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.

Brogan Morris

Published: Nov 5, 2015 05:55 pm

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6) The Villain Is Inferior

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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.

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Author

Brogan Morris