Blaine: There was a three year wait for the next Bond film after "Skyfall" and let me just say "Spectre" is spectacular. It became official on December 4,2014, that the 24th Bond film would be called "Spectre" and Sam Mendes would return to direct. Sam Mendes has done as good a job with "Spectre" as he did with "Skyfall". It has a great ensemble of actors. They had some of the same actors from the last film return and added some new actors to the franchise that I am very familiar with. Daniel Craig as James Bond, Christoph Waltz as Oberhauser, Lea Seydoux as Madeleine Swan, Ben Whishaw as Q, Naomi Harris as Eve Moneypenny, Dave Bautista as Hinx, with Monica Belluci as Lucia and Ralph Fiennes as M. I saw it opening day in IMAX with my friend, James and we both loved it.
Plot
James Bond discovers that all the disasters that has happened to him in the past were caused by one person from Bond’s past.
Blaine: I was surprised that Monica Belluci's character, Lucia, remained alive. Usually they kill a Bond girl in these movies and I felt she was the one who was going to die. I wish her part could have been a little bit bigger though because Monica’s just that great of an actress. At 50, Monica Belluci is the oldest woman to play a Bond girl and that’s making history there. Apparently a lot of fans have been wanting to see Monica as a Bond girl for a while and she said there was a time where she was too young to be a Bond girl, but when she was cast in “Spectre” it was a great experience for her to work with a great cast and a great director like Sam Mendes. Sam Mendes was looking for a mature woman for the Lucia character and Monica was surprised he wanted her because she was asking herself what a 50 year old could do in a James Bond film? The reason why she agreed was because of the strong scenes that are in the film. Monica had to express so many things even though her role isn’t that long.
I was very excited when I found out Lea Seydoux was going to be apart of the James Bond franchise. I’ve been aware of her since 2011 and fell in love with her and her work. Sam Mendes had his eye on Lea after seeing her in “Blue is the Warmest Color”. It was a dream for Lea to be apart of an iconic franchise, but at the same time she was nervous having a big part in something as big as James Bond. Lea had been apart of an action sequence before when she did one of the “Mission Impossible” movies, but the action in “Spectre” was something she had never done before and she really loved it. Lea even did her own stunt when she and Daniel Craig jump eight meters down and land on a net. Daniel Craig says he likes doing his own stunts just so he can make the audience believe he is really there and he has a very skillful stuntman to teach that kind of stuff. Producer Barbara Broccoli said what they loved about Lea is that you can always feel her soul coming through as you’re watching her perform as Swan. Lea Seydoux said that Swan is not a generic Bond girl, she’s more complex, equal and an intellectual.
The thing about these Bond movies is that they keep going forward and re-introducing some characters we've already seen in the past like in the last film ,“Skyfall”, they re-introduced Moneypenny, Q and M as a male. For “Spectre” they’ve re-introdcued the villain of the past, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and shown his right side getting scarred. I like seeing Ralph Fiennes more of an action hero than just being the person in charge.
My favorite scene in “Spectre" is the fight scene between Hinx and Bond on the train. I really liked the hitting, punching and throwing around and then Bond and Swan wrapped a rope around Hinx's neck which pulls him off the train and possibly kills him. And after all that it gets those two horny and it made my friend, James and I laugh. That was an action turned humorous scene. When Swan left Bond, I felt she was either going to betray him or get herself killed. And I felt a little bit of fear at that point thinking someone good was going to die. If Lucia didn't die I felt it could be Swan.
During the beginning of the movie it showed Bond landing on a coach after the stadium blew up and almost collapsed on him. And then the second time he fell, he was rescuing Swan from the old MI6 building before it blew up. He jumped and landed on a net and I leaned over and told my friend, James "It's always nice to have a soft landing." No Bond girl died in this film and I'm ok with that because I love both Monica and Lea and I would hate to see either one of them die. Daniel Craig said he wasn’t completely sure if “Spectre” will be his last Bond film or not, but we’ll just have to see what happens in the future.
My rating on "Spectre" is five out of five stars.
Box Office
"Spectre" became the sixth highest grossing movie of 2015 with $880,674,609.
Awards
“Spectre” became the second Bond film to win Best Song after “Skyfall".
