This especially plays out in the foregrounding of Bond’s legendarily horrible treatment of women.
The screenplay doubles down on Skyfall’s view of Bond as a broken child hardened into a thug, a straightforward observation that nonetheless gives the character much-needed flexibility and perspective. More successful is how the film castigates its hero’s personal failures. As in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, this central debate is only half-resolved, trapped in an ambiguous spot where unchecked surveillance is condemned except when exceptional men wield it. This sets up a dubiously resolved conflict between Bond’s old-school, personal brand of espionage and the modern world of total surveillance espoused by the new head of M15, C (Andrew Scott). Here, however, Bond is introduced disguised in a skeleton costume, a literal walking fossil whose outdated methods soon come under fire for their destructiveness and inefficacy.
#SPECTRE FILM ITALY SERIES#
It’s been exactly 20 years since Judi Dench arrived as a revisionist M in Goldeneye to dismiss 007 as “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War,” yet the series has consistently taken pains to reaffirm the virility and competence of its hero. Naturally, these images connect back to Bond, who only seems at home when shuffling through such areas in a state of torpor. Cold whites provide a baseline palette, but the cinematographer adds to that a thick, brown fog that fills every inch of negative space in decrepit interiors of tarnished gold and faded mahogany, a suffocating dust cloud that signals death and obsolescence. In van Hoytema’s hands, though, the vast sets feel drained of life. Prior franchise entries call attention to the opulence of Bond’s travel destinations and the historical splendor that matches the character’s suave personality. The film’s critical view of Bond can be seen throughout in the cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema, who replaces Roger Deakins’s starkly lit, bleak images from Skyfall with his trademark bleary haze. Watching the sequence, which culminates with Bond almost crashing a helicopter into the Zócalo just to kill one man, it’s hard not to think of the disgust that Craig himself unabashedly feels for the brutish icon. Bond always leaves chaos in his wake, but rarely has one of these films acknowledged the sheer horror of his impact as when the spy emerges unscathed from the rubble of a building, stumbles past wounded and fleeing civilians, and promptly chases after his target with single-minded intent. Citizens dressed as skeletons and looming parade floats of dancing bones set the tone before 007 (Daniel Craig) botches an assassination and blows up half a city block. As if to make sure no one misses the point, the film begins in Mexico City during Dia de los Muertos.
The James Bond franchise’s body count is nearly incalculable, yet death has never pervaded a Bond film the way it does Spectre.