Hugely Disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (3 November 2015)

*Spoilers Ahead*
For me, this James Bond installment was a huge let down. Upon hearing that Christoph Waltz would be taking the role of a Bond villain, I was full of excitement and anticipation. Anyone who has seen Inglorious Basterds is no doubt aware of just how well he is suited to being a bad guy. The trailers came out and the anticipation kept building and building.
Sadly however, it proved to fall short of expectations. The story feels forced and the audience learns a lot of what feels like unnecessary information. Where to begin...
One of the first things we learn is that an organisation known as Spectre is essentially responsible for the events that took place in the previous Daniel Craig films. I'm surely not the only one who saw this as ridiculous? Fair enough if in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall we had seen hints or clues towards a connection but from what I can recall this was not the case. I mean wasn't Skyfall essentially a revenge plot? We are led to believe that the previous villains were part of this organisation which just doesn't fit what we see in the other films. The next thing is Christoph Waltz's character taking responsibility for killing Bond's love interest as well as the previous M. Which again seems to be the writers grasping at straws in order to improve the storyline.
We are also given in insight into Bond's past. About how he was temporarily under the care of some guy who happened to be the villain's father leading to this idea of jealousy and "brotherly quarreling". Which again felt like completely unnecessary information that was simply thrown in to try and make the story seem more interesting. A poor attempt to add a twist to a basic action film.
My biggest complaint other than the completely uncalled for information, is that lack of any sort of real threat. I mean the only threat is a villain having access to the world's surveillance. Where are the huge lasers or bombs? No nuclear missiles being primed for launch? I mean we live in a world where our governments are regularly being brought forward to be held accountable for spying on us. We don't need a Bond film to see such events.
Christoph Waltz did not get enough screen time or enough freedom to really display the Bond villain we all wanted to see. This Bond film tried too hard to add twists and turns and it failed miserably. While the action scenes were pretty incredible. I think in the future if they are going to build a villain up like that, he needs to actually do some crazy acts otherwise it just seems pointless.