Spectre


I was very excited to see Spectre, so I booked tickets for me and my wife to see it in full IMAX, although because of show times I ended up going to the Jurong cinema, in the middle of nowhere, next to an ice rink. It felt like this was the smallest IMAX I’d ever been in, and also the coldest; I think the ice rink was probably warmer.

That wouldn’t have been a problem if the film hadn’t been two and a half hours long, or if it had been involving. Instead, most of Spectre was just a bit dull. The initial scenes in Mexico City were heavily trailered and thus lacked surprise, and there wasn’t a plot twist that hadn’t been signalled from miles away.

At the same time, Spectre does a good job of being too long and not having enough exposition. It felt like a facsimile of a Bond film, a film which didn’t have any logical structure unless it was within a Bond film – the sort of nested problem that makes my brain fry like an egg. There were lumpish bits of Bond prerequisites: a torture scene, a mountain top lair, a snowy pursuit. Mixed in with the recurrent theme of all Mission Impossible films – the fear of the cancellation of the franchise. There was one nod to older Bond films – the way Blofeld should never, ever get near a helicopter.

Finally, I don’t know if I’m getting old, or it was a consequence of watching IMAX up so close, but almost all the fight scenes are pretty impossible to follow – lots of shoving without it being clear who’s been shoved into who. It’s soured me on the whole Bond franchise – I suppose I’ll have to rewatch On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to get over this.


One response to “Spectre”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.