Spectre (Bond 24)

3 hours is the longest ever for a Bond film. Most are around 2 hours with some an 1 hour and 40 minutes and others maybe going to 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Some of the shorter Bonds dispense with story and character development. Quantum of Solace I felt was a great action movie albeit bereft of much of a story. It seemed to delve into conspiracy theories akin to the Illuminati, freemasons, etc. being entrenched into every government and world entity. The central theme of resource scarcity worked much better in a Mad Max film than a Bond film and with that plot, a Thunderdome style fight and the Mad Max 1-style ending, this film was obviously inspired by this series.

Quantum of Solace dispensed with the character development of Casino Royale and Skyfall and just got into the action and never really let up. It is probably the most action packed Bond of them all and if one likes non-stop action, this film is for you. SPECTRE I assume will be more like Craig's other 2 films and there is a lot of character development here about Blofeld, how he is connected to Bond's past and why Bond and the secret service have not been aware of SPECTRE/Quantum for years.

Sam Smith has secured the Uk No: 1 this week.

This is looking like Craig's last outing if his latest comments is anything to go by

Hype just before movie comes out - simples

Gintonious wrote: »

Ill give Craig his due on this, he has seriously raised the bar for an actor to play Bond. He really has done a fantastic job of it.

Craig virtually saved what was by the time he took over at best a cliched, played out series. Die Another Day looked more and more like one of these OTT spoofs of Bond than an actual Bond film.

I remember going to the cinema and thinking Goldeneye was ok, not one of the best, far from one of the worst. I loved 1989's Licence to Kill and 1987s The Living Daylights. I went to Tomorrow Never Dies and said it was better than Goldeneye and Brosnan really got comfortable in the role. Then, I went to The World is Not Enough and was underwhelmed. OK action film but had a below bar climax compared to its direct predecessors and was perhaps the poorest climax in a Bond film for years.

But nothing had set me up for what I was to see in Die Another Day. By the time I watched the pretitle part, I thought it was actually quite good. Bond does battle and is captured by a fictional fascist Far Eastern dictator and is tortured and later released. Setting up a gritty, realistic and more raw Bond. I said perhaps I could get something like Dalton or early Connery here. But, apart from its good start, the film sucks. After that, it is stupid transformations of the affore mentioned Korean fascist dictator into an English businessman. Then, there is the ripoff of the Diamonds Are Forever plot with the space satellite. Then, there's those contrived scenes from every other film put in, a stupid sword-fight, a rather underwhelming climax not any better than The World Is Not Enough (Tomorrow Never Dies is the only Brosnan film that has a truly great climax). But The World Is Not Enough is a masterpiece compared to Die Another Day. As bad and all as thing were, the invisible car part really took the biscuit. This would be ok in Austin Powers, but not in a serious Bond movie.

Coming into Casino Royale, I felt that it just had to go in the right direction. After what went before it, even an avarage movie like The World Is Not Enough would be an improvement but Casino not only surpassed DAD, TWINE, Goldeneye and (Brosnan's best) Tomorrow Never Dies, but was up there with the best of the best (early Connery and Dalton's films). Quantum of Solace was not as good but still good (and better than Brosnan's 4 films too). Skyfall joined Casino and the other best of the best Bond films and SPECTRE looks set to as well. Craig will be a hard act to follow and he has taken the character to new levels. Even his poorest outing, Quantum, beats the socks off all of Brosnan's and the below par Moore films.