Entertainment Geekly: Do the what now?
I have a deep, abiding love for Crazy Bond.
You used to seeGoldfingermore; you seeSkyfallall the time now.
Credit: Everett Collection
Those are worthy, fine movies.
It is not controversial to like them.
We tend to prefer a seriousness of intent in our goofy entertainment.
We want fake things to feel “real.”
But the lineage of Bond is mad.
Mad, I tell you.
Gadgets and rockets, henchmen ubermenschen and oversexed geopolitics.
(As a rule: I love any James Bond movie set designed by Ken Adam.)
(As a rule: I love any James Bond movie with sharks.)
My feelings aboutDie Another Dayand invisible cars and ice castles and sun lasers area matter of record.
(As a rule: Lasers, etc.)
The Daniel Craig Bonds never weren’t a little crazy.
ButCasino Royalehas a funky side: Bond kills a man in the middle of the corpse-chic Bodies exhibit.
I find it mostly unwatchable, a grimdark exercise in anti-joy.
The last big scene inQuantumgoes to a chic hotel with, WOW, alot of squareson the outside!
Credit Roger Deakins, theSkyfallcinematographer.
(I don’t remember why, but at some point inSkyfall, they basically go to Atlantis.)
People don’t loveSpectre.Chris Nashawatygave it a B-minus, which ison the generous side.
Last year, the film writer Film Crit Hulk wrote a towering essay-book-blog about the 007 series.
One of his central big ideas is that the Bond franchise suffers from a self-afflicted case of Terminal Overreaction.
But the Bond franchise is also a case study in zeitgeist overreaction.
You watch the ’70s become the ’80s around the outskirts of the Moore Bonds.
You watch film styles come, go, return.
SoSpectreis an overreaction to our current blockbuster moment.
LikeQuantum, it wants to be a serialized sequel.
Like every superhero film, it wants to prove itself as a Saga.
This is very silly, for the most part.SPOILERS FROM HERE.
It is silly that James Bond was a childhood friend-brother to Franz Oberhauser a.k.a.
Nothing that happens inSpectreholds up to even minor logical scrutiny.
The logic stuff wouldn’t matter in a lighthearted movie, butSpectrekeeps filtering in psychodrama and Snowden-era paranoia.
It’s like watching an episode ofDuckTalesabout the financial crisis.
But I come not to burySpectre, but to weirdly praise it.
Put simply: I have no clear idea what happens in the last half hour ofSpectre.
I’m not sure anyone really does.
It’s a final act that feels overly rewritten in four or five different directions.
I guess you could just say it’s “bad.”
They arrive in a desert.
A car picks them up, and brings them to Villain’s Lair.
In this case, the range is actually a meteor crater.
Oberhauser and Bond talk about the meteorite hitting Earth, but they’re really talking about each other.
At no point in any of this does Bond have a plan.
Instead, Oberhauser puts Bond into a brain drill.
This is where things get a bit weird.
And by “weird,” I do at least partially mean “nonsensical.”
But at one point, Blofeld starts saying some very strange things.
He’s talking, specifically, about the faces of the women close to Bond, now and then.
After the drill goes into Bond’s head, Madeleine Swann walks over to him.
She asks him if he recognizes her.
And thenapropos of very, very littleshe says: “I love you.”
Suddenly, everything changes.
Bond frees himself from the torture contraptionusing, um, his strength.
He gives Madeleine his exploding watch and tells her to throw it.
A long time passes.
Madeleine throws the watch right at him, and it explodes, engulfing him in flames.
Bond grabs Madeleine, and runs outside, and kills everyone.
But thewayhe kills everyone is strange.
Bond and Madeleine get up to the helipad, andthe entire base explodes behind them.
Or is that the Schwarzenegger movie we should be thinking of?
But that’s what happens here.
But she tells him this, crucially,while they are in the middle of a mission.
He finds Blofeld, his left eye scarred.
Blofeld tells Bond that a bomb will destroy the building, and Madeleine is somewhere inside.
He has three minutes.
The MI6 building is a very large building, with multiple floors.
They escape on a boat as the building explodes.
Then he shoots Blofeld’s helicopter down with a pistol.
Then he finds Blofeld on a bridge.
M watches from one side of the bridge; Madeleine watches from the other side.
Bond doesn’t kill Blofeld.
He goes away with Madeleine.
And then he goes away with Madeleine, again.
Here’s the question: Why is any of this happening?
Here’s an answer: It’s all in Bond’s head.
Because he is dying on Blofeld’s operating table.
Roll with me on this for a second.
So then Blofeld starts digging his little contraption into Bond’s head.
I guess maybe he’s just touching nerve endings, maybe?
That’s not what it looks like, and it’s also not what Blofeld’s stated purpose is.
This is the first time in any of Daniel Craig’s movies that he gets the girl.
And not just any girl.
Madeleine Swann feels constructed as a perfect echo ofCasino Royale’s Vesper Lyndthis time, with a happier ending.
Bond learned Vesper was a traitor in Venice when she met with Mister White.
InSpectre, Mister White offers Bond his daughter as a deeply twisted penance.
But I don’t just conjure up myBraziltheory ofSpectreas a lark.
Every actor who has ever played James Bond has left the character unexpectedly.
Connery knew he was leaving Bond, but then he came back twice.
Moore played Bond forever, and then one day all involved decided he was finished.
Dalton and Brosnan were ready for more.
Lazenby seemed good either way.
And yet, their final moments as the character have odd, accidental resonance.
At the end ofNever Say Never Again, Bond goes to live in the Bahamas.Connery’s still there.
Craig: Who knows?
Maybe he’ll do another.
Maybe that will be a more obvious ending.
Whatever world Craig’s Bond is fighting for is already long gone.
Bond walked into Blofeld’s lair, eyes wide open.
Bond left his own body there, eyes wide shut.
