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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.

9) Too Many Characters Are Under-Written

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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).

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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…