A Disappointing, Throwback Unoriginal Mess

Rating: 4/10 (9 November 2015)

Part Die Another Day, part Roger Moore Bond, and part You Only Live Twice is a recipe for disaster. After three successful Craig films, the Bond/MGM machine puts no effort into the script yet spent $250 million making the film somehow. It really all started with the end of Skyfall. There were lots of throwbacks to that the old Bond was coming. Here, almost every scene is a throwback.
There's the helicopter action scene from A View to Kill. There is a train fight scene from From Russia With Love with a Jaws type character who has no dialogue throughout the movie. There's a torture scene similar to Casino Royale. There's a snow chase through the mountains that reminds me of the tank scene in GoldenEye. There's a bad guy headquarters similar to Dr. No or You Only Live Twice.
The dialogue is tacky and predictable. The villains are uninteresting and really just wasted potential. There tries to be a love story angle that is supposed to be as interesting as Casino Royale's, but there is no time spent on developing it. The main characters maybe spend at most a week together before the female lead professes her love for Bond with no discernible reason. The only aspect of their relationship that made any sense is the first time they have sex.
The worst offense this movie makes is trying to connect all of the Craig movies together, with the bad guy proclaiming that all those previous villains were under his command which is just ludicrous and really undermines the events of Skyfall the most. The second worst offense is that the bad guy is Bond's brother-in- law which could have been interesting, but the film puts no depth to their relationship. (This revelation is revealed within the first 30-40 minutes.)
If I were Craig, I wouldn't want to come back to this role either. Spectre does what Diamonds Are Forever, Octopussy, and Die Another Day did. It has dealt the franchise a major, possibly fatal blow. I don't think there is a point to making another Bond film. The Craig Bond was supposed to subvert tropes of the franchise. Instead, Spectre embraces them while trying still trying to be modern which fails miserably.