The film was an enormous hit but it somewhat polarized critics and audiences.
Its harshest critics suggested it set the series back, that it squandered the promise of Skyfall (the series' greatest entry in my estimation) and may perhaps be the worst of Daniel Craig's four outings as Bond.
It was also widely perceived to be Craig's swan song as 007 after nearly a decade in the role.
Not only do I disagree with that summation -- I also hope that this isn't Craig's final Bond. The movie is definitely flawed, but not bad. It ranks about in the middle of the pack for me in the canon. And for reasons I'll get into later I think it would be a disappointing finale for Craig.
The film almost never stood a chance coming on the heels of Skyfall. That film was such an enormous critical and commercial success, that any follow-up would suffer by comparison. Also if you are a student of the Bond films as I am, there is a pretty consistent ebb and flow in terms of quality. In my estimation, Craig has only made one "bad" Bond film, Quantum of Solace, and he's quite good in that film, it's the script that lets him down.
There are problems with Spectre's script -- lots of them -- but it doesn't feel as tonally wrong as Quantum of Solace. But it makes some of the same mistakes. It tries too hard to be a direct sequel to the film that proceeded it, which is all wrong for a Bond film.
So let me break it down. The film's opening sequence is one of the greatest in the history of the series, and it stands up as the equal of anything in Skyfall. Its opening one-shot take of the Day of the Dead in Mexico City which leads to a breathtaking fight inside a pirouetting helicopter is something to behold. But the film never tops this moment, which isn't ideal. The most memorable part of a Bond film should never be it's opening.
That said, the first half of this film is pretty terrific. Craig is in fine form as Bond, getting to play a little bit more humor than before. A great, physically imposing bad guy with minimal dialogue (played by David Bautista) is introduced and although the trailers really spoiled the introduction of his character, Christoph Waltz comes off as truly creepy and menacing (at first).The film starts to get derailed when it begins to try to tie in threads from the previous four films. The strength of Bond films, and their ability to work through transitions from actor to actor, was that the were self-sustained adventures, not an attempt to tell a narrative over several films.
I understand that with the Craig 007s there was a desire to delve deeper into the character's psyche, but what I fear they've done is make it very hard for someone else to fill his shoes, since this Bond seems very specific to the world of these four films. Ironically, it was Craig's strongest entry -- Skyfall -- which felt the most like a one-off entry, but Spectre references it too much, to its own detriment. Even the score resumes some of the same notes.
The film's biggest flaws are its leading lady -- as terrific an actress as I believe Lea Seydoux is I never brought that her character fell in love with Bond or even had much motivation to tag along with him. The other massive disappointment winds up being Waltz. Once he finally enters the story in the third act, his revelations aren't shocking and his performance brings nothing new to the series.
Javier Bardem was a villain unlike any we'd seen before. Waltz could be any generic bad guy from Bond films past, which is odd considering the fact that he is a terrific Oscar-winning actor. There are rumors that he will return for the next film, which is fine, as long as they give him more to do.
I also think, if the series is going to sustain itself, it needs to stop trying to tell a cohesive story over several films. I get the impulse, with Star Wars, the Marvel Universe and DC Comics all building their own cinematic universes. But James Bond is a strictly one-off guy. That's part of the fun. Sure, it's a little inconsequential, but it's also the pinnacle of escapism.
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