It’s likely one of the most controversial James Bond movies of all time. Still, Sam Mendes’s SPECTRE was intended to be a massive 007 epic that would pull together elements from all the other Daniel Craig James Bond movies for what I’m sure they hoped would be a global blockbuster that could rival Skyfall. Fans were excited because it promised the return of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. While the box office receipts and critical reaction fell short somewhat, it was still a blockbuster that paved the way for the upcoming No Time to Die, even if fans, by and large, seem to dislike it.
So what went wrong? A lot of things, it seems. For one, everyone was ultra-focused on making another Skyfall. To that end, Sam Mendes returned after clearly putting all of his ideas for the franchise into the previous movie. It seemed, more than anything, this was a technical challenge for him, with him using some of the techniques he’s honing here for his next film, 1917. Christoph Waltz was highly anticipated as the rumored Blofeld but wound up being a disappointment in the under-written part, while Sam Smith’s theme song didn’t match Adele’s. Add to that the Sony hack, which blew the lid off of budget issues, and you have a recipe for disaster, so in some ways, we’re lucky the film turned out as well as it did!
So join us here on James Bond Revisited as we dig into SPECTRE!