10 Reasons Why Spectre Doesn’t Top Skyfall

Sam Mendes' Spectre, the 24th entry in the James Bond franchise, is not a bad film. Critical consensus indicates it's flawed, but still basically enjoyable and artfully made by a director who's proven surprisingly adept at blockbuster filmmaking. Nevertheless, Spectre has the misfortune of following one of the greatest Bond movies of all-time: Mendes' own Skyfall. A Bond film made to simultaneously bring 007 up-to-date and celebrate 50 years of the character, Skyfall is comfortably the best of the Daniel Craig Bonds. Spectre comes in at a respectable third. That being said, there are ways in which Spectre and Skyfall match in terms of quality: the cast is top-drawer, while the cinematography, though very different in each, can be breathtakingly beautiful. Some of the action set-pieces in Spectre, meanwhile, even top those in Skyfall (the opening Day of the Dead sequence, the car chase through Rome, and the train fight between Bond and Dave Bautista's henchman Mr. Hinx are all series highlights). Still, those fans going into Spectre with high hopes after the superfluous Skyfall need to temper expectations now. If the film were coming after the poor Quantum of Solace, we'd be lauding Spectre as something of a return to form; but seeing as it comes directly after Skyfall, Spectre is unavoidably a minor disappointment. Here, then, are ten reasons why Spectre doesn't quite top its predecessor. Of course, spoilers will follow.... 10) Below-Par CGI Skyfall's egregious Komodo dragons were bad enough, but Spectre goes one better in the bad CGI stakes. Though Mendes admirably keeps special effects practical and in-camera where possible, he doesn't have the same perfectionist's grasp on VFX as someone like Christopher Nolan. It wasn't so damaging in Skyfall, but in Spectre, key scenes are reliant on some below-par computer-designed effects. Without giving too much away, a pair of collapsing buildings play a part in almost taking 007 down in Spectre, as does a dentist's chair-like torture device. All of these are built from CGI, but the effects are so underdeveloped and unconvincing that the threat level is severely diminished. 9) Too Many Characters Are Under-Written The cast in Spectre, as in Skyfall, is absolutely top-of-the-line. With actors like Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Christoph Waltz and Andrew Scott on the roster, you'd assume the characters wouldn't even have to be that well-written to work. And it's almost like the writers on Spectre considered that the challenge, as there's very little here for the cast to chew on. While the focus is broadened in order to give Fiennes, Whishaw and Naomie Harris more to do, there's precious little in the way of development for their characters from Skyfall (Q actually seems to have taken a step backwards, into geeky parody). Scott, meanwhile, is required to little more than sneer and signpost his character's villainy from a mile away, while Monica Bellucci is utterly wasted as a gangster's moll. Still, she doesn't have it quite so bad as Spectre's other new female addition... 8) Madeline Swann Is The Worst Craig Bond Girl Yet Lea Seydoux didn't win a Palme D'Or (along with co-star Adele Exarchopolous and director Abdellatif Kechiche, for Blue is the Warmest Color) for nothing. She is currently one of French cinema's brightest lights; so why did Sam Mendes and the writing team give Seydoux so little to work with in Spectre? After boldly messing with the format in Skyfall and giving Bond girl duties to Judi Dench's M, Mendes and co. go back to formula with Spectre and present viewers a Bond girl of old: vulnerable yet feisty, but ultimately susceptible to Bond's charms. Swann isn't really a character, though - she's a template that has barely any impact on the plot. Seydoux tries, but fails to make much of anything out of a character that is on the page almost a total blank. 7) Bond Is Once Again A Heartless, Mindless Killer This one's a matter of taste, probably, but Skyfall's depiction of 007 as a conflicted man out of time, an almost tragic figure lost in the modern day, helped audiences to invest in Sam Mendes' first Bond. In Spectre, though there's an attempt to replicate the personal stakes of Skyfall by revealing Bond was raised along with Christoph Waltz's villain Franz Oberhauser, the film feels comparatively hollow. Part of the reason for this is that Craig's Bond, once a complex, relatable fellow, is now once again the heartless, mindless killer with commitment issues that Connery, Moore et al played. Feeling much sympathy for this guy is near-impossible, and you sense Craig feels the same way, delivering as he does his most stale Bond performance. 6) The Villain Is Inferior What Spectre does have over Skyfall, and indeed any of the previous Craig Bonds, is a great henchman (Bautista's Mr. Hinx is terrifying with just a flash of his reptilian grin). What it doesn't have is a main villain to rival Skyfall's Raoul Silva, a calculating, possibly deranged and possibly entirely justifiable bad guy. Franz Oberhauser, though played with menacing relish by double Oscar winner Christoph Waltz, has too little screen-time and is given insufficient personality to be truly compelling. Spectre famously went into production without a finished script, and Oberhauser - who features most significantly in the rewritten-on-the-fly third act - suffers more than any other character. He's supposed to be 007's ultimate nemesis, the secret puppet master of Silva, but Oberhauser comparatively feels like the weaker bad guy. 5) Oberhauser's Origins Story Is Terrible Oberhauser's motivation for revenge against James Bond is hinted at throughout Spectre, but then comes the reveal...and it turns out Oberhauser has built a giant criminal organization and pursued 007 for some 30-plus years simply because his dad took Bond in as an orphan. It's unbelievable and weak. And honestly, it only gets worse. As we find out, Franz Oberhauser is actually Ernst Stavro Blofeld, just under a different name. It's been the worst kept movie secret of the year, but that's not the worst thing about Spectre's handling of Blofeld. No, not at all. The film bafflingly feels the need to laboriously explain how Blofeld comes to be his iconic self, explaining away his iconic cat, wheelchair and facial scar through the final third of the film. With the element of mystery removed, Blofeld at the end of Spectre is less threatening than ever. In fact, he's almost a bit of a joke. 4) Interesting Concepts Are Raised But Never Fully Realized "The dead...are alive." Spectre chooses to open with those words written across the screen, and then never clarifies exactly what it means. That the film raises intriguing ideas relating to death and rebirth but then never capitalizes upon them is one of the main signs that the script was a rush-job. It's a film where the writers clearly had something to say about family, legacy and mortality at the planning stages, but there just wasn't enough time to sufficiently articulate it all. Where Skyfall addressed its own concerns clearly even amidst all the booming action, in Spectre, any good ideas just get lost in the noise. For example, Andrew Scott's nefarious Denbigh and his Nine Eyes spy program is presumably Spectre making a comment on surveillance and decreasing privacy, but the argument is never crystallized. It all leaves the film feeling just a tad insubstantial. 3) The Dialogue Isn't Up To Scratch Another sign of a rushed script: too much saying, not enough doing. Where Skyfall's words felt carefully prepared, Spectre in parts feels heavily stodgy thanks to all the expositionary dialogue that John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth left in there. When it's time for action, Spectre flies by. When it's time for talk, the film slows markedly. When the movie isn't busy explaining everything, Spectre makes obvious attempts at iconic dialogue, but mostly the lines just come across as a bit bizarre ("You're a kite dancing in a hurricane, Mr. Bond," "I always knew death would wear a familiar face," etc). Ultimately, there's nothing in Spectre that rivals Skyfall's rat monologue, and nothing that resonates quite like that final exchange between Bond and Judi Dench's M. 2) It's Around 30 Minutes Too Long Spectre could have been leaner, to say the least. It starts invigoratingly with the Day of the Dead sequence, and doesn't let up with the great set-pieces from there. Before long though, it's a case of too much of a good thing, as all the great action moments stack up to inflate the relatively straightforward story to two-and-a-half hours - the longest any Bond movie has been. That being said, Spectre is still only five minutes longer than Skyfall - yet with its bloated frame and exposition-heavy dialogue, it feels much longer. A major screenplay polish was needed to bring Spectre up to shape - a good 30 minutes of fat could have been trimmed off - but alas, the production team didn't get the chance before wheels started turning. So, what we have now is a highly entertaining movie that occasionally feels like a slog. 1) The Third Act Is Just Not Good Enough Skyfall suffered from third act problems, but it at least wrapped its story up satisfyingly. Spectre, on the other hand, almost falls apart in its own final stretch. It's a sign of the talent of everyone involved - cast, director, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and composer Thomas Newman included - that it doesn't quite feel like an unmitigated mess, but Spectre's third act is still just not good enough. The generic, reconstituted action set-pieces, the two damp squib showdowns (between Bond and Oberhauser, and M and Scott's Denbigh), and the romantic conclusion of Bond and Swann's affair - it's all finalized too neatly. You can tell why execs weren't happy with Spectre's finale, as revealed in the Sony hack: the film isn't concluded nearly as gracefully as Skyfall was.