Bond On: SPECTRE

Skyfall was the first James Bond movie to cross a billion dollars at the box office. You know what’s better than a billion-dollar Bond movie? A second billion-dollar Bond movie!

MGM fast tracked a follow-up to capitalize on Skyfall’s success. Spectre was shot, edited, scored and shipped to theaters in a tight 11-month window.

This created numerous challenges. To make matters worse, the Sony Hack of 2014 resulted in early drafts of Spectre’s screenplay being leaked online.

Meanwhile, a longstanding battle over classic IP rights was finally resolved and forced filmmakers to cram in various elements along the way.  Did all these problems give Spectre only a ghost of a chance to be successful?

Spectre – Behind The Scenes

Two main elements shaped the development of Spectre. First, Eon Productions desired to conclude the character arc of Craig’s Bond shaped over his previous films.

Second, for 40 years, the criminal organization SPECTRE and Ernst Stavro Blofeld were absent from Bond films due to a legal dispute between Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory over the novel Thunderball. MGM finally laid this battle to rest in 2013. This allowed them to bring the classic villain and organization back into frame.

With these touchstones in place,  Skyfall director Sam Mendes returned and worked with screenwriters John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth. They crafted a story to tie together the loose threads of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall into a conspiracy orchestrated by Blofeld. They also introduced the twist of making Blofeld Bond’s foster brother to make the story more personal.

Unlike Skyfall, which benefited from an extra nine months of preparation due to MGM’s bankruptcy, Spectre was put together on the fly. Mendes noted that a major part of his daily work was wrestling an unfinished script with rewrites.

The Director

Initially reluctant to return after exhausting himself on Skyfall, Mendes agreed to direct in order to complete the story of the MI6 characters he had reintroduced. While Skyfall was a psychologically deconstruction of Bond, Mendes wanted Spectre to exhibit the flamboyance, wit and mischief of the original films. Instead of breaking Bond down mentally, Mendes aimed for a more physical 007, who drove the investigation of the film as a wiser, more introspective agent

To replicate the look of cinematic spy films, Mendes shot most of Spectre on 35mm film. Because his previous collaborator Roger Deakins was unavailable, Mendes hired cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. Mendes consulted industry peers (including Christopher Nolan) before making this choice. Together, they designed color palettes for each location—such as the romantic, shadowy baroque lighting of Rome, which was heavily influenced by Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

For the opening Day of the Dead sequence, Mendes spent months planning a four-minute unbroken tracking shot. His goal was to “drop the audience into Bond’s shoes” and make them participants in the action.

Casting

Casting Spectre focused on established talent to create characters who were worthy counterparts of Craig’s Bond.  Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson knew the return of SPECTRE required a formidable villain. Oscar winner Christopher Waltz’s came onboard through a long, secretive process. To hide the twist that he played Blofeld, Waltz was announced as “Franz Oberhauser.”

Locations

Spectre was filmed across Mexico, Italy, Austria, Morocco and the United Kingdom.

The film opens in Mexico City. Production spent a year negotiating with government officials to shut down the historic Zócalo Square. This allowed them to shoot a low-flying helicopter fight over a crowd of 1,500 extras. Mexico City did not actually host a Day of the Dead parade of this specific scale at the time. Spectre’s elaborate production design inspired the city to launch its own annual parade starting in 2016.

Rome and Vatican City served as the backdrop for Bond’s introduction to SPECTRE. The car chase between Bond’s Aston Martin DB10 and Mr. Hinx’s Jaguar C-X75 was filmed on iconic streets like Via della Conciliazione in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. It concluded with Bond driving his vehicle into the Tiber River near the Ponte Sisto bridge.

The Museum of Roman Civilization served as a high-end cemetery for Marco Sciarra’s funeral.

Production traveled to the Alps for the winter scenes. The Hoffler Clinic, where Bond meets Dr. Madeleine Swann, is the Ice Q Restaurant, located at the summit of the Gaislachkogl Peak in Sölden. The plane chase occurred along the Ötztal Glacier Road—the second-highest paved road in Europe—and in the village of Obertilliach. Lake Altaussee served as the lake Bond crossed by boat to confront Mr. White.

Morocco provided the stark environment required for Blofeld’s base. To get there, Bond and Madeleine rode the Oriental Desert Express railway line between Oujda and Bouarfa. The exterior of Blofeld’s base was shot in a geological crater formation near Erfoud.

London acted as the anchor point of the film’s climax. Sequences were captured around Whitehall and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office courtyard. Q-Branch was accessed via Camden Lock. Bond’s flat was filmed at Stanley Gardens in Notting Hill. The final speedboat and helicopter chase took place on the River Thames, illuminated under Westminster Bridge and in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament.

Action

Spectre relied on practical stunts and real locations, prioritizing a classic cinematic feel over CGI. Special effects supervisor Chris Corbould and second unit director Alexander Witt orchestrated massive set-pieces.

For the opening helicopter sequence, aerobatic pilot Chuck Aaron performed barrel rolls and steep dives only a few hundred feet above the ground. While Craig and stuntman Gary Powell filmed the close-up combat on a studio gimbal rig, the wide shots featured real stuntmen dangling from the flying aircraft.

For the car chase, Aston Martin built eight custom DB10 cars. Several were “hero” cars for close-ups. Others were equipped with roll-cages, reinforced suspensions and external steering pods so stunt drivers could control the vehicle while the actors focused on performance.  To shoot the cars bouncing down historic Roman steps, the crew placed protective concrete wedges over the original stones and protected the surrounding walls with painted steel. The city shut down major areas for 18 consecutive nights while the cars reached speeds exceeding 100 mph.

To film the plane crashing through barns and trees, special effects teams mounted a real, engine-less aircraft onto a cable-and-rail track system hidden in the trees. This allowed them to guide the plane through the scene at high speed. Multiple junked fuselages were packed with small explosives and towed down snow-covered roads at 60 mph to film the final crash.

The train fight between Bond and Mr. Hinx was designed as a homage to the train fight between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love. Both Craig and Bautista insisted on doing as much work as possible themselves, crashing through breakaway walls and partitions. This resulted in multiple injuries. Craig accidentally landed a full-force left hook that broke Bautista’s nose. Meanwhile, Craig suffered a knee injury, which required arthroscopic surgery and temporarily halted production.

The destruction of Blofeld’s desert base earned a Guinness World Record for the largest film explosion in history. Chris Corbould’s team detonated 8,418 liters of kerosene, combined with 33 kilograms of powder explosives, yielding a blast equivalent to 68.47 tonnes of TNT. The explosion had to be captured in one take because rebuilding the compound was financially impossible. The crew spent months rigging the site with micro-computer detonators. The massive, 7.5-second fireball had to also be coordinated with Craig and Seydoux in the foreground.

Do You Expect Us To Talk?

Wrenage: Well, well, well, if it isn’t my old frenemy, Spectre. I have not seen you in probably ten years. I did not expect to see you again. Yet, here we are…

Stark: Another proof point for the unified Bond theory – that Bond is like sex and pizza – even when it isn’t the best, it’s still good and you are glad you had it. For me, Spectre has two problems that undermine a lot of it, and no doubt we will talk about them at length as we go into this.

Wrenage: For the first 90 minutes, Spectre mostly treads water. I thought, this isn’t as bad as I remember. Then the last hour hit. Woof…

Ranking And Rating

Let’s get to the ratings and rankings. Wrenage and Stark will give their opinions on the Bondian elements found in Spectre and come up with a score and ranking to place it appropriately in their league table of all things Bond.

Bond

Wrenage: Craig is mostly okay, but a certain meta-smugness enters the proceedings. He was Bond alone in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace…and it was wonderful, but now the dream is over, and the douchebag is awake. Like Brundlefly, Bond is a fusion of Bondcraig from Skyfall onward. His snide remarks about his weariness of Bond, comments about misogyny and push for wokeness start to show. I no longer see James Bond onscreen moving through a story. I see Craig running through a checklist.

Stark: As I frequently say, Fleming’s Bond was supremely weary in places, introspective, often entertained the idea of quitting the service. Often gets suckered by a girl with a hard luck story, can’t resist the “bird with a wing down”. Only other actor who got that as right as Craig was Dalton.

Wrenage: It all culminates in a groaner ending that sees Bond leave Blofeld to the authorities so he can go live happily ever after with one of the worst Bond girls ever. No, no and no. Rather, Bond should have looked for the nearest chimney to drop Blofeld down after patting his bald head and saying, “All right, keep your hair on…” A pox on this bleeding heart version of Bond!

Stark: I don’t have a problem with him leaving Blofeld on the ground like a bitch for the authorities to deal with. I just don’t buy the ultimate romance. Which brings us to…

Bond Girls

Wrenage: Monica Bellucci is a non-issue. She is in the movie for two minutes — pure stunt casting. However, Lea Seydoux as Madeleine Swan is worse than Denise Richards as Christmas Jones. I said what I said…

Stark: There is a certain coldness about her, isn’t there? Maybe it’s just that she’s French. I get that Bond would want to have a special cuddle with her, but give up his life and fall head over heels? She’s one of the two things I talked about.

Wrenage: Denise Richards at least had some life and vibrancy about her. She enjoyed being there. Her character tagged along and showed bimbo energy, even as she attempted to be an intellectual. Seydoux is a sullen, dour character with perpetual resting bitch face who does nothing interesting. Yet, we are supposed to believe she is the woman that motivates Bond to leave everything behind at the end? In comparison to Bond Girls like Vesper Lynd and Tracy di Vicenzo. Laughable!

Stark: Christmas Jones would be a good time. Guaranteed. There would probably be shots involved. As you say, if Bond’s ultimate love in Bond v1.0 was Tracy, and in Bond v2.0 it was Vesper, it is going to take something special to really make him give up his life as a celebrated swordsman. Seydoux’s got a certain elegance and sophistication, I give her that, I just don’t buy it.

Villains

Stark: Blofeld is a complicated character to get right in a new version, with all the baggage the previous versions bring. The movies had him as something of a one-note big bad who keeps coming back. In the books he only appears in three novels. In Thunderball he is in the background and Bond never meets him, but it is his first run out vs. SPECTRE. Then On Her Majesty’s Secret Service where they do meet, and Blofeld is ultimately responsible for Tracy’s death. Finally You Only Live Twice, which is all about the revenge. And, of course, another book where Bond “dies”.

Because he has a defined beginning, middle, and end, and is singularly responsible for Bond’s pain, I get what they were doing here in the movie. It just falls flat.

Wrenage: Initially, I was excited about the casting of Christopher Waltz and the return of Blofeld. I’m a big fan of Inglourious Basterds and could not wait to see what Waltz did with the role. It turns out, he did nothing. Somehow, with all the money and talent in the world, Spectre managed to make Blofeld boring. Waltz looks like he is on a regimen of valium and warm beer for the duration of the shoot. He makes Daniel Kaluuya look like an ADHD patient.

Stark: I don’t have a problem with his performance. It’s actually chilling in places. It is just the second of those two big things that derail the whole movie for me – the link to Bond’s past. No issues with Quantum having been absorbed by SPECTRE. No issues with Blofeld having been a secret hand behind things. But why waste the Bond-lore of Oberhauser and Bond’s life immediately after his parents tragic death (featured in the books) by pulling the Austin Powers III lever?

I get that its brother/guardianship, not actual brother or foster brother, but still. It derails the whole thing and is a step too far. That is one of those things that should have been in an early version of the script, and then was written out as they polished. So it probably links back to the whole pace of production issue.

Genuinely, cut that shit completely out, and drop in a better Bond girl, and you have a pretty tidy Bond movie.

Wrenage: I can see that. Meanwhile, Bautista as Mr. Hinx fares much better. His character feels like a genuine throwback to Oddjob and Jaws and is one of Spectre’s few successes. The only complaint here is that he is woefully underused. He also doesn’t even really get to use his gimmick, metal thumbnails, in his battle with Bond. Oddjob used his hat. Jaws tried to bite Bond multiple times. Mr. Hinx should have at least left claw marks on the wall as Bond ducks out of the way our something during their train fight.

Stark: The train fight really is fantastic. I am sure we will talk about that later.

Wrenage: The other shame is that Jesper Christensen is also wasted as Mr. White. Christensen genuinely brought something to the table, and his Mr. White character had a wonderful sliminess about him. Spectre might have been a lot better if they had made Mr. White ultimately turn out to be Blofeld. Christensen would have nailed it.

Stark: A more developed script, 3 or 4 rewrites on, might have had SPECTRE absorbing Quantum as the lever, the opportunity MI6 finds out about to exploit and infiltrate. In the course of this, with something massive at stake, Bond and White become uneasy allies, and this is how he finds himself in Madeline’s orbit.

Plot

Stark: I like the idea of the establishment being infiltrated (doesn’t that ring true these days?!!?) and information being the new power. Needed building out and developing more. There is a theme here, isn’t there? This all feels like another couple of go arounds would have solved all of this without too much effort.

Wrenage: The plot is an example of forced high stakes. Oh no! The villain is going to have his lackey turn on computers and have access to data that Facebook probably already had a decade ago. M must stop him by making him fall over some railing.

Wait, what? Villain lackey? M? What about a final confrontation between Bond and Blofeld? They are the reason people go to these movies.

Well, see, here’s the exciting part. Blofeld is going to make Bond run around a deserted building in a completely unrelated tangent. Why is that exciting? Because the building is going to blow up, and Bond has to find the worse Bond Girl ever before it does…and he will! Without any real obstacles whatsoever! Why are you yawning…?

Stark: There it is again! Nothing that couldn’t be fixed by just a bit more thought and a couple more goes around with the script. I remember that in the Sony hack, Amy Pascal – now new Bond producer alongside David Heyman – said she didn’t like the ending and felt it needed to be bigger and with higher stakes. Maybe she is a safe pair of hands to take this forward?

Wrenage: Heh-heh. Remember when the Sony Hack revealed those emails between Amy Pascal and Jonah Hill to combine 21 Jump Street and Men in Black. Hill called the idea “clean and rad and powerful.” That was funny!

Action Sequences

Wrenage: Aside from the train fight, the action is a bit lackluster. The car chase is by rote. It’s just two cars zooming around night streets. They don’t really crash into anything. No major destruction. Plus, it is undercut with attempts at comedy and intercutting to Moneypenny rummaging in her fridge. It’s lazy compared to the mayhem of the Remy Julienne car chases in the Roger Moore films.

Stark: I liked the gags with the gadgets and the music, the car being set up for 009, and the return of the ejector seat in an Aston. But you are right, there is some zip and zing missing. Like the cars they were using were too valuable, and the scenery was too historic, so start smashing them into each other and blowing shit up.

Wrenage: The plane chase is better, but it ends up impersonal because it puts the opponents too far apart. You need some intimacy in an action scene: cars bashing into each other, fists bashing into faces, stuff like that. Most of the scene is Bond buzzing cars with a plane.

The train fight is good, though. That is probably the only moment in the film that genuinely feels somewhat electric.

Stark: The train fight is superb. It really builds. Starts off as a fight, and then the dawning horror as Bond realises he can’t win, then the desperation as dirty tricks and guile fail, then the actual fear, and then genuine attempts to escape becoming increasingly frantic. Craig really sells it in this scene. Actual acting in the middle of a heavy stunt scene.

Wrenage: The climax, however, is terrible. I have never really seen an action film on the level of Bond say, “You know what, we’re just not going to do anything exciting for the last hour of the movie.”

Bonds escape from the torture chair is contrived. His run through the deserted building absolutely begged for Mr. Hinx to return to present a physical threat in the sequence. And the lackluster climax that sees Bond drive a boat down the Thames and shoot Blofeld’s helicopter down with his PPK is silly and again, inexcusably, lazy.

Stark: Multi-vehicle chase required here. Speedboats down the Thames, then Blofeld makes his helicopter which Bond then races across London in a car. Culminate it with Blofeld coming in to land out at a skyscraper construction site in the banking district and Bond gets there first and uses a construction crane to swat the helicopter out of the sky. Sorted. If we can come up with this stuff…?

Wrenage: See, now you’re cooking with gas! Those ideas are clean and rad and powerful…

Pre-Title Sequence

Stark: Helicopter fight also very good from a technical execution point of view. Add that to the train fight.

Wrenage: Pretty good title sequence, yes. I would, however, argue the elaborate one-take opening shot is a completely unnecessary indulgence for a Bond movie. That time could have been better spent beefing up weak areas of the film.

Stark: An interesting technical exercise.

Wrenage: I have one other complaint about the opening. The man in the white suit is clearly the goal of the sequence. Once he is thrown out of the helicopter, the scene is effectively over. Yet, it continues on as Bond battles a meaningless helicopter pilot.

Theme Song And Score

Stark: This was before Sam Smith became monumentally annoying. Could/should have been a good pick, but how do you follow the sheer big, brassy balls of Adele’s Skyfall? Not with this. Not with this.

Wrenage: I’m open to Writing’s on the Wall being the worst Bond song ever. Sam Smith’s mincing, falsetto voice is jarring, and the lyrics are terrible.

How do I live? How do I breath? When you’re not here, I’m suffocating.

That is not Bond’s inner voice at all… Apparently, Radiohead also did a song for the film, but it was rejected. It wasn’t very good either…

Stark: If I say anything about Radiohead here, I will make some enemy’s for life, so I plead the 5th!

X-Factor

Stark: It’s big. It’s bold. It just gets a few key things wrong. Unfortunately they add up to derail the whole experience for me. It has moments and things that should be Bondian X-Factors, but you are too busy thinking “Why is she so miserable?”, “How exactly does one evil organization take over another? Are there shares?”, and “Hang on, did nobody at Eon watch Goldmember?”

Wrenage: I may not like the narrative choice of making Blofeld Bond’s foster brother, but I guess that qualifies as an X factor…

Stark: It’s just the wrong one! Let’s be clear, it’s not bad. It’s not a terrible film. Like all these Bond films, there is unified Bond theory at play. Also, watching these Bond movies that the internet says aren’t good all over again just makes me think “well, it’s not that bad!” – like online crowd noise has outpaced reality.

Scoring Breakdown

Stark: As the Fleming fan, no issues with Craig again. I just can’t shake the feeling that a couple more rewrites would have nailed this by smoothing out the issues.

Wrenage: Spectre does nothing to change my inner head cannon, which is that Craig’s Bond run was Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and that’s it…

Stark: The world will come to appreciate Quantum! I have forseen it!

Wrenage: Yet, I must admit, I am curious to see how No Time To Die plays when I view it again. I saw it in the theater and have not viewed it since…

Stark: That one will entirely hinge on a single thing, I reckon. One for another day…

Overall Rankings

We are nearly at the end, maybe in time for a brand new 007 to be announced. So how it is all shaking out now?

First Tier:

Casino Royale (68.5)
From Russia With Love (61.5)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (61)
The Spy Who Loved Me (59.5)
Dr. No (56.5)
Licence To Kill (56)

Second Tier:

Goldfinger (54.5)
Thunderball (53.1)
Live and Let Die (53)
Tomorrow Never Dies (52)
You Only Live Twice (51.5)
For Your Eyes Only (51.5)

Third Tier:

Skyfall (51)
Octopussy (51)
Quantum Of Solace (50.5)
The Living Daylights (50.5)
Moonraker (48.5)
A View To A Kill (48)

Fourth Tier:

GoldenEye(47)
The World Is Not Enough (43)
Die Another Day (42)
The Man With The Golden Gun (38.5)
Spectre (35)
Diamonds Are Forever (34.5)

Stark: Wow! I did not expect that! Low? Yes. Fourth tier, possibly, but there is no way I would place Spectre personally below Die Another Day and barely above the only Bond movie I come close to disliking, Diamonds Are Forever. Then again, I still have a stewards enquiry lodged over GoldenEye and The Living Daylights position in the ranking. Steward doesn’t seem to be answering the phone, though. Who came up with this ranking system, anyway?

Wrenage: I am slightly disappointed in a different way. I can’t believe Spectre did not score several digits lower than Diamonds Are Forever. I would actually create a fifth tier and consign Spectre to its fiery depths for a millennia.

I am also surprised that your scores are fairly close to mine on Spectre despite your Unified Bond Theory. I thought I might be unrealistically harsh, and you might show me the error of my ways. But, nope, we are fairly simpatico. I’m just a wee bit more histrionic about its failings. Like you, I can see how this film should be better than it is and how they seemingly made almost every wrong choice possible along the way.

That’s A Wrap

Stark: We are nearly at the end. When we get to the end, I will be sad. I enjoy our little Bond chats.

Wrenage: Don’t be sad. Be glad it happened. Plus, we still have to go back and redo From Russia With Love due to the Great LMO Server Crash. I know I made your day by reminding you of that. There’s nothing like going back and redoing a 10,000-word article with images.

I think I’d rather just watch Spectre again…twice…

NEXT TIME…  We tackle, arguably, the most controversial Bond movie of them all. No Time To Die.

Meanwhile, check out the rest of our Bond On series as we take a walk through all the Bond movies in order: Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever,  Live And Let Die, The Man With The Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker,  For Your Eyes Only, a two-way Battle Of The Bonds for Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, A View To A Kill, The Living Daylights, Licence To Kill, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day and Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace and Skyfall.