Posted on November 25th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro
Okay, a couple of friends have had this plot point spoiled for them already, and I have wanted to rant about it for a while, so here I go, spoiling:
SPECTRE.
Yes, the deal is that it tells us that James Bond’s historical arch-enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld, reintroduced in this film, is actually Bond’s jealous step-brother, his Loki.
But it’s stupider than THAT.
Hear this:
After the death of Bond’s parents in a car crash, the family gardener became his guardian, with what we assume was a healthy trust fund to pay all expenses. Only the gardener’s son hated Bond and hated that his father was now paying so much attention to this other kid.
So: within a couple of years, he arranged another accident that killed his dad and faked his own death.
And by the time Bond had reached adulthood, the son of the gardener, motivated ONLY by hatred for Bond, had created a vast international network of crime and terrorism.
Talk about over-reaction!
More: up to this point, Bond has only detected SPECTRE via encounters with its smaller enterprises, including all the plots the Daniel Craig Bond has stopped in the prior three movies.
This includes Le Chiffre, desperately trying to fix a poker game so he could pay off African terrorists he’s been embezzling from, in CASINO ROYALE. Somehow, that guy was all a setup and on SPECTRE’s payroll. Makes no sense, but okay.
This includes the evil organization Quantum, from the second movie, which really one of SPECTRE’s subsidiaries. This even includes the bad guy from SKYFALL, who seemed to have his own perfectly understandable motivation without being paid by others, but what the fuck do I know.
This is all so that Christoph Waltz can tell Bond that he is the author of all his pain, and also so he can lean in and say, “By the way, I’ve changed my name to Ernst Stavro Blofeld.”
A revelation that works about as well as Benedict Cumberbatch swallowing the announcement that, by the way, he’s Khan, which those moviemakers and these moviemakers seemed to believe would get a shocked gasp, even though it’s wholly unprepared for in the script, wholly without weight in context, and — not incidentally — entirely dependent on the audience having obsessive knowledge of movies decades old that did it better.
“I’m — Khan!” Okay. Yawn.
“I’m…Ernst Stavro Blofeld!” Okay. Yawn.
Unless you live and breathe this stuff, it has as much weight as, “I’m Milton Feinbaum!” Who?
SPECTRE has many problems, including some that would be fatal all by themselves, but it has set itself up to depend entirely on the conceit that a gardener’s son conquered the world of evil just because he didn’t like sharing bunk beds with little Jimmy.
And that….diminishes the shit out of Blofeld, really.
Look. The movie Blofeld was never the book Blofeld. I am talking about the movie Blofeld. The original movie Blofeld was an unseen presence with a vaguely German accent who gave monstrous orders while petting a long-haired white cat, setting the plots of a number of the early Connery movies in motion. When in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, he turned around and revealed himself to be Donald Pleasance, identifying himself as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, it was one of the great delayed villain entrances in movie history — more so because it took a number of movies to get there. We never needed to know how he forged his vast criminal empire. It was an origin. It didn’t matter. When he killed Bond’s new bride on their wedding day, in the subsequent ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, it was the greatest shock moment in the franchise’s history. Why did he do it? Because Bond had foiled his plans. That’s enough.
This bullshit…just makes him a whiny brat.
Tags: Bad Movies, Casino Royale, Daniel Craig, James Bond, Movies, Star Trek, Telly Savalas, writing, wrt | Category Commentary, Movies
Comment By: Sean Patrick Brady
November 25th, 2015 at 11:18 pm
Spot on.
Comment By: Ari Marmell
November 25th, 2015 at 11:18 pm
This is why I haven’t paid to see the movie. I had this spoiled for me, and it’s just so… So… GAH!
It lessens the character on every conceivable conceptual level, and manages to retroactively lessen OTHER characters in the process. That’s a special level of problematic.
Comment By: Patrick Sanders
November 25th, 2015 at 11:18 pm
I agree. God rest his soul, but Philip Seymour Hoffman would have been PERFECT.
Comment By: Sean Patrick Brady
November 25th, 2015 at 11:18 pm
Its written by the same guys who brought us SKYFALL which also had a lousy script.
Comment By: K.c. Locke
November 25th, 2015 at 11:18 pm
[voice quivering with restrained rage; speaking through gritted teeth] How DARE you diminish the impact of Milton Feinbaum…
Comment By: Morgan Smith
November 26th, 2015 at 12:18 am
Bravo!
Comment By: Elric Fraumeni
November 26th, 2015 at 4:18 am
There is a good moment where after the whole B.S. speech, Bond pretty much says “Give me a break”. I thought that was funny.
Comment By: Ethan Hobart
November 26th, 2015 at 5:20 am
When Bond wakes up in the torture chair, I hoped for a moment they were going to to a variation of how the novels You Only Live Twice ends and The Man With the Golden Gun begins (Bond captured by the Soviets, brainwashed, returns to England some time later, attempts to assassinate M.) At least that would have been more interesting than what they actually did.
Comment By: John McClure Kimmins
November 26th, 2015 at 9:18 am
I knew he was blofeld from the trailer
Comment By: George Peterson
November 26th, 2015 at 10:22 am
Idiots overthinking stuff… Both Bond and Blofeld are better characters if they have no particularly interesting backgrounds. Outside of this profession, Bond should be as bland and boring as his name. The less we know about Blofeld, the better.
Comment By: Ben Adams
November 26th, 2015 at 11:20 am
Wait. I though Blofeld said he only turned his attention to Bond after Bond showed up and spoiled whatever was going on with Quantum in Casino Royale. That suddenly Bond had reappeared in his business and so now Blofeld made it part of his business to ruin Bond’s life. I never, ever got the impression that Blofeld started SPECTRE just as a way to get to Bond.
Comment By: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
November 26th, 2015 at 6:21 pm
What’s really and truly jaw-dropping about this is that it’s a straight-faced lift from the third Austin Powers film. I mean, did *nobody* involved with SPECTRE say, “Wait a minute, maybe we ought to stop and think this through…”