10 James Bond Screenwriting Lessons You Can Learn From Spectre

4. Justify The Deathtrap

In the classic Bond movies, Bond was often captured and subjected to over-the-top deathtraps that he€™d narrowly escape from even though it would have made much more sense for the villain to just put a bullet in 007€™s head. It rarely made sense for the villains to allow Bond the chance of escape. In Spectre, the backstory establishes why the villain wants Bond to suffer. Blofeld€™s personal vendetta against Bond justifies why he not only spent the last few years orchestrating his misery, but also why he straps Bond down to a chair and tries to drill inside his brain rather than just killing him outright. If a writer is going to have a villain torture Bond, it's important for the torture to play an important role in the narrative and not just serve as a plot beat. And Spectre gives a really adequate reason why Blofeld would rather torture Bond than kill him.