A Spectre of My Former Self (James Bond 24)

Daniel Craig returns as Ian Fleming’s James Bond in Spectre, the latest in the long-running film series. After the incredible highs of the previous film, Skyfall, people were eager for the follow-up. And since the same writers, director, producers, and star were returning, it had to be great, right? Right?

Unfortunately, Spectre rehashes the same ground that was tread in the previous film, and does so with less finesse. While it certainly has fantastic action, the rest of the film comes away as forced, leaving us with a middling Bond film.

I’m going to make a lot of references to Skyfall in this review of Spectre. Since pretty much the entire crew came back for the sequel, I think it’s fair to do so. There was a lot to dissect in the latest Bond outing, so I’m going to break down my thoughts into three categories.

The Good

I was immediately pleased to see the opening gun barrel scene at, you know, the opening, after two films shunted it to the end.

As has been the case for all of Craig’s Bond films, the action scenes in Spectre are top-notch. The most incredible takes place during the pre-title sequence. Bond is thrust into the crush of people in Mexico City’s wild Day of the Dead parade. He takes out some bad guys, and gets caught on a helicopter which is careening out of control. The loop-de-loops were thrilling, and the visuals of the holiday festivities alone were worth the price of admission. Bond looked cool as hell in the skeleton outfit he dons in the opening minutes.

James Bond Pre-Title Sequences, Ranked

As a long-time James Bond fan, I’ve seen all the movies over and over again. The series is famed for it’s thrilling pre-title sequences which precede the story. I’ve listed all the sequences in order from worst to best. Check it out and let me know what you think!

22) The World is Not Enough – It isn’t a surprise that the worst Bond movie also has the worst pre-title sequence. It’s absolutely bloated with excess. It starts off promising, with him fighting some people at a bank in Spain, but quickly spirals out of control as he goes on an overly long speedboat chase on the Thames River, and ends hanging off a hot-air balloon. It’s like a parody of a James Bond intro. It personifies the over-indulgence of the Pierce Brosnan era.

21) Die Another Day – This intro is also pretty bad, but fares slightly better than the previous entry. It starts out completely cringe-worthy as Bond surfs into North Korea, moves along to a ridiculous hovercraft chase scene, and ends with Bond getting captured. The only reason I ranked it higher than The World is Not Enough is because they blended the opening song with the pre-title sequence. They had never done that before, and it kind of worked.

20) Quantum of Solace – The crappy Bond movies keep on coming. I almost ranked this one at number 22, but I decided it wasn’t that horrible. It’s a car chase, which is cool in theory. Unfortunately, it’s schizophrenically edited. No shot lasts longer than two seconds. The camera is constantly switching from Bond’s face to the car to the tires to the road and back again. Making matters worse is the shakey-cam in which it was filmed. So, you have shakey-cam with jarring editing. If that doesn’t make you puke, I don’t know what will.

Letters to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Glamorous Hollywood stars.

Dear The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,

I recently watched you, and thought I should let you know about something called brevity. With an excruciatingly long running time, clearly you have never heard of this important concept. Next time, keep things concise. Like this letter.

Sincerely,

BrikHaus

————

Dear The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,

I wanted to commend you for your amazing characters. The female lead, Elizabeth Salamander, is tough and hardcore. This is depicted to the audience by her shaved eyebrows, crazy hair, tattoos and piercings, and the fact that she is a loner. Thank you for not boring us with drab personal details like how she grew up, the inner workings of her psyche, or why she chooses to give herself such a unique appearance. We really should just take her at face-value, that’s the best thing to do. The male lead, James Bond, is also tough and hardcore. We see this by his wearing glasses hanging off of one ear. James Bond never ages, why should he need glasses? He doesn’t. I figured this was just a subterfuge by your exceptionally good writing. Keep up the good work. I hope to see more face-value characters in your sequel.

Yours,

The Public at Large

The Sky is Falling (James Bond 23)

Since every film critic and blogger has already pledged their undying love and firstborn child to Skyfall, I feel like I need to take a different approach to reviewing it. I could do my usual complaining, but after wracking my brain, I found that I had very little to complain about. It was a solid Bond movie from start to finish, and a welcome addition to the franchise. So, I think I’ll just throw out random thoughts I had and leave it at that.

Where the fuck was the Opening Gunbarrel Sequence? Oh, at the end again. For 20 films, they always opened through the point of view of a gun, with Bond firing a shot, and blood spilling down the screen. The last movie, Quantum of Solace, which was kind of a piece of shit, inexplicably moved the sequence to the end. Skyfall does the same thing. Director Sam Mendes stated he wanted to have it in the beginning, but thought it looked ridiculous paired to the opening of the movie with Bond walking out with his gun raised. I guess that makes sense, but throwing it onto the end makes it feel like an afterthought. I have always liked the traditional opening, something that no other film series has, and to just tack it on at the end feels shameless.

The opening credits were designed by Daniel Kleinman who did the opening credits for all the Bond movies from Goldeneye through Skyfall, with the exception of Quantum of Solace, which again makes that movie stand out as kind of shitty. The credits, again, were fantastic. He has really upped his game with Skyfall, making a visual feast with beautiful girls, flashy effects, and thematic elements that tie in with the plot of the film. The only part of the opening credits that falls flat is the title song “Skyfawwll” performed by Adele. The song is a boring dud, just like its singer.

Movies > Books: Casino Royale

“Bond… Silhouette Bond.”

Every time a movie comes out that’s based on a book, people always shout, “LOL BUT TEH BOOK WAS SOOO MUCH BETTER LOL!” Well, sometimes the movie can be better than the source material. In some cases, drastically so. Just because the source material is a book doesn’t mean the book is not a huge steaming pile of shit. Here’s an example:

In case it wasn’t already known, I am a huge fan of the James Bond film series. I have watched them all, own them all, and eagerly anticipate the release of each new movie. The successful franchise is based on a series of popular books. Since I’m illiterate I had never read any of the books, but I figured, what the hell, I should give one of them a try. Going in chronological order made sense, so I figured I’d start at the beginning.

The first book in the James Bond series is Casino Royale. It was written by Ian Fleming and published in 1953. He pretty much made the espionage genre of literature and films popular with this single work. There have been countless imitators since then, but there is only one James Bond. There was no way I was going to dislike this book. It was the first James Bond novel! It was going to be awesome! I sat down to read, and…

…holy shit this book is fucking terrible!