James Bond Spectre review, or, How to write a sexual predator character who becomes an icon

Spectre is one of the most successful British films ever, and probably the most successful Bond film. It has received rave reviews. It also has the honour of being the first James Bond movie with a theme song that became a number 1 hit single. For a while the news feeds were dominated with news about it. As a film, it is touted as one of those 'must-see movies'. So I went to see it.

Back in 2012 I wrote a review of Skyfall, where I said I was uneasy with the predatory activity of MI6's most well known double-O agent. Specifically, a barely consensual shower sex scene when Bond forces himself onto a frequently-trafficked woman, who is later shot dead in front of him.

The same tropes crop up in Spectre, which for all it's glitz and hype suffers from three key failings: a reliance on magic, conspiracy theory 'explanations' and sexual predation. That last charge is the worst one, but I will deal with the other two first.

What do I mean by magic? Well, we have a massive secret base in the manner of the best Bond films of old. But it suffers from what I call the 'Death Star flaw', by which I mean it can be totally destroyed by one well-placed shot. Seriously. Bond shoots one little gas pipe and the whole place goes up in multiple explosions. At some point that goes beyond good marksmanship and becomes magic.

The conspiracy theory explanation was tiresome as well. I'm pretty sure the Skyfall villain spent some time explaining how he was behind all the terrible things that happened to Bond. Now the main villain in Spectre does the same thing. Apparently the events of all four films starring Daniel Craig were all orchestrated by this one guy as some sort of revenge for the villain's Dad liking James more when his family fostered him. It seems like a lot of effort to go to.

The 'it's all a massive conspiracy' idea is quite popular in movies. I think this is because movie-makers are trying to tell a story and actually the real world isn't set up for stories. Most events don't have a beginning, middle or end, nor are there neat causative processes that can be easily narrated. People want to believe in conspiracies, and large shadowy criminal organisations pulling the strings behind the scenes, because the idea that things happen at random and chaotically is terrifying. There is no way to control much of the random stuff that happens in reality. But you can do it in the movies. Take out the mastermind and the terror stops.

And then we have the third problem. The predation. Bond wastes no time at all bedding a widow the evening she returns from her husband's funeral. He then promises her protection, but not from him, from someone else he knows. I wouldn't put too much faith in that, but it might be better than any protection Bond would offer. In Skyfall Bond spectacularly failed to protect a woman he had just promised to protect. In Quantum of Solace a casual lay from the diplomatic service is found tortured to death in his hotel room shortly after they did the deed there.

But widows aren't enough. Bond soon latches on to a recently orphaned young woman and by the end of the film, has seduced her. Widows and orphans? There seems to be no emotionally vulnerable group that Bond won't exploit.

So, what's good about this film? Well, there are stunts. There is a lovely tracking shot of a train in the North African desert. There are stunts... Yeah, that's about it. The thing is the stunts and cinematography can't mask the sucking hole at the centre of the film, the aggressive sociopathic sexual predator called James Bond, who we, the audience, are meant to root for as the hero.

There is even an attempt at exoneration. Ralph Fiennes, taking over as M now that Judi Dench has moved on, gives an impassioned defence of the Double O programme at one point. To the career civil servant he says that having a licence to kill is a terrible burden because you have to look into a man's eyes and decide whether to kill a fellow human being or not.

I can see that being a difficult thing to do. I don't see any evidence that Bond sees this as a difficult thing to do.

As this film makes clear, human beings are expendable to James Bond, whether its his sexual conquests, or the careers of colleagues who he asks to deliberately disobey orders and operate outside their jurisdiction.(And that's another contradiction in the Bond films - any agent hat goes rogue is presumed to be bad and kill-worthy for 007, but he effectively goes rogue here and takes several important colleagues with him. Talk about subjective morality - it's OK for me to ignore orders that I decide are unjust, but anyone else who doesn't follow orders goes on the death list. Wait, why?)

So, this is where we are. A career sexual predator with a callous disregard for human beings who cross his path is apparently an icon.Quite what this shows about our culture is hard to fathom. The most worrying thing is that very few people seem to question this. We just munch our popcorn, go 'ooh' at the explosions and let James carry on with what he does.

Recently viewed DVDs reviewed

Alien - the Director’s Cut
I love Alien. Not quite as much as I love Aliens, but still enough to watch the film again. But why add in a very odd scene which adds nothing to the film?

The scene in question is very near the end, when Ripley finds Dallas and Brett semi-fossilised by the alien, who presumably is saving them as a snack for later. It kind of detracts from the way Dallas disappears earlier on, and illustrates how sometimes the most haunting aspect of a horror film is leaving the audience not knowing what’s going on. An inferred sticky end is much stickier if left to the imagination.

But having said that, what exactly happens to Lambert and Parker. They’re both screaming, but you don’t really see the alien kill them. The camera focuses in on the aliens hook-claw-tail thing but we don’t see it being used; just lots of shouting.

One thing you notice is how cinema story-telling has changed. It takes 45 minutes for the crew to reach the chest-burster scene. If Alien was being filmed today, it would take about ten minutes to get there. But the beauty of Alien is the slow build. That’s where the suspense lies.

Clerks II
Ten years after the cult classic Clerks, Kevin Smith resurrects the characters who are now wasting their life in a burger bar. It’s not great cinema, although it does have its funny moments. I was put off by the over-long “inter-species erotica” scene involving a donkey, which I can’t help but feel was included just to see how far a film could push the boundaries of acceptable taste.

The sad thing is the donkey sex overshadows possibly the finest scene in modern cinema, which explores the real meaning of friendship. When Randal finally admits he is afraid of being left alone when Dante moves away, there’s an emotional rawness to it which is quite moving.

There’s also a useful dissection of contemporary culture. The Lord of the Rings movies come in for a slating, as do the Star Wars prequels. The absurdly wooden acting of Hayden Christiansen is brilliantly summed up by calling him Mannequin Skywalker. I don’t know if that’s an original Kevin Smith-ism (I suspect it’s not), but it is very funny.

Weeds Series 1 & 2
I enjoyed this up to a point, but then the scriptwriters got carried away with seeing how much ludicrous stuff they could add in. The original premise is silly enough: Mary-Louise Parker is widowed suddenly and becomes a drug dealer in order to maintain her lifestyle. Later on, she enters a marriage of convenience with a DEA agent, who she slept with before finding out he was ‘the enemy’. Like you do.

The final straw for me was about halfway through the second series when Andy finally got to bed the sexy (female) head of the Rabbinic School, who promptly strapped on a big black prosthetic penis and took him from the rear. I stopped watching after that. If I’m going to watch ridiculous nonsense, there’s other stuff I’d prefer to watch.

What have you become?

I did a 'relationships' talk with the youth tonight. As I prepped for it, Cath asked me "What have you become?"

On that note, is it a bad sign when your fellow leader spends most of your talk holding her head in her hands?

Another night, another Sean

I've been laughing a lot recently! We saw two comedians in two nights and they were both called Sean. First off on Thursday we saw Sean Hughes at the Sherman Theatre (or the 'Man' as Sean pointed out because half the lights were out on the sign), then last night we saw Sean Lock at St David's Hall.

It was the first time I'd been to the Sherman and it was a good venue - not too big, but not a club either. The bloke next to me fell asleep before the interval, which shows the seats were comfortable I suppose.

As you'd expect, given the time lapse, Sean's routine was very different from when we saw him about 11 years ago. He began with a bit based on his role in Coronation Street, and ended up talking about how he'd narrowly cheated death in the Tsunami. 

There were some good jokes along the way like working in a factory producing subliminal advertising ("We only got paid £2.00 an hour, but everyone thought it was very reasonable"), and a large number of sex jokes. His method of dissuading trick-or-treaters from knocking on his door could backfire: "I just paint the word 'paedophile' on my door in big angry red letters..."

Sean Lock was a bit different. He seemed a bit lost in a big venue, and the first half of the show was quite flat. But he livened up in the second half, talking about his cure for baldness he was taking on Dragon's Den (basically pretending his hand was hair instead) and loads of other random bits and bobs. Plus, this one has to go down in the annals as the comedy show with the most unexpected ending - as he stripped off to reveal his secret identitiy as...

...nah, I'm not going to spoil it for you. You'll just have to guess.

Omni or Xeno?

Discussing last night’s Torchwood (Episode 7 ‘Greeks bearing Gifts’) today with Matt, we noted how, after only half series so far it seems that everyone on the team is bisexual. Or ends up smooching someone of the same-sex at least.

Except that this being a sci-fi show, most of the same-sex snogging is with aliens in a human body. Or a cyberwoman in stainless steel hotpants. (What was that about? Don't get me started on the potential chafing...)

But does having it off with an alien inhabiting a human body really make a person bi or homo? The debate is whether this makes you Omnisexual (i.e. you’d shag anything) or Xenosexual (i.e. you screw aliens).