“Daniel Craig rejected a $50million deal that would have seen 007 using a Samsung mobile phone in new film Spectre because it was not deemed good enough for James Bond”.
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This movie made it to the list mostly for its scenery than its actual plot. I’ll fondly reminisce about the famous Roger Deakins-inspired silhouetted fight scene in “Skyfall”, which remains to this day one of the most beautifully choreographed sequences the Bond franchise has ever offered up. Even during the conventional high speed vehicle chase, with the classic Aston Martin DB10 or Jaguar C-X75 (what Bond movie would be without either auto or chase), he remains calm, cool and collected as a cucumber.
Bond movies have a tradition of real action, real explosions and real stunts. While “Spectre” does a marvelous job connecting the proverbial dots of James Bond’s lifelong obsession, it provides little in the way of memorable set pieces audiences will be talking about long after the movie.
Christoph Waltz is the quiet and calculated nemesis to Bond in this film and their ties lie far deeper than expected. Bond then goes to Rome on a trail of not just one master criminal, but a whole organization of them. Thankfully, Ralph Fiennes has not tried to fill in the hole left by Judi Dench’s M but rather has his own spin on the character. Excellent people have played these roles in the past but we didn’t miss them when they were off-screen, which was most of the time.
Waltz isn’t the only villain in “Spectre”.
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I’m a fan of James Bond, but I must admit, I’m not that big of a fan of Daniel Craig in the role (Sean Connery was my favorite, of course). A brother, who now knows how to push all of Bond’s buttons, a man who wishes to destroy Bond. The fear of a surveillance state, while timely, is barely explored, and the twisted web of Bond’s past, the villains he’s faced, the women he’s loved, never seems as important as it should. It takes a certain kind of deftness to mix ejector seats and a half-baked commentary on drone warfare, and “Spectre’s” team doesn’t quite have it. Instead, we get Andrew Scott as the smarmy C trying to ditch the double-0 program for a singular, worldwide intelligence agency, which isn’t exactly fresh narrative waters for a Bond film. At least those films had a storyline to twist and turn. There’s less action, more exposition but also an ambitious overarching story arc. And, finally, the Craig films established a cast of supporting characters to care about. If this is indeed Daniel Craig’s last film, they have finished his Bond arc in a spectacular way.
