One of the greatest film letdowns of 2015 has undoubtedly been Spectre, a film so riddled with plot-holes, cliches and nostalgic throwbacks to the 60s Bond films, that it makes the Austin Powers films look like cinematic masterpieces.
While Sam Mendes could have taken the chance to create something genuinely innovative and interesting, making a Bond film on a similar level to Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, we instead got a 2015 remake of From Russia with Love. There is nothing wrong with this Bond classic. In fact, its a perfectly good film considering it was made back in the 60s. But unfortunately for Spectre, a whole new genre taking the piss out of classic spy flicks has emerged since then, most notably Kingsman; The Secret Service, and of course Austin Powers. This makes it just impossible to take some of Spectres more cliched scenes, and its Dr Evil style antagonist, seriously.
And for a franchise priding itself on its action sequences, the action of the 2015 Bond film was decidedly lackluster, the opening scene quickly falling short of expectations the minute Bond survived a collapsing tower block by falling a good 50 metres only to land on a sofa, making even the action scenes from Austin Powers look like something akin to a Schwarznegger movie. When the film could have been given some sort of semi-decent ending, what viewers got instead was a helicopter being shot out of the sky by a pistol, a damsel in distress, and a badly scarred villian (despite the fact he was the victim of an explosion that wiped out an entire complex), who is led off to arrest on London Bridge by the Police in a scene that has been taken straight out of a 1980s cop drama or Johnny English.
Spectre lacked any attempt to create something innovative and new
Spectre was crippled by the disease afflicting many recent films; a reliance on past cliches for inspiration, and lack of ambition to fuse existing characters and themes with raw creative genius, shown all too well by the mess of The Hobbit trilogy. Spectre lacked any attempt to create something innovative and new, which is a shame considering 2015 saw the release of the spectucular Mad Max; Fury Road, which was able to achieve what Spectre failed to do.
A recommendation for Sam Mendes to improve his Bond film in the future could be to combine his Bond cast with the cast of Austin Powers, and maybe throw in Mini-Me as well just for good measure. That way we might be able to take his Bond film a little bit more seriously.