about to, uh, do, and resume that scene. He did say to her “I’ll be right back”… But no, he is just flying the copter to, somewhere.
You may be right, but that’s not the way I remember it. I don’t remember the pilot having a handgun (awfully hard to fly an out of control copter with one hand!) or even turning around in his seat to see Bond. Again, this is my (likely) faulty memory only, but this is how I remember the scene: Bond fights with Sciarra in the back of the helicopter, Sciarra goes down (but not out!) and Bond thinks, “Well, I might as well choke out the pilot because fuck you that’s why!” Helicopter then starts falling.
I hope your version is right. I guess we’ll have to wait till the clip shows up on YouTube.
The problems really do come down to the execution, don’t they?
We can handle a fight in a copter, even to the point of the helicopter doing a barrel roll over innocent people - it’s not that bad. But when the heli does 5 barrel rolls, and a loop, and a zoom five feet over everyone’s head, AND there’s no good ending, like Bond landing on the roof and going back to the girl, it just doesn’t work as a scene. It falls flat. There’s no…weight to the scene. It’s just noise. It’s missing…something, and even if we don’t know what that something should be, we know we’re missing it.
Past the edit window:
But, even if the pilot was shooting at him, you’d think the prospect of killing a couple thousand people in the square in a fiery helicopter crash would lead Bond to a better course of action than “Let’s kill the one man flying this machine and hope some miracle happens to prevent this entirely predictable tragedy.”
I can just see Bond with M later: “You blew up a whole apartment block.”
“Better than a whole stadium of people.”
“Yeah, but then you killed 1,200 people in a helo accident.”
“Fuck you, M. It’s called double-o! I can kill as many people as I want.”
I latched onto that immediately. “WTF? Where did the dinner jacket come from?”
The other most memorable impact it made on me: I had no idea helicopters could do rolls. That was impressive. The rest of the film … meh.
You ought to see one do a loop.
The pilot pulled a flare gun or something from a locker next to his seat.
And really, while attacking the only guy flying the chopper in flight is unwise, so is idly sitting back while the guy is actively trying to kill you (aside from the gun, the pilot was trying to dump Bond out the door by jerking the chopper back and forth).
That innocent bystanders weren’t killed from that helicopter was a minor miracle (though who knows how many died from that collapsing building that just preceded it), but I’ll agree that it was the action sequence of the film, even thought it was confusingly constructed and thoroughly anti-climactic.
Another idiocy–Q gets a DNA match for Blofeld off a Spectre ring that we never see him (and have no reason to believe he ever did) wear. How did that happen? Then again, Q does have a passing resemblance to Harry Potter…
Also, for anyone who has actually been to London or Rome, it is common knowledge that if you are driving at midnight, you will not be the only car on the road. Yes, these huge avenues and thoroughfares are completely empty of cars and pedestrians in two of the most popular cities in Europe.
That whole scene went so fast, I wasn’t sure what Q was “analyzing”. At first, I thought the entire upper echelon of Spectre had their names micro-etched into the ring. Then I thought Q had analyzed all the photos they had and saw they were all wearing the same ring.
Having Bloefeld’s DNA on the ring is the most far-fetched of these three scenarios! How would they even know what his DNA was?
Again … Bond film. All those idiocies are easily balanced out by exciting action in exotic locales IF the ride delivers otherwise … in the interesting characters, or plot that pulls you in, or at least the comic relief departments.
Just like Doctor Who I guess … I am willing to forgive a lot with “timey-whimey” if it otherwise delivers but when it does not …
Bond movies always have lots of stupid and makes no sense in them. Stock and trade. Those items were not the problem with this movie … the problem with this movie was that it was through action sequence after action sequence - boring.
Scenes like that stupid helicopter stunt were the equivalent of watching a video game preview where you, the viewer, have no real vested interest in what was happening because of how utterly ridiculous it all was.
It’s been a week since I saw the film and I think I hate it more now than I did while actually watching it.
How did Blofeld survive being dropped down the industrial
Chimney?
Off-camera, I figure Roger Moore rather fancied the idea of owning a delicatessen and went back for him.
This is a prequel. The chimney comes a lot later.