Pay Attention 007

I watched Spectre this afternoon.  Getting the all new revamped score had put me in the mood again, even though the score remains one of the worst in the series.  

Mind you, Spectre the movie is no great shakes either.  I'd say it's the worst of Daniel Craig's - at least Quantum of Solace is short - and it doesn't really make any sense.  What exactly is the plot, after all?  Blofeld wants to get hold of all the CCTV in the world, or something?

Actually, what really irritated me on this watch is just how passive 007 is.  He's our hero and yet all he does is mope around taking orders.  He's the world's greatest spy and he doesn't do any actual spying.  Instead, he goes somewhere, then someone tells him where to go next, then he's off.  It's like an RPG, only instead of friendly villagers giving 007 subquests, it's Monica Bellucci in her pants.

Admittedly, Bond has always been a bit rubbish at the actual spying stuff, but he does it now and then.  Think of Moonraker, where he spots a C&W logo while being throttled; this sends him to Rio, where he asks Manuela about it, and she tells him.  He even overrides her perfectly valid objections to visiting the warehouse that night, because he's so keen to follow up this lead.  He's an active participant in the plot.

Here's all the times James Bond is told where to go in Spectre:

• Judi Dench's M, in her from the dead video, tells Bond to go to and find Sciarra.
• Ralph Fiennes' M tells Bond to go to Q Branch.
• Judi Dench's M, in the second part of her from the dead video, tells Bond to go to Sciarra's funeral.
• Lucia tells Bond to go to that meeting at Blenheim Palace.
• Moneypenny tells Bond to go to Mr White in Austria in the middle of a car chase.
• Mr White tells Bond to go to a different bit of Austria to find Madeline.
• Madeline tells Bond to go to Tangiers to visit L'American.
• Mr White's computer tells Bond to go to a big crater in the desert.

That's almost the entire film.  After this point, Bond stops going places because he's told, and instead gets a bag over his head and driven to Vauxhall Cross against his will; presumably, if Blofeld had simply asked nicely, he'd have turned up neatly dressed with a dozen red roses.  The first time he does the opposite of what someone told him to do is when he rescues Madeline and escapes the exploding building, and I think we can all agree that was a terrible mistake and the world would be a much better place if he'd let her die there and then.  There would've been a much happier ending to No Time To Die, anyway.