The Daniel Craig James Bond films reinvented the Bond character for the modern era starting with the great Casino Royale in 2006. We went from a cheesy almost super hero like James Bond that constantly uttered one-liners to a hard-boiled more grounded and raw version of Bond.

I have been looking forward to Spectre since I saw the first trailer for it. Getting to delve deeper into the character of Bond after Skyfall was super exciting. Spectre however, is nowhere near as good as Skyfall, it’s sadly not even as good as Quantum of Solace, which was the worst Craig movie up to this point.

Spectre is the weakest of all of the Daniel Craig films and it had everything going for it. A great cast, the same director and writer from Skyfall, yet the movie is much weaker than Skyfall and started to dive into the same problems movies like “The World is not enough” and “die another day” did.

The best part of the movie is the entirety of the opening sequence. Bond running through the day of the dead parade is really well shot and the whole scene is just plain exciting. There’s a really good long shot at the beginning of the film and looks like it was all done with practical effects for the most part.

From there the movie starts to fall apart though. The main villain of the movie for instance is shown once about 45 minutes into the movie and doesn’t appear again until the third act of the film about an hour and half later.

Bonds character also takes a few steps back in the movie. Whereas in Casino Royale and Skyfall he has clear weaknesses, he’s not 100 percent on point with a gun and he has real struggles with fights with henchman.

In Spectre he nonchalantly causes explosions, barely struggles with anyone even the “strongman” portrayed by Dave Bautista. One scene where Bond is supposed to go through something crippling he gets right back up and causes an explosion like nothing ever happened.

The plot of the movie without giving too much away is almost identical to the newest Mission Impossible film. Entire plot points seemed to be mirrored and Q plays almost the same role that Simon Pegg character did in Mission Impossible.

The attempt to tie all four movies together is also kind of forced. In Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace the plots were tied and happened back to back. Skyfall was stand –alone, but gave Bond more character development.

SPOILER WARNING: Spectre tries to shoehorn a plot that says all 4 movie plots were orchestrated by the same person who ran one giant Illuminati-like organization and that this person was personally making all of this stuff happen so that bond would suffer.

It’s important to note that I didn’t absolutely hate Spectre. The film itself is ok, but it’s incredibly weak and disappointing compared to the other recent films. Casino Royale and Skyfall proved that Bond movies still survive in today’s climate where there’s no clear war enemies.

Spectre proves that maybe they’re already running out of ideas which is extremely disappointing. With Spectre potentially being Craig’s last outing as bond it would be sad to see such a strong franchise being left in a weak state before a new Bond is announced.

I’d personally give Spectre a 6.5 out of 10. The film isn’t awful and it’s nearly as bad as some of the pre Craig movies, but it’s the weakest one to come out yet.

Mace Mackiewicz can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]