Spectre
Besides the Berlinale and “Leviathan”, I have not actually been to any movie theaters this year. As I already mentioned, my life has been shifting. Instead of watching movies, I watch operas in the evening, instead of watching anime I have been watching TV shows, and instead of going to movie theaters I have been going to the opera. All of this is actually because this is my last year in Berlin, and it will change next year: perhaps more books, but also more anime, more movie theaters and generally more movies. Nevertheless, there are always some films which I love to catch in theaters, namely more action-focused franchises I like, such as the Hobbit series. Those kinds of films are much less enjoyable on a small screen, in fact, I doubt I would even watch them on a small screen.
The 007 series is a special one. When I was a child, I saw all of the Pierce Brosnan ones when they came out on TV, and I caught a lot of the old ones too whenever they were on TV. My dad was a fan (though much unlike the rest of the world, he didn’t like Sean Connery), and I liked them too as a child. When I grew older, the Bond movies stuck in my mind as “mindless action” (much like the Indiana Jones series, which I never liked), and I thought of myself as better than the Bond films. When I started watching movies with more interest (around the time I started with this blog), I never took an interest in the Bond franchise even though I read articles about “Casino Royale”, how it changed the franchise and, well, that it had Eva Green in the story as Bond’s true love. All of that was not enticing enough for me until Pip and I got into this phase (around 2012) where we loved seeing action films on screen and went to the Downtown Crossing cinema so often that we had a loyalty card and regularly used it. That was when we saw “Skyfall” and I was blown away by its greatness.
Unsurprisingly, “Spectre” is comparably less great. As Pixelmatsch accurately pointed out, it’s a funnier film, it has a lovely Bond girl (even though she is being played by Léa Seydoux who always has these somewhat tired looking eyes) and its less ridiculously misogynist as “Skyfall” was with Sévérine’s silly death scene. Not even Judi Dench’s interesting and complex role in the story could have saved that. Nevertheless, “Spectre” is more action, it’s much more formulaic than “Skyfall” and its main antagonist pales against all the other evil guys in which Christoph Waltz was able to shine lately. Most importantly, “Spectre” lacked the depth that “Skyfall” surprisingly had (and I guess it is also unusual that it did), whereas Blofeld’s characterization never really went beyond a petty, jealous little boy. Despite my general sympathies for Seydoux’ character, she is a little bit too perfect: Extremely smart, young but sexy, can shoot a gun and say some tough things, she is pretty much every Bond fan’s female dream,
Speaking of lack of depth, I am so so giddily in love with Q and was happy to see that he got to do a little more than pounding away frantically on his keyboard. I thought Ben Whishaw was cute ever since “Cloud Atlas”, and the nerdiness aspect in Q amplifies that. Hah!
Overall, “Spectre” was much fun, and I feel lucky that we were able to catch it in theaters again. Despite the weaknesses I thought the film had, I am very much into the franchise now and would like to revisit all the old films too, even if only to revive those childhood memories.