{"id":3466,"date":"2023-05-30T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T21:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=3466"},"modified":"2023-03-06T22:15:58","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T05:15:58","slug":"movie-spectre-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/30\/movie-spectre-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Spectre (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/b\/b9\/Spectre_2015_poster.jpg\/220px-Spectre_2015_poster.jpg\" alt=\"Spectre\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\">Spectre<br>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2015<br>\nRating: PG-13<br>\nLength: 148 minutes \/ 2.47 hours<\/p>\n<p>After the practically perfect <em>Skyfall<\/em> (2012), my expectations for what a <em>Bond<\/em> film should be were considerably heightened. And while <em>Spectre<\/em> (2015) still contained some elements that made me enjoy <em>Skyfall<\/em>, it missed that small little \u201caha!\u201d moment that brought everything together for me. Sure, <em>Spectre<\/em> was directed by Sam Mendes, brought back franchise-famous villain Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), and had characters with emotional connections to Bond (Daniel Craig) that spanned across movies in Craig\u2019s tenure, but it lacked the spark to make it fully work. Perhaps it was just abiding by the idiom that lightning can\u2019t strike twice.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not to say that <em>Spectre<\/em> is a bad Bond movie, it just has a lot to compare against. The modern style and action that Craig\u2019s Bond has are still better than some of the sillier entries in the long-running franchise. There\u2019s a drag in the second act that probably could have been tightened up with less time in the Alps. The action doesn\u2019t feel memorable either, which might just be because there\u2019s so much of it\u2014and so much of it feels repeated from previous Bond films. Chases involving cars and motorbikes are fairly common now, but at least the helicopter bits in the beginning felt new.<\/p>\n<p>I appreciate that the thread of connections from all the way back in <em>Casino Royale<\/em> (2006) and <em>Quantum of Solace<\/em> (2008) is given more of a solid explanation and organization through the eponymous Spectre. That these films aren\u2019t exclusively one-off movies with <em>deus ex machina<\/em> plots helps recommend <em>Spectre<\/em> in terms of the whole Craig set of Bond films. I\u2019m glad that there was at least one more movie to wrap things up after this one, though.<\/p>\n<p>An OK <em>Bond<\/em> film after a hard act to follow, I give <em>Spectre<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\"> 1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/bmw-the-critic\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2968\" srcset=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2.jpg 820w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-300x114.jpg 300w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-768x292.jpg 768w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-640x244.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spectre Year: 2015 Rating: PG-13 Length: 148 minutes \/ 2.47 hours After the practically perfect Skyfall (2012), my expectations for what a Bond film should be were considerably heightened. And while Spectre (2015) still contained some elements that made me enjoy Skyfall, it missed that small little \u201caha!\u201d moment that brought everything together for me. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2],"tags":[33,3378,1471,110,1242,319,13,8,2920],"class_list":["post-3466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-movie","tag-33","tag-blofeld","tag-bond","tag-christoph-waltz","tag-daniel-craig","tag-james-bond","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-spectre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3476,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466\/revisions\/3476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}