Watch Spectre (2015), Story, Stars, Reviews & All You Want To Know About A Great Movie
Spectre (2015)
A cryptic message from James Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover the existence of a sinister organisation named SPECTRE. With a new threat dawning, Bond learns the terrible truth about the author of all his pain in his most recent missions.
Spectre is a 2015 spy film based on the Ian Fleming character James Bond, produced by Eon Productions and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It is the sequel to Skyfall (2012) and is the twenty-fourth Eon-produced James Bond film.
Directed by Sam Mendes and written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan, and Jez Butterworth, it stars Daniel Craig as Bond, alongside Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci, and Ralph Fiennes. In the film, Bond learns of Spectre, an international crime organisation led by Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Waltz).
Despite initially stating he would not direct Spectre, Mendes confirmed his return in 2014 after Nicolas Winding Refn declined to direct; Mendes became the first to direct successive James Bond films since John Glen. The inclusion of Spectre and its associated characters marked the end of the Thunderball controversy, in which Kevin McClory and Fleming were embroiled in lengthy legal disputes over the film rights to the novel; Spectre is the first film to feature these elements since Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
Following the Sony Pictures hack, it was revealed Sony and Eon clashed regarding finance, stunts, and filming locations; Spectre is estimated to have a final budget of $245 million—$300 million, making it one of the most expensive films ever made. Principal photography began in December 2014 and lasted until July 2015, with filming locations including Austria, the United Kingdom, Italy, Morocco, and Mexico.
Spectre premiered at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 October 2015 and was theatrically released in conventional and IMAX formats in the United Kingdom that day, and in the United States on 6 November.
The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the action sequences, cast performances (particularly Craig’s and Bautista’s), and the musical score, but criticised the pacing and formulaic narrative decisions. It grossed $880 million worldwide, making it the sixth-highest grossing film of 2015 and the second-highest grossing James Bond film after Skyfall, unadjusted for inflation.
The film’s theme song, “Writing’s on the Wall”, won an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song. The sequel film, No Time to Die, was released in 2021.
Spectre (2015)Â Trailer
Spectre (2015)Â Reviews
It retroactively forces connections between “Royale,” “Solace” and “Skyfall,” by way of a video-recorded warning sent to Bond by his old boss M (Judi Dench) right before her death, urging Bond to follow the trail from Mexico City to Italy to Morocco and beyond, and dig to the bottom of the conspiracy that claimed so many agents’ lives.
The movie feels like a culmination of everything the franchise has been building toward since Craig stepped into the part in “Casino Royale.”
The most recent incarnation of Bond doesn’t just have stunts and quips and gadgets and curvy women with porno names. Courtesy of “Skyfall,” it has a mythology that turns Bond into Batman minus the cape and cowl, and boasts a Bond version of Stately Wayne Manor; an Alfred-the-butler figure (Albert Finney in “Skyfall”); a tragic orphan back-story (repeated via the death of Dench’s matriarchal figure, who’s even called “Mum”), and a Joker-type bad guy (Javier Bardem’s fey torturer).
If you loved all that stuff, you’ll adore “Spectre,” which revives the titular organization from the Sean Connery era Bond flicks. It has subplots, characters and incidents that amount to what genre fans would call “ret-cons.” And it introduces us to a new big bad, Franz Obenhauser (Christoph Waltz)—aka Ernst Stavro Blofeld; please don’t act surprised, neither of us were born yesterday!
This new (old, really) villain makes Bardem’s character in “Skyfall” seem like a junior Joker at best, if that. He even lures Bond into a ruined building that he’s transformed into a combination haunted house and gallery installation, and by the end, he acquires a scar whose gruesomeness rivals the Joker’s mouth disfigurement.
What’s the problem? Maybe it’s the script. It’s credited to a murderer’s row of gun-for-hire writers, but it can’t seem to come up with anything but undistinguished chases and fights and quips pasted together by exposition that’s half baked even by Bond standards. Like Christopher Nolan’s Batman, Bond shows up wherever he has to be and escapes certain death as needed, without a hint as to how he pulled it off.
And even by Bond’s damn-the-rules, full-speed-ahead standards, the character is such a suitcase nuke in a cable-knit sweater that it’s hard to see him as England’s (or the West’s) disreputable protector, which is how you pretty much have to see Bond if you’re going to root for him.
(Omelets, eggs.) In the pre-credits sequence, Bond wreaks destruction on Mexico City, creating an international incident that gets him suspended for the umpteenth time; when he argues that the terrorists he was trying to foil would’ve caused more damage, he sounds like a parody of the sort of hero who would say such things. At least when Tom Cruise offers similar defenses the “Mission: Impossible” movies (the latest of which has a plot not hugely different from this one’s, come to think of it) it’s meant to be ludicrous and frothy, not freighted with righteous woe.
Or maybe the problem is the production itself. The crew teams “Skyfall” director Sam Mendes with production designer Dennis Gassner and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (“Interstellar”) and fills the screen with deserts and lakes and forests and mountains and historic skylines and converging perspective lines and tastefully arranged rectangles-within-squares and shallow planes of focus (the movie often seems to be in 3-D even though it’s not), but too often ends up looking rather like a SuperBowl ad for cell phone service or cologne.
She reciprocates the craggy killer’s affection even though, as she rightly observes, she was living in hiding for years until Bond led the bad guys straight to her. But there’s little in this film’s writing of Bond, or in Craig’s performance, to imply that the character is capable of investing in anything more emotionally fraught than a martini mixed with house vodka.
Or perhaps the problem is historical fatigue. Even the better bits of “Spectre,” such as a close-quarters fistfight on a passenger train between Bond and a thick-necked henchman (Dave Bautista of “Guardians of the Galaxy”), and a mostly wordless, almost one-take stalking/assassination sequence set during a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City, pale in comparison to their Bondian inspirations (respectively, “From Russia with Love,” and “Live and Let Die” by way of “Octopussy”).
We’ve been assured by the producers that “Spectre” contains homages to every previous Bond picture. That’s great if you go to films mainly for Easter egg-style trivia in the form of situations and props. But it’s not so great if you’re inclined to take the makers of these films at their word, and expect a Bond film like “Casino Royale,” something with more brains and nuance than the usual, as opposed to a film that purports to be that kind of movie but is content to posture and strut rather than doing the necessary dramatic spadework.
Whatever the explanation(s), “Spectre” is the third Bond film in a row to write conceptual and dramatic checks that the movie itself can’t cash. We’re at the point now where these films are consistently more fun to anticipate than they are to watch. The media campaigns tend to be more cunning and surprising than anything that ends up onscreen. This film won political correctness kudos for casting Monica Bellucci as Bond’s first age-appropriate lover (she’s two years older than Craig), but “Spectre” itself squanders her in two scenes, then ditches her for the 30-year old Seydoux.
Blofeld’s chief henchman is a bust, just a muscleman in a suit; he makes a memorably nasty entrance blinding a rival with his thumbs, but from then on, he’s all sneers and punches and kicks. Blofeld fizzles, too. Waltz, who tends to give the same performance over and over with minor variations but at least has the decency to be a hoot each time, is in “Spectre” only slightly longer than Bellucci, and has been drained of the glee he displayed in Quentin Tarantino’s films.
The payoff of his character’s storyline is so dumb that it makes the “twist” in “Star Trek Into Darkness” seem sensible and heartfelt. Stupider still is Bond’s reaction when he finally gets the drop on his nemesis. Bags of Scrabble tiles make more sense.
But of course “Spectre” can’t give us that, because Bond films are products before they’re anything else, and products aren’t allowed to challenge or upset people. If Mendes didn’t keep finding original ways to stage unoriginal moments, this film’s star rating would be lower than it is. Even by the generous standards of Bond pictures, which have been graded on a curve since 1962, “Spectre” has to be considered a missed opportunity.
- Matt Zoller Seitz –  Roger Ebert
- Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.
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Spectre (2015) Credits
Spectre (2015)
148 minutes
Cast
Daniel Craig as James Bond
Christoph Waltz as Franz Oberhauser
Léa Seydoux as Madeleine Swann
Monica Bellucci as Lucia Sciarra
Andrew Scott as Denbigh
Dave Bautista as Mr Hinx
Ralph Fiennes as M
Naomie Harris as Eve Moneypenny
Ben Whishaw as Q
Rory Kinnear as Bill Tanner
Jesper Christensen as Mr. White
Stephanie Sigman as Estrella
Alessandro Cremona as Marco Sciarra
Neve Gachev as Clinic Patron
Alessandro Bressanello as Priest
Judi Dench as M
Director
- Sam Mendes
Characters
- Ian Fleming
Screenplay
- John Logan
- Neal Purvis
- Robert Wade
- Jez Butterworth
Story
- John Logan
- Robert Wade
- Neal Purvis
Original Music Composer
- Thomas Newman
Director of Photography
- Hoyte van Hoytema
Editor
- Lee Smith
Costume Design
- Jany Temime
Spectre (2015)Â Plot
MI6 agent James Bond carries out an unauthorised mission in Mexico City on the Day of the Dead, where he stops a terrorist bombing plot. Bond kills Marco Sciarra, the terrorist leader, and takes his ring, which is emblazoned with a stylised octopus, before stealing a helicopter to escape.
Upon his return to London, Bond is suspended from field duty by Gareth Mallory, the current M, who is engaged in a power struggle with Max Denbigh (whom Bond dubs “C”), the Director-General of the new, privately backed Joint Intelligence Service formed by the merger of MI5 and MI6.
C campaigns for Britain to join the global surveillance and intelligence initiative “Nine Eyes”, and uses his influence to close down the ’00’ field agent section, which he believes is outdated. In private, Bond tells Eve Moneypenny that he went to Mexico to target Sciarra after receiving a video message from the previous M that was delivered to him after her death. Moneypenny agrees to assist Bond behind M’s back.
Bond disobeys M’s orders and travels to Rome to attend Sciarra’s funeral. He saves and seduces Sciarra’s widow, Lucia, who tells him Sciarra belonged to an organisation of businessmen with criminal and terrorist connections.
Bond uses Sciarra’s ring to infiltrate a meeting to select Sciarra’s replacement, where he identifies the leader, Franz Oberhauser. After hearing Oberhauser give the order for the “Pale King” to be assassinated, Bond is pursued across the city by the organisation’s assassin, Mr. Hinx. Moneypenny informs Bond that the Pale King is Mr. White, a former member of the organisation’s subsidiary Quantum, who had fallen afoul of Oberhauser. Bond asks her to investigate Oberhauser, who was presumed dead 20 years earlier.
Bond locates White in Altaussee, Austria, where he is dying of thallium poisoning. He tells Bond to find and protect his daughter, psychiatrist Madeleine Swann, who will take him to L’Américain in order to locate Oberhauser. White then commits suicide. Bond confronts Swann and rescues her from Hinx and his forces. The pair meet Q, who links Oberhauser to Bond’s previous missions, identifying Le Chiffre, Dominic Greene and Raoul Silva as agents of the same organisation, which Swann identifies as Spectre.
Swann takes Bond to L’Américain, a hotel in Tangier, and they discover that White left evidence directing them to Oberhauser’s base at a crater in the Sahara. Taking a train to a remote station, Bond and Swann encounter Hinx, who gets ejected from the train in the ensuing fight, and later they are escorted to Oberhauser’s base. Oberhauser reveals that Spectre has funded the Joint Intelligence Service while staging terrorist attacks around the world, creating a need for the Nine Eyes programme.
In return, C will give Spectre unlimited access to intelligence gathered by Nine Eyes, allowing them to anticipate and counteract investigations into their operations. Bond is tortured as Oberhauser discusses their shared history. After Bond was orphaned, Oberhauser’s father, Hannes, became his temporary guardian.
Jealous of his father’s affection for Bond, Oberhauser killed his father, staged his own death, adopted the name Ernst Stavro Blofeld, went on to form Spectre and target Bond, and is ultimately responsible for several tragedies in Bond’s life, including the deaths of Vesper Lynd and the previous M. Bond and Swann stun Blofeld by setting off an explosive wristwatch in his face, disfiguring him, and escape to London to prevent the Nine Eyes from going online.
In London, Bond and Swann meet M, Q, Bill Tanner and Moneypenny with the intention of arresting C. Swann and Bond are separately abducted by Spectre operatives, while the rest of the group proceed with the plan. After Q succeeds in preventing Nine Eyes from going online, a struggle between M and C ends with C falling to his death. Bond is taken to the ruins of the old MI6 building, scheduled for demolition after Silva’s bombing.
Blofeld—still alive and badly scarred on the right side of his face—tells Bond that he must escape before explosives are detonated in three minutes, or die trying to save Swann. Bond finds Swann and they escape by boat as the building collapses. Bond shoots down Blofeld’s helicopter, which crashes onto Westminster Bridge. Blofeld manages to crawl away from the wreckage and dares Bond to kill him, but Bond refuses, leaving him to be arrested by M. He then reunites with Swann and the two depart.
Later, Bond acquires his rebuilt Aston Martin DB5 from Q and drives away with Swann.
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Spectre (2015)Â Box office
Spectre grossed $880.7 million worldwide; $135.5 million of the takings were generated from the UK market and $200.1 million from North America.[13] Worldwide, this made it the second-highest-grossing James Bond film after Skyfall,[145] and the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2015.
Deadline Hollywood calculated the film’s net profit as $98.4 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it sixteenth on their list of 2015’s “Most Valuable Blockbusters”.
Sony had expected the net profit of the film to be around $38 million had it performed to the same level of its predecessor, but it earned 20% less than Skyfall.[148] Sony paid 50% of the production costs for the film—which totalled some $250 million after accounting for government incentives—but received only 25% of certain profits, once costs were recouped. The studio also spent tens of millions of dollars in marketing and had to give MGM some of the profit from the studio’s non-Bond films, including 22 Jump Street.
In the United Kingdom, the film grossed £4.1 million ($6.4 million) from its Monday preview screenings.[149] It grossed £6.3 million ($9.2 million) on its opening day[150] and then £5.7 million ($8.8 million) on Wednesday, setting UK records for both days.
In the film’s first seven days it grossed £41.7 million ($63.8 million), breaking the UK record for highest first-week opening, set by Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban‘s £23.9 million ($36.9 million) in 2004.[152] Its Friday–Saturday gross was £20.4 million ($31.2 million) compared to Skyfall‘s £20.1 million ($31 million).
The film also broke the record for the best per-screen opening average with $110,000, a record previously held by The Dark Knight with $100,200.[153] It has grossed a total of $136.3 million there.[154] In the UK, it surpassed Avatar to become the country’s highest-grossing IMAX release ever with $10.09 million.
Spectre opened in Germany with $22.5 million (including previews), which included a new record for the biggest Saturday of all time,[156] Australia with $8.7 million (including previews) and South Korea opened to $8.2 million (including previews).[157] Despite the 13 November Paris attacks, which led to numerous theatres being closed down, the film opened with $14.6 million (including $2 million in previews) in France.
In Mexico, where part of the film was shot, it debuted with more than double that of Skyfall with $4.5 million.[156] It also bested its predecessor’s opening in various Nordic regions where MGM is distributing, such as in Finland ($2.7 million) and Norway ($2.9 million),[159] and in other markets like Denmark ($4.2 million), the Netherlands ($3.4 million), and Sweden ($3.1 million).
In India, it opened at No. 1 with $4.8 million which is 4% above the opening of Skyfall.[160] It topped the German-speaking Switzerland box office for four weeks and in the Netherlands, it held the No. 1 spot for seven weeks straight where it topped Minions to become the top movie of the year. The top earning markets are Germany ($70.3 million) and France ($38.8 million).[162] In Paris, it has the second-highest ticket sales of all time with 4.1 million tickets sold only behind Spider-Man 3 which sold over 6.3 million tickets in 2007.
In the United States and Canada the film opened on 6 November 2015, and in its opening weekend, was originally projected to gross $70–75 million from 3,927 screens, the widest release for a Bond film.[164] However, after it grossed $5.3 million from its early Thursday night showings and $28 million on its opening day, weekend projections were increased to $75–80 million. The film ended up grossing $70.4 million in its opening weekend (about $20 million less than Skyfall’s $90.6 million debut, including IMAX previews), but nevertheless finished first at the box office.
IMAX generated $9.1 million for Spectre at 374 screens, premium large format made $8 million from 429 cinemas, reaping 11% of the film’s opening, which means that Spectre earned $17.1 million (23%) of its opening weekend total in large-format venues. Cinemark XD generated $1.9 million in 112 XD locations.[165][166]
In China, it opened on 12 November and earned $15 million on its opening day, which is the second biggest 2D single day gross for a Hollywood film behind the $18.5 million opening day of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and occupying 43% of all available screens which included $790,000 in advance night screenings.[167] Through its opening weekend, it earned $48.1 million from 14,700 screens which is 198% ahead of Skyfall,[157] a new record for a Hollywood 2D opening.
IMAX contributed $4.6 million on 246 screens, also a new record for a three-day opening for a November release (breaking Interstellar‘s record).[157] In its second weekend, it added $12.1 million falling precipitously by 75% which is the second worst second weekend drop for any major Hollywood release in China of 2015.
It grossed a total of $84.7 million there after four weekends (foreign films in the Middle Kingdom play for 30 days only, unless granted special extensions).[170] Despite a strong opening, it failed to attain the $100 million mark there as projected due to mixed response from critics and audiences as well as facing competition from local films.
Spectre (2015)Â Critical Response
Spectre has an approval rating of 63% based on 367 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.4/10. Its critical consensus reads, “Spectre nudges Daniel Craig’s rebooted Bond closer to the glorious, action-driven spectacle of earlier entries, although it’s admittedly reliant on established 007 formula.”
Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Spectre a score of 60 out of 100 based on 48 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews”.[174] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A−” on an A+ to F scale.
Prior to its UK release, Spectre mostly received positive reviews.[175] Mark Kermode, film critic for The Observer, gave the film four out of five stars, observing that the film did not live up to the standard set by Skyfall, but was able to tap into audience expectations.[176] Writing in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film a full five stars, calling it “inventive, intelligent and complex”, and singling out Craig’s performance as the film’s highlight.
In another five star review, The Daily Telegraph‘s Robbie Collin described Spectre as “a swaggering show of confidence'”, lauding it as “a feat of pure cinematic necromancy.”
Positive yet critical assessments included Kim Newman of Sight and Sound, who wrote that “for all its wayward plotting (including an unhelpful tie-in with Bond’s childhood that makes very little sense) and off-the-peg elements, Spectre works” as he felt “the audience’s patience gets tested by two and a half hours of set-pieces strung on one of the series’ thinner plots”;
and IGN’s Chris Tilly, who rated the film 7.2 out of 10, considering Spectre “solid if unspectacular”, and concluding that “the film falls frustratingly short of greatness.”
Critical appraisal was mixed in the United States. In a review for RogerEbert.com, Matt Zoller Seitz gave Spectre 2.5 out of 4, describing it as inconsistent and unable to capitalise on its potential.[181] Kenneth Turan, reviewing the film for Los Angeles Times, concluded that Spectre “comes off as exhausted and uninspired”.
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times criticised the film as having “nothing surprising” and sacrificing its originality for the sake of box office returns.[183] Forbes’ Scott Mendelson also heavily criticised the film, denouncing Spectre as “the worst 007 movie in 30 years”.
Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly viewed Spectre as “an overreaction to our current blockbuster moment”, aspiring “to be a serialized sequel” and proving “itself as a Saga”. While noting that “[n]othing that happens in Spectre holds up to even minor logical scrutiny”, he had “come not to bury Spectre, but to weirdly praise it. Because the final act of the movie is so strange, so willfully obtuse, that it deserves extra attention.”[185] Christopher Orr, writing in The Atlantic, also criticised the film, saying that Spectre “backslides on virtually every [aspect]”.
Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer called Craig’s performance “Bored, James Bored.”[187] Alyssa Rosenberg, writing for The Washington Post, stated that the film turned into “a disappointingly conventional Bond film.”[188]
In a positive review published in Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, describing Spectre as “party time for Bond fans, a fierce, funny, gorgeously produced valentine to the longest-running franchise in movies”.[189] Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle, raved that “One of the great satisfactions of Spectre is that, in addition to all the stirring action, and all the timely references to a secret organisation out to steal everyone’s personal information, we get to believe in Bond as a person.”
Stephen Whitty from The New York Daily News, who awarded the film four of five stars, stated that “Craig is cruelly efficient. Dave Bautista makes a good, Oddjob-like assassin. And while Lea Seydoux doesn’t leave a huge impression as this film’s ‘Bond girl’, perhaps it’s because we’ve already met—far too briefly—the hypnotic Monica Bellucci, as the first real ‘Bond woman’ since Diana Rigg.”
Chicago Sun-Times film reviewer Richard Roeper, who gave the film three stars out of four, considered the film “solidly in the middle of the all-time rankings, which means it’s still a slick, beautifully photographed, action-packed, international thriller with a number of wonderfully, ludicrously entertaining set pieces, a sprinkling of dry wit, myriad gorgeous women and a classic psycho-villain who is clearly out of his mind but seems to like it that way.”
Michael Phillips, reviewing for the Chicago Tribune, stated, “For all its workmanlike devotion to out-of-control helicopters, Spectre works best when everyone’s on the ground, doing his or her job, driving expensive fast cars heedlessly, detonating the occasional wisecrack, enjoying themselves and their beautiful clothes.”[193] Variety film critic Guy Lodge complained in his review that “What’s missing is the unexpected emotional urgency of Skyfall, as the film sustains its predecessor’s nostalgia kick with a less sentimental bent.”
Spectre (2015)Â Accolades
| Award | Category | Recipient | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards | Best Original Song | “Writing’s on the Wall” (Sam Smith & Jimmy Napes) | Won |
| Golden Globe Awards | Best Original Song | Won | |
| Critics’ Choice Awards | Best Song | Nominated | |
| Best Actor in an Action Movie | Daniel Craig | Nominated | |
| St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards | Best Song | “Writing’s on the Wall” (Sam Smith & Jimmy Napes) | Won |
| Houston Film Critics Society Awards | Best Original Song | Nominated | |
| Art Directors Guild Awards | Production Design for a Contemporary Film | Dennis Gassner | Nominated |
| Satellite Awards[195] | Best Cinematography | Hoyte van Hoytema | Nominated |
| Best Original Score | Thomas Newman | Nominated | |
| Best Original Song | “Writing’s on the Wall” (Sam Smith & Jimmy Napes) | Nominated | |
| Best Visual Effects | Steve Begg &Â Chris Corbould | Nominated | |
| Best Art Direction and Production Design | Dennis Gassner | Nominated | |
| Best Film Editing | Lee Smith | Nominated | |
| Best Sound (Editing and Mixing) | Per Hallberg, Karen Baker Landers, Scott Millan, Gregg Rudloff & Stuart Wilson | Nominated | |
| Saturn Awards[196] | Best Action or Adventure Film | Nominated | |
| Empire Awards[197] | Best British Film | Won | |
| Best Thriller | Won | ||
| Teen Choice Awards[198] | Choice Movie: Action | Nominated | |
| Choice Movie Actress: Action | Léa Seydoux | Nominated |
Spectre (2015) Movie Info
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Spectre (2015)Â Pictures
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