A movie-goer begs for mercy

Rating: 4/10 (21 November 2015)

Spectre may be interesting as evidence of Britain's national love of tradition, but otherwise it's a bore. As part of the trend to cater to foreign (English as a second language) audiences, where so much of the film production costs can be recouped, Spectre eschews intelligent dialog and lacks an intelligible plot. After all, translating complex conversations is difficult and now that audiences are accustomed to moronic plots, why bother thinking up a good one? (Any audience member should be insulted by a scene in which she watches a torture device being administered and why it has absolutely no effect on Bond is never explained.) Bond hops around the world to encounter various people whose role in the story would only need to be explained if the movie had a story. The creators patch gaps in the story-line with blasts of its obnoxious musical score. Bond films are not alone in being an interminable series of fight scenes, car chases and encounters between the sexes smothered start-to-finish in jingoistic nonsense on how powerful and technologically advanced the lead actor's nation is. (Perhaps the Bond series is the origin of this heavy-handed nationalism.) The pre-release hype emphasized that Spectre was a modernization of the Bond series in having one older woman as a "love target" and that it dealt with modern fears of government surveillance. But the Bond clichés are no longer endearing: technological toys that pale in comparison to real-life advancements, childishly simple, brainless plots, a happy bachelor who continually encounters women uninterested in more than sex and an English-speaking world without US influence. The series has gone stale. Please respect your audiences' intelligence and lead Hollywood with movies that reflect what Ian Fleming might write for today's modern readers.