It’s my own damn fault, really.

I’m a curious guy and as much as I was (note the past tense) eager to see the 007 film Spectre, released today, I just had to read some of the reviews.

To be fair, the earliest reviews, appearing earlier in the week and following, I assume, the UK premiere of the film, were generally positive and my hopes were raised.  I’m a fan of James Bond and have a love for many of the films, even as I’m clear-eyed enough to recognize there is plenty of chaff among the wheat.

My favorite Bond is Sean Connery though even his run of films weren’t perfect.  Thunderball was a great spectacle but in retrospect was probably the first of the Bond films to show both formula and bloat but its follow-up, You Only Live Twice, was the only Connery Bond film (including the non-canon Never Say Never Again) to leave me cold.  While others loathe the tongue in cheek campiness of Diamonds Are Forever, I happen to like that film for just that reason.

Between You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever we had On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the only Bond film featuring George Lazenby in the title role.  There are many who consider this one of the all time best Bond films ever but I’m not one of them.  I found the film rather flat, though it was fun to see Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas in it.  Continuity-wise, I never understood why Mr. Savalas’ Blofeld didn’t recognize James Bond and vice versa.  Despite the change in actors, the two characters had come face to face in the previous film, You Only Live Twice.

The first Bond I encountered was the Roger Moore version.  Though many hate Mr. Moore’s take on the Bond character, I enjoyed his work.  The biggest problem, IMHO, with Mr. Moore’s Bond films is that one good film was almost always followed with a really bad one.  Further, two of the worst Bond films ever made, Moonraker (a silly Star Wars inspired affair) and A View To A Kill (an uninspired work -you need only check out the totally ho-hum opening action set piece to see how uninspired the rest of the film was) both featured Mr. Moore.  Yet the highs were very high.  The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only are two of my all time favorite Bonds.

Timothy Dalton would replace Roger Moore in the underrated The Living Daylights, a damn good Bond film that would have benefited even more had the producers/creators tailored their script for Mr. Dalton rather than Roger Moore (as good as Mr. Dalton is, there are moments in the film that appeared designed specifically for Mr. Moore’s interpretation of the character).  Mr. Dalton’s second (and last) Bond film, License to Kill, however, was a big disappointment and I wasn’t too surprised when it was announced he was out.

Pierce Brosnan, the actor who the studios originally wanted to take over for Roger Moore following A View to a Kill, would be hired for the next four Bond films which, frankly, didn’t do all that much for me.  I love the idea of Pierce Brosnan playing Bond but the films, apart from the first, felt like a cookie cutter product.  One film fades into the next and if pressed, I’d have a hard time telling you the plots of his Bond run.

Then came Daniel Craig with the 2006 “reboot” Casino Royale.  Based on the first Ian Fleming penned James Bond story, Casino Royale was what Timothy Dalton’s first Bond film should have been.  Serious, sexy, and tragic.  Here we had James Bond presented as a new agent and, by the end of the adventure when he states he’s “Bond, James Bond” it feels like you’ve just seen his origin story and away we go…

…only we didn’t.

The next Bond film, Quantum of Solace, fell victim in part to a writer’s strike and was a mess of a movie, IMHO.  2012’s Skyfall, however, hit audiences like napalm.  Critics almost universally loved the film and, when watching it, so did I.

But as pretty and adrenaline pumping as Skyfall was to watch in theaters that first time, the movie’s story falls apart even under the most modest of scrutiny.  Worse, this is the only Bond film I know of where the bad guy “wins”.  His stated goal is to kill Judi Dench’s M and then die and this is exactly what he does.  Which makes one wonder: Just how effective is this Bond?

Another thing that bothered me about the film, even upon first watching it, is that at the very end we again establish the “old” Bond setup of a male M, Moneypenny, and Bond.  Didn’t we already do a “origin” story with Casino Royale?  How come we’re now three movies into Mr. Craig’s run and yet we wind once again having an origin story with Skyfall?

Which brings us back to Spectre.

Despite the bumps in the road and the disappointing films, I maintain I’m a fan of the franchise and like nothing more than to see a good Bond film.  The early commercials for Spectre indicated, at least to me, that this new movie would offer plenty of homages to the old ones, something that thrilled me.

In my mind I’m thinking: Now that we’ve finally gotten rid of the whole origin story stuff, we’re going into primo-Bond territory with, among other Bondian staples, a bruiser henchman whom he fights on a train (Shades of From Russia WIth Love and The Spy Who Loved Me)!  You have the evil organization Spectre coming back after all these years (the organization that vexed Connery’s Bond for most of his run!  Hey, it’s in the movie’s title!).  You have car chases and snow and beautiful women (not that they ever left the series) and…

…and it looked like so much fun.

Then came the other reviews.

As I said above, its my own damn fault.  When I read this HEAVY SPOILER review by Drew McWeeny, I was beside myself:

Spectre Manages to Majorly Muddy Daniel Craig’s James Bond Legacy

I’ll try to stay clear of certain spoilery material as best I can, but one of the first things to annoy me upon reading this review is that it appears we once again have a Daniel Craig Bond film that takes place BEFORE he becomes a “full on” Connery-Moore-Lazenby-Dalton-Brosnan Bond.  In other words, we’re once again -on our fourth Daniel Craig film!- yet again dealing with a proto-Bond in an origin story.

Even worse than that was discovering in this review and others like it the identity and motives of the movie’s villain.  I’m not going to give that information away (if you want SPOILERS, click the link above or search for other reviews), but the motives of the villain are -and there is no kind way of saying this- stupid.

Extremely stupid.

How stupid?  So stupid one wonders if the writers forgot the same motivations and relationships were presented years before in one of the Austin Powers films (again, I’m being careful here to not be spoilery).  In the Austin Powers films these were presented as broad comedy and the silliness was intentional.  In Spectre they’re playing it straight and reading about it makes it feel all the sillier.

So here we are, four films into Daniel Craig’s run of James Bond and, based on some of the interviews he’s given, Spectre might well be his final appearance as Bond and, at least for some critics, if this is his swan song he’s going out on a low.

Too bad.