The Newest Return to the Old Bond - Exciting, but not satisfying story wise

Rating: 6/10 (12 November 2015)

The Newest Return to the Old Bond
The dead are alive. The captions in the first minute of Spectre. An note at the Mexican Día de los Muertos – the beautiful opening of Spectre – but also a threatening indication of the events to come. Which is not fulfilled as chillingly as it might be. The beginning of this movie (everything before the opening song) takes you in with its superb beauty and thrills. Mexico City and the parade of skeletons make a great scene for a nice action opening. On ground level, atop buildings and taking to the sky. So far everything is cool. But a few minutes after the song, Bond is revealed to have been complying with a last request of an old friend, and we are dragged into a plot that is outrageous and far-fetched. Everything Bond has been through (since his reboot with 2006 Casino Royale), has a connecting to the events in this movie. But one might wonder why. Isn't Spectre as it is revealed in the film an evil enough organisation by itself? It adds nothing in creepiness that Bond (as said in the trailer) came across his enemy Franz Oberhauser so many times in the past, without knowing it was him. Skyfall (2012) was a grand, plot driven, mysterious movie. Spectre wants to be that too, but it shouldn't. A lot of times one is thinking about how little sense the events in this movie make. And that is not a good thing. Don't get me wrong, the action with planes, cars, and the robust Dave Bautista looks very good. Almost every scene is visually exciting, which makes up for quite a bit. But the feeling I got from this movie after seeing it was more or less a Roger Moore movie that wanted to be Skyfall so badly, but failed. Nevertheless, all actors are doing fine jobs. Léa Seydoux is convincing, although her character comes off as the good old helpless Bond girl. Christoph Waltz also delivers, but his characters fault is, that after an overwhelming entrance, he becomes this typical baddie that needlessly makes some convenient mistakes. Ralph Fiennes' M actually steals the show at some points, on another battlefield than Bond. Spectre borrows from the old Bond movies' comical and over the top action, which is okay if that is your thing. But going back to Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall story wise is absurd, in that it makes the villains in those movies look like nothing more than paws. And didn't Quantum of Solace do this exact same thing? Le Chiffre in Casino Royale (played thrillingly by Mads Mikkelsen), turned out to be just a small part of the bigger organisation Solace. Make up your mind what villain organisation you belong to, villains! All in all Spectre is worth watching. Not just because everybody has watched it and you have to as well, but because it is entertaining. But it isn't a return to the story quality of Skyfall, and it's not the most they could have made out of it.