Spectre: 5 Awesome Things (And 8 That Sucked) In The New James Bond

4. Connections With Other Films Feels Forced

As has been mentioned a couple of times in this article, Spectre paints itself as the pinnacle of the Craig's run as Bond, the grand finale to the sprawling four-part single-continuity saga that been in motion from Casino Royale. Oberhauser points out over and over again how, "It's all lead to this", "It's always been Spectre", "I'M THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE ME ME ME." The problem is, the film can tell us that as much as it wants, but it doesn't mean the audience will feel it. Because of a dispute over the rights to the Spectre name, Bond had to come up with pseudo-Spectre, Quantum, and when Oberhauser informs Bond that "Oh, Quantum was working for Spectre", instead of being a revelation that swells everything around it to new heights of importance, it just lands with an awful clunk. Aside from the ace cameo from Mr White, none of the connections Spectre draws between it and other films feel substantial or even make sense. All they do is show pictures of past villains (there's a scene with actual, no joke, red string linking everything together, and whenever a previous adversary comes up, a character says, "Those guys? They were working for Spectre all along." WHAT? Silva wasn't working for Spectre, his whole deal was that he had a personal vendetta against M. It's revisionist retconning at its most blatant and superficial, and it robs the film of its very reason for being.